équity must be preserved too; and it is impoffible, that any thing should be neceffary to commerce, which is inconfiftent with justice. The principle of credit was not weakened by that bill. God forbid! The enforcement of that credit was only put into the fame public judicial hands on which we depend for our lives, and all that makes life dear to us. But, indeed, this bufinefs was taken up too warmly both here and elsewhere. The bill was extremely mistaken. It was fuppofed to enact what it never enacted; and complaints were made of claufes in it as novelties, which exifted before the noble lord that brought in the bill was born. There was a fallacy that run through the whole of the objections. The gentlemen who oppofed the bill, always argued, as if the option lay between that bill and the antient law. But this is a grand mistake. For practically, the option is between, not that bill and the old law, but between that bill and thofe occafional laws called acts of grace. For the operation of the old law is fo favage, and fo inconvenient to fociety, that for a long time paft, once in every parliament, and lately twice, the legislature has been obliged to make a general arbitrary jail-delivery, and at once to fet open, by its fovereign authority, all the prifons in England.

Gentlemen, I never relifhed acts of grace; nor ever fubmitted to them but from despair of better. They are a dishonourable invention, by which, not from humanity, not from policy; but merely because we have not room enough to hold thefe victims of the abfurdity of our laws, we turn loose upon the public three or four thousand naked wretches, corrupted by the habits, debafed by the ignominy of a prifon. If the creditor had a right to those carcafes as a natural fecurity for his property, I am fure we have no right to deprive him of that fecurity. But if the few pounds of flesh were not neceffary to his fecurity, we

had

had not a right to detain the unfortunate debtor, without any benefit at all to the perfon who confined him.-Take it as you will, we commit injuftice. Now lord Beauchamp's bill intended to do deliberately, and with great caution and circumfpection, upon each feveral cafe, and with all attention to the just claimant, what acts of grace do in a much. greater measure, and with very little care, caution, or deliberation.

I fufpect that here too, if we contrive to oppofe this bill, we shall be found in a struggle against the nature of things. For as we grow enlightened, the public will not bear, for any length of time, to pay for the maintenance of whole armies of prisoners; nor, at their own expence, submit to keep jails as a fort of garrifons, merely to fortify the abfurd principle of making men judges in their own caufe. For credit has little or no concern in this cruelty. I fpeak in a commercial affembly. You know that credit is given, because capital must be employed: that men calculate the chances of infolvency; and they either withhold the credit, or make the debtor pay the rifque in the price. The counting-houfe has no alliance with the jail. Holland understands trade as well as we, and fhe has done much more than this obnoxious bill intended to do. There was not, when Mr. Howard vifited Holland, more than one prifoner for debt in the great city of Rotterdam. Although lord Beauchamp's act (which was previous to this bill, and intended to feel the way for it) has already preserved liberty to thousands; and though it is not three years since the last act of grace paffed, yet by Mr. Howard's laft account, there were near three thousand again in jail. I cannot name this gentleman without remarking, that his labours and writings have done much to open the eyes and hearts of mankind. He has vifited all Europe,--not to furvey the sump-' tuoufness of palaces, or the ftateliness of temples; not to make

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make accurate measurements of the remains of antient grandeur, nor to form a scale of the curiofity of modern art; not to collect medals, or collate manufcripts : but to dive into the depths of dungeons; to plunge into the infection of hofpitals; to furvey the manfions of forrow and pain; to take the gage and dimensions of misery, depreffion, and contempt; to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and to compare and collate the diftreffes of all men in all countries. His plan is original; and it is as full of genius as it is of humanity. It was a voyage of discovery; a circumnavigation of charity. Already the benefit of his labour is felt more or lefs in every country: I hope he will anticipate his final reward, by seeing all its effects fully realized in his own. He will receive, not by retail but in grofs, the reward of those who visit the prifoner; and he has fo foreftalled and monopolized this branch of charity, that there will be, I truft, little room to merit by fuch acts of benevolence hereafter.

Nothing remains now to trouble you with, but the fourth charge against me-the business of the Roman Catholics. It is a business closely connected with the reft. They are all on one and the fame principle. My little scheme of conduct, fuch as it is, is all arranged. I could do nothing but what I have done on this fubject, without confounding the whole train of my ideas, and disturbing the whole order of my life. Gentlemen, I ought to apologize to you, for seeming to think any thing at all neceffary to be faid upon this matter. The calumny is fitter to be fcrawled with the midnight chalk of incendiaries, with "No pope"ry," on walls and doors of devoted houses, than to be mentioned in any civilifed company. I had heard, that the fpirit of discontent on that fubject was very prevalent here. With

pleasure

pleasure I find that I have been grofsly misinformed. If it exists at all in this city, the laws have crushed its exertions, and our morals have fhamed its appearance in day-light. I have pursued this spirit wherever I could trace it; but it ftill fled from me. It was a ghost, which all had heard of, but none had seen. None would acknowledge that he thought the public proceeding with regard to our Catholic diffenters to be blameable; but feveral were forry it had made an ill impreffion upon others, and that my interest was hurt by my fhare in the bufinefs. I find with fatiffaction and pride, that not above four or five in this city (and I dare fay these misled by fome grofs misrepresentation) have figned that symbol of delufion and bond of fedition, that libel on the national religion and English character, the Proteftant Affociation. It is therefore, gentlemen, not by way of cure but of prevention, and left the arts of wicked men may prevail over the integrity of any one amongst us, that I think it neceffary to open to you the merits of this tranfaction pretty much at large; and I beg your patience upon it: for, although the reasonings that have been used to depreciate the act are of little force, and though the authority of the men concerned in this ill defign is not very impofing; yet the audaciousness of these confpirators against the national honour, and the extensive wickedness of their attempts, have raised persons of little importance to a degree of evil eminence, and imparted a fort of finister dignity to proceedings that had their origin in only the meanest and blindest malice.

In explaining to you the proceedings of parliament which have been complained of, I will state to you,-first, the thing that was done;-next, the perfons who did it ;and lastly, the grounds and reafons upon which the legi

flature proceeded in this deliberate act of public justice and public prudence.

Gentlemen, The condition of our nature is such, that we buy our bleffings at a price. The Reformation, one of the greatest periods of human improvement, was a time of trouble and confufion. The vaft ftructure of fuperftition and tyranny, which had been for ages in rearing, and which was combined with the intercft of the great and of the many; which was moulded into the laws, the manners, and civil inftitutions of nations, and blended with the frame and policy of ftates; could not be brought to the ground without a fearful struggle; nor could it fall without a violent concuffion of itself and all about it. When this great revolution was attempted in a more regular mode by government, it was oppofed by plots and feditions of the people; when by popular efforts, it was repreffed as rebellion by the hand of power; and bloody executions (often bloodily returned) marked the whole of its progress through all its stages. The affairs of religion, which are no longer heard of in the tumult of our prefent contentions, made a principal ingredient in the wars and politics of that time; the enthusiasm of religion threw a gloom over the politics; and political interefts poisoned and perverted the spirit of religion upon all fides. The Proteftant religion in that violent struggle, infected, as the Popish had been before, by worldly interefts and worldly paffions, became a perfecutor in its turn, fometimes of the new fects, which carried their own principles further than it was convenient to the original reformers; and always of the body from whom they parted; and this perfecuting spirit arofe, not only, from the bitterness of retaliation, but from the merciless policy of fear.

It