t 
sy 
> 
+ 
_ passion. 
HISTORY OF EUROPE. 
titled to full credit: and having 
said this, it will not be imputed as 
auly personal attack on that gentle- 
man, if, contrarily to our usual 
custom, we make a remark on a 
speech, the substance and tendency 
of which, only, it is our business, 
in the character of annalists, to re- 
port. This observation, that the 
massacres of France did not origi« 
nate in the principles of the rights 
of man, though commonly resorted 
to by the defenders of innovation, 
is not. worthy of the philosophical 
accuracy and precision of Mr. 
_ Sheridan, who knows the distinc- 
tion between efficient causes, or 
rather the one EFFICIENT cause, 
and natural causes or occasions. 
Massacres cannot arise out of mere 
abstractions, whether entertained 
in the brain, or represented by 
symbols or writing ; but notions 
concerning rights, mingled with, 
and brought into play, every evil 
An explosion is effected 
not by nitre alone, but by the ac- 
tion of fire on nitre mixed. with 
sulphur. 
Sir Francis Burdett, among a 
variety of pointed observations, 
said, that without areform of par- 
liament, corruption would become 
‘the euthanasia of the constitution. 
Corruption had reduced us, with 
all the advantages of our soil and 
climate, to a state, that no more 
resembled, in point of liberty, that 
of our ancestors, than if we were 
the inhabitants of a foreign land. 
“Tadeed, said sir Francis, with all 
our boast of wealth, the mean and 
hard lot of poverty fal& to the share, 
of the mass of the people: aad that, 
comfort, which ought to be the re- 
ward of honest labour, is seized by 
the griping hand of a rapacious 
government. But all these things 
are drawing towards a conclusion. 
That which was once a matter of 
choice, is now a matter of necece 
sity ;, and the chancellor of the 
exchequer, though an enemy to 
liberty, has, ‘by his conduct, con= 
tributed to revolution.’’? Sir Fran- 
cis concluded a contise but ener- 
getic speech, glowing with the fire 
of freedom aud the sentiments of 
humanity, with declaring, that the 
present motion should have his 
hearty support. 
From the generous concern of 
sir Francis Burdett for the oppress= 
ed mass of the people, whose patient 
and silent sufferings seldom fiad a 
sincere advocate in sucha place, 
we can neither with-hold nor sup- 
press our sincere approbation and 
applause. Of what use is a flourish- 
ing revenue, if it cannot beapplied, 
by political management, to the 
relief and comfort of the great body 
of the people ?* 
Sir Richard Hill did not omit,on 
the present occasion, to harp on the 
common string of the minister’s in- 
consistency, 
* We have formerly had occasion to observe that most of our laws, multiplied al- 
‘most beyond the power of enumeration, relate to the augmentation of the revenue, and 
the preservation, not to say the extension, of the powers of the executive governiment,, 
Few are the laws of a truly paternal and patriotic kind. Nay, when measures have 
_ been proposed for reducing the enormous price of provisions, we have seen a «1 
_ of state setting hisface against them. Onthe twenty-second of June, this year, ir, 
~ Mainwaring moved the order of the day, on a bill for the better preventing of forestal- 
a, ling and segrating of live cattle. Mr. Dundas opposed this bill, on the ground that it 
e * would hart the landed interest ofthis country, by diminishing, through a reduced price 
_ af provisions, the value of farms, Though 4 committee of the house of communs, 
y Vor. XXXIX, [5] 
‘= 
‘1796, 
