Mr. PITT spoke to the following purport:—­Sir, it is common for those to have the greatest regard to their own interest who discover the least for that of others.  I do not, therefore, despair of recalling the advocates of this bill from the prosecution of their favourite measures, by arguments of greater efficacy than those which are founded on reason and justice.

Nothing, sir, is more evident, than that some degree of reputation is absolutely necessary to men who have any concern in the administration of a government like ours; they must either secure the fidelity of their adherents by the assistance of wisdom, or of virtue; their enemies must either be awed by their honesty, or terrified by their cunning.  Mere artless bribery will never gain a sufficient majority to set them entirely free from apprehensions of censure.  To different tempers different motives must be applied:  some, who place their felicity in being accounted wise, are in very little care to preserve the character of honesty; others may be persuaded to join in measures which they easily discover to be weak and ill-concerted, because they are convinced that the authors of them are not corrupt but mistaken, and are unwilling that any man should be punished for natural defects or casual ignorance.

I cannot say, sir, which of these motives influences the advocates for the bill before us; a bill in which such cruelties are proposed as are yet unknown among the most savage nations, such as slavery has not yet borne, or tyranny invented, such as cannot be heard without resentment, nor thought of without horrour.

It is, sir, perhaps, not unfortunate, that one more expedient has been added, rather ridiculous than shocking, and that these tyrants of the administration, who amuse themselves with oppressing their fellow-subjects, who add without reluctance one hardship to another, invade the liberty of those whom they have already overborne with taxes, first plunder and then imprison, who take all opportunities of heightening the publick distresses, and make the miseries of war the instruments of new oppressions, are too ignorant to be formidable, and owe their power not to their abilities, but to casual prosperity, or to the influence of money.

The other clauses of this bill, complicated at once with cruelty and folly, have been treated with becoming indignation; but this may be considered with less ardour of resentment, and fewer emotions of zeal, because, though, perhaps, equally iniquitous, it will do no harm; for a law that can never be executed can never be felt.

That it will consume the manufacture of paper, and swell the books of statutes, is all the good or hurt that can be hoped or feared from a law like this; a law which fixes what is in its own nature mutable, which prescribes rules to the seasons and limits to the wind.  I am too well acquainted, sir, with the disposition of its two chief supporters, to mention the contempt with which this law will be treated by