* * * * *

Having sufficiently proved that nothing could make it generally improper for Mr. Burke to prove what he had alleged concerning the object of this dispute, I pass to the second question, that is, Whether he was justified in choosing the committee on the Quebec Bill as the field for this discussion?  If it were necessary, it might be shown that he was not the first to bring these discussions into Parliament, nor the first to renew them in this session.  The fact is notorious.  As to the Quebec Bill, they were introduced into the debate upon that subject for two plain reasons:  First, that, as he thought it then not advisable to make the proceedings of the factious societies the subject of a direct motion, he had no other way open to him.  Nobody has attempted to show that it was at all admissible into any other business before the House.  Here everything was favorable.  Here was a bill to form a new Constitution for a French province under English dominion.  The question naturally arose, whether we should settle that constitution upon English ideas, or upon French.  This furnished an opportunity for examining into the value of the French Constitution, either considered as applicable to colonial government, or in its own nature.  The bill, too, was in a committee.  By the privilege of speaking as often as he pleased, he hoped in some measure to supply the want of support, which he had but too much reason to apprehend.  In a committee it was always in his power to bring the questions from generalities to facts, from declamation to discussion.  Some benefit he actually received from this privilege.  These are plain, obvious, natural reasons for his conduct.  I believe they are the true, and the only true ones.

They who justify the frequent interruptions, which at length wholly disabled him from proceeding, attribute their conduct to a very different interpretation of his motives.  They say, that, through corruption, or malice, or folly, he was acting his part in a plot to make his friend Mr. Fox pass for a republican, and thereby to prevent the gracious intentions of his sovereign from taking effect, which at that time had begun to disclose themselves in his favor.[8] This is a pretty serious charge.  This, on Mr. Burke’s part, would be something more than mistake, something worse than formal irregularity.  Any contumely, any outrage, is readily passed over, by the indulgence which we all owe to sudden passion.  These things are soon forgot upon occasions in which all men are so apt to forget themselves.  Deliberate injuries, to a degree, must be remembered, because they require deliberate precautions to be secured against their return.