The honorable gentleman sees that I respect the principle upon which he goes, as well as his intentions and his abilities.  He will believe that I do not differ from him wantonly and on trivial grounds.  He is very sure that it was not his embracing one way which determined me to take the other. I have not in newspapers, to derogate from his fair fame with the nation, printed the first rude sketch of his bill with ungenerous and invidious comments. I have not, in conversations industriously circulated about the town, and talked on the benches of this House, attributed his conduct to motives low and unworthy, and as groundless as they are injurious. I do not affect to be frightened with this proposition, as if some hideous spectre had started from hell, which was to be sent back again by every form of exorcism and every kind of incantation. I invoke no Acheron to overwhelm him in the whirlpools of its muddy gulf. I do not tell the respectable mover and seconder, by a perversion of their sense and expressions, that their proposition halts between the ridiculous and the dangerous. I am not one of those who start up, three at a time, and fall upon and strike at him with so much eagerness that our daggers hack one another in his sides.  My honorable friend has not brought down a spirited imp of chivalry to win the first achievement and blazon of arms on his milk-white shield in a field listed against him,—­nor brought out the generous offspring of lions, and said to them,—­“Not against that side of the forest! beware of that!—­here is the prey, where you are to fasten your paws!”—­and seasoning his unpractised jaws with blood, tell him,—­“This is the milk for which you are to thirst hereafter!” We furnish at his expense no holiday,—­nor suspend hell, that a crafty Ixion may have rest from his wheel,—­nor give the common adversary (if he be a common adversary) reason to say,—­“I would have put in my word to oppose, but the eagerness of your allies in your social war was such that I could not break in upon you.”  I hope he sees and feels, and that every member sees and feels along with him, the difference between amicable dissent and civil discord.

SPEECH

ON A

MOTION MADE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS,

MAY 7, 1782,

FOR

A COMMITTEE TO INQUIRE INTO THE STATE OF THE REPRESENTATION OF THE
COMMONS IN PARLIAMENT.

Mr. Speaker,—­We have now discovered, at the close of the eighteenth century, that the Constitution of England, which for a series of ages had been the proud distinction of this country, always the admiration and sometimes the envy of the wise and learned in every other nation,—­we have discovered that this boasted Constitution, in the most boasted part of it, is a gross imposition upon the understanding of mankind, an insult to their feelings, and acting by