Mr. Sheridan's amendment tended to oblige the privy council to take care that the instrument stating his Majesty to be recovered, which was to be sent to the Lord Mayor of London, and inserted in the London Gazette, be previously before parlia

ment.

The committee divided on the amendment; ayes 113; noes 181. They then went through the whole bill-the report was brought up and agreed to, and the bill ordered for the third reading on the morrow.

FEBRUARY 12.

REGENCY RESTRICTION BILL.

Upon the third reading a clause was proposed to be added by Mr. Pulteney, limiting the restriction relative to the creation of peers to three years.

MR. SHERIDAN remarked, that his sentiments coincided with those of his honourable friend (Mr. Pulteney) in regard to the probability of the lords refusing to open the door to their house if, by passing the bill without any limitation of the duration of the restriction with respect to the regent's power to make peers, they suffered the power to pass out of their hands, and the door of the house of lords to be once shut. Mr. Sheridan declared he was surprised at what the right honourable gentleman (Mr. Pitt) had said of the idea of the improbability of the lords ever wishing to continue the power when they once got it into their possession. The right honourable gentleman seemed to have forgotten they had gone throughout the whole of their proceedings, not on probable dangers, but on possible dangers; and every danger which was morally possible to happen had been most studiously and cautiously guarded against. That such an idea as the right honourable gentleman had stated was implied by parliament, was not, Mr. Sheridan thought, to be tolerated; the right honourable gentleman, and the gentleman behind him, seemed to have adopted a principle which might be extended for seven years, as well as three; and, therefore, not choosing to lend his sanction to the principle that the executive power ought to continue maimed and crippled by useless and harsh restrictions, for three years, he should move to leave out the words "three and that the words "one year" be inserted in the blank.

years,"

Mr. Chancellor Pitt answered, that the honourable gentleman who spoke last, seemed to have done him more justice than the honourable gentleman near him, because he had expressly stated, that as they could not fix the precise period of the

duration of his Majesty's illness, he would agree to three years as a period the most extreme and distant that could be taken; but that if his Majesty should not recover sooner, the restrictions ought to cease within the period proposed; and the honourable and respectable member who had introduced it, had expressly stated a similar sentiment. How then could it be considered that, adopting the words "three years" to fill up the blank under the construction which had been laid down, was making parliament declare that its opinion was, that the restrictions ought to last for three years? With regard to the amendment proposed, would not the honourable gentleman, by what he was doing, defeat his own purpose? The honourable gentleman had observed that he moved an earlier day that it might not appear to be the opinion of parliament that parliament thought the restrictions ought to continue three years. He should conceive that the honourable gentleman would serve his purpose better hy withdrawing his amendment, and letting the original motion be put.

Mr. Sheridan answered, if the motion for filling the blank with the words "three years" was carried, the right honourable gentleman had declared, it would appear that it was not the opinion of the house that the restriction should continue for three years. This was, Mr. Sheridan said, the most extraordinary opinion he had ever heard, and therefore he should certainly persist in his amendment.

The question was put, and the clause filled up with the words "three years," agreed to, and ordered to stand part of the bill.

'Mr. Sheridan begged leave to ask a question of the honourable and learned gentleman whom he saw opposite to him, the answer given to which would show whether his amendment was necessary or not. His Majesty had power to grant a commission for opening parliament; and he desired to know whether the king. had not power to invest those commissioners with full regal authorities. He found from the precedents with which they had been furnished, that in the case of Henry the Sixth, when the Duke of York was appointed to exercise the royal authority in parliament, it might be done. What he wished to know then, was, could the king do the same thing by a general commission; or whether, as in the case of Lord Hardwicke, in the year 1754, he must issue a second commission to give the royal assent to any bill or bills?

The master of the rolls answered, that if the honourable gentleman meant to inquire whether the king could delegate the whole of his authority by one commission, he thought he could not do so;-he could not, for instance, make his attorney-general king. To make any man king by attorney, was a power that the king of England did not possess. With regard to the commissions issued in Henry the Sixth's reign, in the cases of the Duke of Gloucester in the commencement, and

the Duke of York in a subsequent period; in both those cases the commissions issued under the great seal, and were confirmed by parliament.

Mr. Sheridan thanked the honourable and learned gentleman for answering him in part, but he had reasoned rather than answered him entirely. Mr. Sheridan proceeded to put his case again, and maintained that the commission appointing the Duke of Gloucester to hold the parliament, and give the royal assent to bills was a case in point. The king was then a minor, incapable of acting for himself, as our king was at present incapable, though from another cause. Was there not in the king a power not only to issue a commission investing commissioners with authority to open parliament, but to give the royal assent to a bill, and to act in every instance with the royal authority?

The attorney-general said he would answer the honourable gentleman in three words: the king cannot.

Mr. Sheridan afterwards went again into the question which he had before put to the lawyers, grounding his second application upon a clause which he moved; the object of which was, to restrain his Majesty from granting any general commission, investing the commissioners with powers to open the parliament, give the royal assent to bills, &c. &c. &c.

The question was put on Mr. Sheridan's clause and negatived.

MARCH 19.

ORDNANCE ESTIMATES.

The report of the resolutions voted by the committee of supply on the ordnance estimates having been brought up by Mr. Gilbert and the resolutions read a first time, on the question being put " That these resolutions be read a second time,” General Burgoyne, Mr. Courtenay, and Mr. Sheridan opposed them. The object of the resolution was to grant a sum of £218,000 for the extraordinaries of the ordnance. This demand was made by ministers in consequence of a plan formed by the master-general, for fortifying to a certain extent the West India islands. In the course of the debate Mr. Courtenay was called to order by the speaker.

MR. SHERIDAN rose to defend his honourable friend Mr. Courtenay, who had, he thought, been rather improperly called to order.

The speaker answered, that it was an essential part of his duty to preserve order. It was at all times disagreeable to him to interrupt gentlemen; but when they in a second speech went into new reasoning and argument, instead of confining themselves to explanation, he felt it to be his duty to interrupt them; and, however he might on any occasion mistake the point of duty, in respect to order, yet, when his intentions were of the nature which he had described, he conceived it to be unhandsome to make any reflection on his conduct.

Mr. Sheridan admitted that his honourable friend's words, when he was called to order from the chair, were not afterwards followed with that explanation which he had expected he was about to give; but the house well knew, when gentlemen were interrupted, it frequently happened they pursued a different train of ideas from those they had set out with. With regard to the question itself, he did not mean to speak to the military part of it, nor did he conceive this was the question before the house. But, if they were to rely on military authority, his honourable friend (Colonel Phipps) must excuse him if, on account of his greater experience, he gave the preference to the authority of his honourable friend near him (General Burgoyne). The real question, however, for their consideration, appeared to him to be, whether his Majesty's chancellor of the exchequer, in asking that sum from parliament, had given the proper documents to satisfy the house that the sum ought to be voted? Mr. Sheridan said, he thought the right honourable gentleman had not; because, last year he had himself submitted the very same motion as that which was now made by his honourable friend. The right honourable gentleman had then declared that no estimate had been received by government from the West Indies, but that government expected one; and when it came, it should be laid on the table. Upon that suggestion, or rather promise, Mr. Sheridan said, he had consented to waive his motion. He remarked that he perfectly well recollected the right honourable gentleman had last year said, the expense would probably amount to about £200,000, but that, if it were double that sum, the object would deserve it. As it was confessed that an estimate was now before the board of ordnance, the house ought to have it upon the table before they proceeded to vote the money. Mr. Sheridan declared he had not been present when the seamen were voted; but when he saw that 2000 additional seamen had been voted, it gave him great satisfaction, because he thence conceived that the project of fortifying the West India islands had been reconsidered by his Majesty's ministers, and rejected as impolitic; a conception to which the train of reasoning of the right honourable gentleman naturally led, when he spoke upon the subject, in the course of the preceding session.

The resolution for granting the sum demanded was voted without a division,

MAY 4.

PETITION OF MR. HASTINGS.

On the 3rd of February Mr. Hastings presented a petition to the house of lords, in which, after recapitulating the proceedings, which had already been had from the commencement of the impeachment, he stated the great hardships to which its extraordinary duration had, and was likely still further to subject him. Among these he mentioned the decease of several of his judges—the detention of witnesses necessary for his defence—the probability of his being deprived of many of them by various accidents—his health impaired, and his fortune wasted. He reminded them that two articles only, out of twenty, had yet been gone through by his accusers-that his expenses had already exceeded £20,000, and, consequently, that should his life be continued to the close of the trial, he might find himself destitute of the means of defence, and even of subsistence, and run the dreadful chance of having his character transmitted on the records blasted with unrefuted criminations. He therefore prayed, that they would enable him to make his innocence, and he hoped his deserts, apparent, by proceeding without delay upon his trial. The intervention of the circuits of the judges rendered it impossible for the lords to proceed upon the trial before the 20th of April, when the court was resumed, and sat during the remainder of the session seventeen days. The charge brought before them, and opened by Mr. Burke, was that relative to the corrupt receipt of money. In the course of his speech Mr. Burke had occasion to remark upon the conduct of Mr. Hastings towards one of his accusers in India, called Nundcomar; and after relating other acts of injustice and cruelty, he added, that he had, at last, murdered that person by the hands of Sir Elijah Impey. A few days after the charge had been opened, Major Scott presented a petition from Mr. Hastings to the house of commons, in which he stated that Mr. Burke, in supporting the charges, exhibited against him at the bar of the house of lords, had accused him of sundry heinous crimes not laid in the articles of impeachment. He instanced the charge of having been concerned in a plot for assassinating the Shahzada, and in another plot for putting to death the son of Jajfier Ally Khan; of being accessary to certain horrible cruelties alleged to have been committed by one Dibi Sing, and lastly, of having been guilty of the murder of Nundcomar. He therefore prayed the house either to bring forward and prosecute those charges in specific articles, and thereby give him an opportunity of vindicating his innocence, or to grant him such other redress as to their justice and wisdom might seem fit. A motion was made that the petition should be brought up, which was after a debate agreed to without a division. A difficulty occurred as to the mode of ascertaining the words spoken; the notes of the short-hand writers who attended the trial being contended for by several of the members, and objected to by Mr. Fox and Sir Grey Cooper as contrary to the uniform practice of parliament. Their objections appeared of so much importance to the house, that a committee was appointed to search for precedents. The committee reported, that there were no precedents of any complaint of words spoken by managers in Westminster Hall to be found. The managers again urged their objections to the examination of any short-hand writers; but the favourers of the petition insisting upon the duty of the house to govern itself in such cases by what should appear most likely to