Gentlemen-I may, perhaps, be warranted in feeling a personal indignation at the mischievous abuse of my name, thus attempted, for the purpose of vilifying the country: and, possibly, this imposition may have partly led me to enter into the copious details and observations, with which I have this day troubled you.

Gentlemen-If you should feel that any of these.observations are founded in truth and reason, you will give me, at least, the credit of upright motives for those, from which you may differ. I can have no other motive, indeed, than a hope of doing some public good, by inciting other persons to useful and meritorious actions. Other Judges have very frequently, and with great propriety, charged various Grand Juries upon the general state of the country, its disturbances, and the causes of its commotion-and some of them have ascribed these disturbances and commotions to a general spirit of dissatisfaction and seditions. If I have a very different and far more consolatory view of the same subject, it cannot be improper or unbecoming my functions, to take the like opportunity of stating my judicial opinions, of enumerating the several causes, which, in my fixed judgment, have generated those disturbances, and have retarded peace and prosperity in this country --and distinctly pointing out the redemies and correctives, proper for terminating all those mischiefs, and allaying all discontents.— These considerations will, I trust, vindicate, as well the motives, as the propriety of my conduct in this respect, through every scrutiny, and against every cavil.

Gentlemen-You will retire to your Jury-room- and there dispose of such Bills, and other official business, as shall come before you. Let all your private affairs, your settlements with tenants, your canvassing of freeholders and such occupations, be postponed to another opportunity. Be punctual and diligent--rather, indeed, for your own sakes than mine. You will be the sooner released from duty-but, as for me, I must, at all events, remain here during the allotted period of time.

I have addressed you very much at large, with great sincerity of heart-with an earnest desire for your interests and those of the public-and (may I hope) not wholly without effect."

THE SPEECH

OF

SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY,

IN THE

HOUSE OF COMMONS,

ON THE TWENTY-EIGHTH OF JUNE,

1814,

ON THAT ARTICLE IN THE TREATY OF PEACE

WHICH RELATES TO

1

The Slave Trade.

A SPEECH, &c.

3

2

To those Members who were present when it was arranged in what order the business respecting the Treaty should be brought before the House, it cannot be necessary to point out the injustice of the noble Lord's' charge against my honorable and learned Friend, of having brought forward his motion at an improper time. If he has moved for these papers only twenty-four hours before the Treaty is to be taken into consideration, it is because he has yielded to the wishes of others; and has, for their convenience, and most especially for the convenience of the noble Lord himself, postponed his motion. It was desired by my honorable Friend, who sits behind me, that his intended

Lord Castlereagh.

4

2 Mr. Horner.

The motion was for an Address to the Prince Regent, that His Royal Highness would be pleased to give directions that there be laid before the House, Copies of all Representations made on the part of His Majesty's Government during the late Negociation for Peace, and of all Communications which passed between His Majesty's Minister and the Allied Powers relative to the Abolition of the African Slave Trade.

• Mr. Wilberforce.

Address, which was yesterday unanimously voted by the House, should precede my learned Friend's motion for papers: this was the wish, too, of the noble Lord, expressed by him in his place; and he cannot have forgotten the reason he assigned for it, namely, that he doubted not, that, in the debate upon the Address, he should convince my learned Friend, that his motion was unnecessary. The Address would have been moved for, a week ago, but for the noble Lord's indisposition. It was on his account alone that it was postponed to yesterday. The noble Lord was requested to defer the discussion of the Treaty for a few days; but upon this he was inexorable. Though no possible inconvenience could attend the delay, he insisted that the Treaty should be taken into consideration to-morrow. And after all this, and when it has been at his request, and for his personal convenience, and because he will not put off his own motion, even for four-and-twenty hours, that this debate comes so close upon the consideration of the Treaty, the noble Lord is unjust enough to impute blame to my learned Friend, for not bringing on his motion sooner. In the same spirit, and in a style of great exaggeration, he says, that the Treaty has been lying a whole month upon the table before these papers are called for, although at the moment when I am speaking, a month has not elapsed since the Treaty, which bears date only the 30th of May, was signed, and although it was not till the 3d of the present month that this House was informed from the Throne, that it would attend to our wishes on this important part of the negociation.

I certainly shall not, Sir, by complimenting the noble Lord and his colleagues for their sincerity, and their services in the cause of the Abolition of the Slave Trade, provoke the same extraordinary return as my learned Friend has experienced, and as little shall I be deterred by

the high and presumptuous tone which the noble Lord has this day, assumed, from expressing my strong disapprobation of that article in the Treaty he has concluded, which relates to that odious trade. If I knew, indeed, what claims the Ministers had to praise upon this subject, I would not refuse to do them justice, even though my commendations were to be met with the same disdain as my learned Friend's; but I am really at a loss to conjecture on what those claims can be founded; and recollecting, as I do, in what manner, and to what an extent the Slave Trade has of late years been carried on by Portugal, while the eminent services we had rendered that State gave us so good a right to require the total sacrifice of it on her part, I can see no reason to applaud His Royal Highness's Ministers, either for the zeal or the success of their exertions.

It is impossible, I know, to speak of this article of the Treaty in the severe, but just terms, which in my opinion it deserves, without incurring the imputation of acting with party views. Conscious that I am not in the smallest degree influenced upon this occasion by such motives, I regard all such imputations with contempt; but it but it may be well for those who are forward to cast them, to recollect that party is not the exclusive reproach of opposition, and to consider, whether they, who defend and applaud in public what, in the secret of their own bosoms, they utterly reprobate and condemn, are themselves exempt from that party-spirit with which they suppose others to be infected.

The noble Lord objects to the production of the papers moved for, because this article cannot, he says, be properly estimated, when taken disconnected from the rest of the Treaty and from the whole negociation; and yet the noble Lord was content last night to enter into his justification