Volume II Part 25 (1/2)
THE SPEECH FROM THE THRONE.
LUNae, 14 DIE JUNII, 1784.
A motion was made, That a representation be presented to his Majesty, most humbly to offer to his royal consideration, that the address of this House, upon his Majesty's speech from the throne, was dictated solely by our conviction of his Majesty's own most gracious intentions towards his people, which, as we feel with grat.i.tude, so we are ever ready to acknowledge with cheerfulness and satisfaction.
Impressed with these sentiments, we were willing to separate from our general expressions of duty, respect, and veneration to his Majesty's royal person and his princely virtues all discussion whatever with relation to several of the matters suggested and several of the expressions employed in that speech.
That it was not fit or becoming that any decided opinion should be formed by his faithful Commons on that speech, without a degree of deliberation adequate to the importance of the object. Having afforded ourselves due time for that deliberation, we do now most humbly beg leave to represent to his Majesty, that, in the speech from the throne, his ministers have thought proper to use a language of a very alarming import, unauthorized by the practice of good times, and irreconcilable to the principles of this government.
Humbly to express to his Majesty, that it is the privilege and duty of this House to guard the Const.i.tution from all infringement on the part of ministers, and, whenever the occasion requires it, to warn them against any abuse of the authorities committed to them; but it is very lately,[59] that, in a manner not more unseemly than irregular and preposterous, ministers have thought proper, by admonition from the throne, implying distrust and reproach, to convey the expectations of the people to us, their sole representatives,[60] and have presumed to caution us, the natural guardians of the Const.i.tution, against any infringement of it on our parts.
This dangerous innovation we, his faithful Commons, think it our duty to mark; and as these admonitions from the throne, by their frequent repet.i.tion, seem intended to lead gradually to the establishment of an usage, we hold ourselves bound thus solemnly to protest against them.
This House will be, as it ever ought to be, anxiously attentive to the inclinations and interests of its const.i.tuents; nor do we desire to straiten any of the avenues to the throne, or to either House of Parliament. But the ancient order in which the rights of the people have been exercised is not a restriction of these rights. It is a method providently framed in favor of those privileges which it preserves and enforces, by keeping in that course which has been found the most effectual for answering their ends. His Majesty may receive the opinions and wishes of individuals under their signatures, and of bodies corporate under their seals, as expressing their own particular sense; and he may grant such redress as the legal powers of the crown enable the crown to afford. This, and the other House of Parliament, may also receive the wishes of such corporations and individuals by pet.i.tion. The collective sense of his people his Majesty is to receive from his Commons in Parliament a.s.sembled. It would destroy the whole spirit of the Const.i.tution, if his Commons were to receive that sense from the ministers of the crown, or to admit them to be a proper or a regular channel for conveying it.
That the ministers in the said speech declare, ”His Majesty has a just and confident reliance that we (his faithful Commons) are animated with the same sentiments of loyalty, and the same attachment to our excellent Const.i.tution which he had the happiness to see so fully manifested in every part of the kingdom.”
To represent, that his faithful Commons have never foiled in loyalty to his Majesty. It is new to them to be reminded of it. It is unnecessary and invidious to press it upon them by any example. This recommendation of loyalty, after his Majesty has sat for so many years, with the full support of all descriptions of his subjects, on the throne of this kingdom, at a time of profound peace, and without any pretence of the existence or apprehension of war or conspiracy, becomes in itself a source of no small jealousy to his faithful Commons; as many circ.u.mstances lead us to apprehend that therein the ministers have reference to some other measures and principles of loyalty, and to some other ideas of the Const.i.tution, than the laws require, or the practice of Parliament will admit.
No regular communication of the proofs of loyalty and attachment to the Const.i.tution, alluded to in the speech from the throne, have been laid before this House, in order to enable us to judge of the nature, tendency, or occasion of them, or in what particular acts they were displayed; but if we are to suppose the manifestations of loyalty (which are held out to us as an example for imitation) consist in certain addresses delivered to his Majesty, promising support to his Majesty in the exercise of his prerogative, and thanking his Majesty for removing certain of his ministers, on account of the votes they have given upon bills depending in Parliament,--if this be the example of loyalty alluded to in the speech from the throne, then we must beg leave to express our serious concern for the impression which has been made on any of our fellow-subjects by misrepresentations which have seduced them into a seeming approbation of proceedings subversive of their own freedom. We conceive that the opinions delivered in these papers were not well considered; nor were the parties duly informed of the nature of the matters on which they were called to determine, nor of those proceedings of Parliament which they were led to censure.
We shall act more advisedly.--The loyalty we shall manifest will not be the same with theirs; but, we trust, it will be equally sincere, and more enlightened. It is no slight authority which shall persuade us (by receiving as proofs of loyalty the mistaken principles lightly taken up in these addresses) obliquely to criminate, with the heavy and ungrounded charge of disloyalty and disaffection, an uncorrupt, independent, and reforming Parliament.[61] Above all, we shall take care that none of the rights and privileges, always claimed, and since the accession of his Majesty's ill.u.s.trious family constantly exercised by this House, (and which we hold and exercise in trust for the Commons of Great Britain, and for their benefit,) shall be constructively surrendered, or even weakened and impaired, under ambiguous phrases and implications of censure on the late Parliamentary proceedings. If these claims are not well founded, they ought to be honestly abandoned; if they are just, they ought to be steadily and resolutely maintained.
Of his Majesty's own gracious disposition towards the true principles of our free Const.i.tution his faithful Commons never did or could entertain a doubt; but we humbly beg leave to express to his Majesty our uneasiness concerning other new and unusual expressions of his ministers, declaratory of a resolution ”to support in their _just balance_ the rights and privileges of every branch of the legislature.”
It were desirable that all hazardous theories concerning a balance of rights and privileges (a mode of expression wholly foreign to Parliamentary usage) might have been forborne. His Majesty's faithful Commons are well instructed in their own rights and privileges, which they are determined to maintain on the footing upon which they were handed down from their ancestors; they are not unacquainted with the rights and privileges of the House of Peers; and they know and respect the lawful prerogatives of the crown: but they do not think it safe to admit anything concerning the existence of a balance of those rights, privileges, and prerogatives; nor are they able to discern to what objects ministers would apply their fiction of a balance, nor what they would consider as a just one. These unauthorized doctrines have a tendency to stir improper discussions, and to lead to mischievous innovations in the Const.i.tution.[62]
That his faithful Commons most humbly recommend, instead of the inconsiderate speculations of unexperienced men, that, on all occasions, resort should be had to the happy practice of Parliament, and to those solid maxims of government which have prevailed since the accession of his Majesty's ill.u.s.trious family, as furnis.h.i.+ng the only safe principles on which the crown and Parliament can proceed.
We think it the more necessary to be cautious on this head, as, in the last Parliament, the present ministers had thought proper to countenance, if not to suggest, an attack upon the most clear and undoubted rights and privileges of this House.[63]
Fearing, from these extraordinary admonitions, and from the new doctrines, which seem to have dictated several unusual expressions, that his Majesty has been abused by false representations of the late proceedings in Parliament, we think it our duty respectfully to inform his Majesty, that no attempt whatever has been made against his lawful prerogatives, or against the rights and privileges of the Peers, by the late House of Commons, in any of their addresses, votes, or resolutions; neither do we know of any proceeding by bill, in which it was proposed to abridge the extent of his royal prerogative: but, if such provision had existed in any bill, we protest, and we declare, against all speeches, acts, or addresses, from any persons whatsoever, which have a tendency to consider such bills, or the persons concerned in them, as just objects of any kind of censure and punishment from the throne.
Necessary reformations may hereafter require, as they have frequently done in former times, limitations and abridgments, and in some cases an entire extinction, of some branch of prerogative. If bills should be improper in the form in which they appear in the House where they originate, they are liable, by the wisdom of this Const.i.tution, to be corrected, and even to be totally set aside, elsewhere. This is the known, the legal, and the safe remedy; but whatever, by the manifestation of the royal displeasure, tends to intimidate individual members from proposing, or this House from receiving, debating, and pa.s.sing bills, tends to prevent even the beginning of every reformation in the state, and utterly destroys the deliberative capacity of Parliament. We therefore claim, demand, and insist upon it, as our undoubted right, that no persons shall be deemed proper objects of animadversion by the crown, in any mode whatever, for the votes which they give or the propositions which they make in Parliament.
We humbly conceive, that besides its share of the legislative power, and its right of impeachment, that, by the law and usage of Parliament, this House has other powers and capacities, which it is bound to maintain.
This House is a.s.sured that our humble advice on the exercise of prerogative will be heard with the same attention with which it has ever been regarded, and that it will be followed by the same effects which it has ever produced, during the happy and glorious reigns of his Majesty's royal progenitors,--not doubting but that, in all those points, we shall be considered as a council of wisdom and weight to advise, and not merely as an accuser of competence to criminate.[64] This House claims both capacities; and we trust that we shall be left to our free discretion which of them we shall employ as best calculated for his Majesty's and the national service. Whenever we shall see it expedient to offer our advice concerning his Majesty's servants, who are those of the public, we confidently hope that the personal favor of any minister, or any set of ministers, will not be more dear to his Majesty than the credit and character of a House of Commons. It is an experiment full of peril to put the representative wisdom and justice of his Majesty's people in the wrong; it is a crooked and desperate design, leading to mischief, the extent of which no human wisdom can foresee, to attempt to form a prerogative party in the nation, to be resorted to as occasion shall require, in derogation, from the authority of the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament a.s.sembled; it is a contrivance full of danger, for ministers to set up the representative and const.i.tuent bodies of the Commons of this kingdom as two separate and distinct powers, formed to counterpoise each other, leaving the preference in the hands of secret advisers of the crown. In such a situation of things, these advisers, taking advantage of the differences which may accidentally arise or may purposely be fomented between them, will have it in their choice to resort to the one or the other, as may best suit the purposes of their sinister ambition. By exciting an emulation and contest between the representative and the const.i.tuent bodies, as parties contending for credit and influence at the throne, sacrifices will be made by both; and the whole can end in nothing else than the destruction of the dearest rights and liberties of the nation. If there must be another mode of conveying the collective sense of the people to the throne than that by the House of Commons, it ought to be fixed and defined, and its authority ought to be settled: it ought not to exist in so precarious and dependent a state as that ministers should have it in their power, at their own mere pleasure, to acknowledge it with respect or to reject it with scorn.
It is the undoubted prerogative of the crown to dissolve Parliament; but we beg leave to lay before his Majesty, that it is, of all the trusts vested in his Majesty, the most critical and delicate, and that in which this House has the most reason to require, not only the good faith, but the favor of the crown. His Commons are not always upon a par with his ministers in an application to popular judgment; it is not in the power of the members of this House to go to their election at the moment the most favorable for them. It is in the power of the crown to choose a time for their dissolution whilst great and arduous matters of state and legislation are depending, which may be easily misunderstood, and which cannot be fully explained before that misunderstanding may prove fatal to the honor that belongs and to the consideration that is due to members of Parliament.
With his Majesty is the gift of all the rewards, the honors, distinctions, favors, and graces of the state; with his Majesty is the mitigation of all the rigors of the law: and we rejoice to see the crown possessed of trusts calculated to obtain good-will, and charged with duties which are popular and pleasing. Our trusts are of a different kind. Our duties are harsh and invidious in their nature; and justice and safety is all we can expect in the exercise of them. We are to offer salutary, which is not always pleasing counsel: we are to inquire and to accuse; and the objects of our inquiry and charge will be for the most part persons of wealth, power, and extensive connections: we are to make rigid laws for the preservation of revenue, which of necessity more or less confine some action or restrain some function which before was free: what is the most critical and invidious of all, the whole body of the public impositions originate from us, and the hand of the House of Commons is seen and felt in every burden that presses on the people.
Whilst ultimately we are serving them, and in the first instance whilst we are serving his Majesty, it will be hard indeed, if we should see a House of Commons the victim of its zeal and fidelity, sacrificed by his ministers to those very popular discontents which shall be excited by our dutiful endeavors for the security and greatness of his throne. No other consequence can result from such an example, but that, in future, the House of Commons, consulting its safety at the expense of its duties, and suffering the whole energy of the state to be relaxed, will shrink from every service which, however necessary, is of a great and arduous nature,--or that, willing to provide for the public necessities, and at the same time to secure the means of performing that task, they will exchange independence for protection, and will court a subservient existence through the favor of those ministers of state or those secret advisers who ought themselves to stand in awe of the Commons of this realm.
A House of Commons respected by his ministers is essential to his Majesty's service: it is fit that they should yield to Parliament, and not that Parliament should be new-modelled until it is fitted to their purposes. If our authority is only to be held up when we coincide in opinion with his Majesty's advisers, but is to be set at nought the moment it differs from them, the House of Commons will sink into a mere appendage of administration, and will lose that independent character which, inseparably connecting the honor and reputation with the acts of this House, enables us to afford a real, effective, and substantial support to his government. It is the deference shown to our opinion, when we dissent from the servants of the crown, which alone can give authority to the proceedings of this House, when it concurs with their measures.
That authority once lost, the credit of his Majesty's crown will be impaired in the eyes of all nations. Foreign powers, who may yet wish to revive a friendly intercourse with this nation, will look in vain for that hold which gave a connection with Great Britain the preference to an affiance with any other state. A House of Commons of which ministers were known to stand in awe, where everything was necessarily discussed on principles fit to be openly and publicly avowed, and which could not be retracted or varied without danger, furnished a ground of confidence in the public faith which the engagement of no state dependent on the fluctuation of personal favor and private advice can ever pretend to. If faith with the House of Commons, the grand security for the national faith itself, can be broken with impunity, a wound is given to the political importance of Great Britain which will not easily be healed.
That there was a great variance between the late House of Commons and certain persons, whom his Majesty has been advised to make and continue as ministers, in defiance of the advice of that House, is notorious to the world. That House did not confide in those ministers; and they withheld their confidence from them for reasons for which posterity will honor and respect the names of those who composed that House of Commons, distinguished for its independence. They could not confide in persons who have shown a disposition to dark and dangerous intrigues. By these intrigues they have weakened, if not destroyed, the clear a.s.surance which his Majesty's people, and which all nations, ought to have of what are and what are not the real acts of his government.
If it should be seen that his ministers may continue in their offices without any signification to them of his Majesty's displeasure at any of their measures, whilst persons considerable for their rank, and known to have had access to his Majesty's sacred person, can with impunity abuse that advantage, and employ his Majesty's name to disavow and counteract the proceedings of his official servants, nothing but distrust, discord, debility, contempt of all authority, and general confusion, can prevail in his government.