DISPUTE WITH RUSSIA.
In proposing to continue the additional number of seamen which had been engaged for the expected war with Spain, Pitt had said that there were circumstances in the present situation of Europe, which made it necessary to keep up a naval armament, for a time, of more than ordinary extent. This had reference to the warlike attitude of Russia. At the congress of Reichenbach, the defensive alliance had proposed to the Czarina that she should accede to the peace which they were negociating with Austria, and that all conquests should be restored. This she flatly refused; but subsequently, being deprived of lier ally, and seeing that it was at present impossible for her to subjugate Turkey to her sway, she offered to restore all her acquisitions, except the city and dependencies of Oczakow, an important place, commanding the mouth of the Dnieper, at a distance of less than two hundred miles off the Turkish capital. As this offer exhibited an inclination on the part of the Czarina to re-commence the war at some future period, the allies projected a more effectual interference, and on the 28th of March Pitt delivered a message from the king on the subject. His majesty acquainted his faithful commons, that his endeavours, in conjunction with his allies, to accomplish a pacification with Russia and the Porte had proved abortive; and that the consequences which might arise from the continuance of the war being important to his own interests, as well as those of his allies and to Europe in general, he judged it requisite, in order to add weight to his representations, to augment his naval forces, relying on the zeal and affection of the house of commons to make good such expenses as might be incurred. After delivering this message, Pitt moved an address to the king, thanking him for it, and promising him the support of the house. In doing so the minister represented, that, if Russia should be allowed to gather any material strength at the expense of Turkey, the effect would be injurious to the interests of all Europe; and that the interference of England was indispensable for the preservation of that balance of power, which all statesmen and men of all parties held to be essential for the security of Europe. This doctrine was very ancient, and had long been the doctrine of both Whig and Tory, but it was now despised by the opposition, who, to a man, became the champions of the Czarina. It was argued that it would be folly to sacrifice all the advantages of our immense trade with Russia for the sake of a Turkish fortress; that neither wisdom nor policy could justify Great Britain in going to war to preserve a barbarian power, which for the sake of religion, justice, and humanity ought to be utterly extirpated; and that, as we had received no injury from Russia, all hostile interference on our part was wholly unnecessary. On the other hand, it was argued by ministers that the aggrandisement of Russia at the expense of Turkey would injure both our commercial and political interests; and that the possession of Oczakow would facilitate the acquisition, not only of Constantinople, but of Alexandria and Lower Egypt. The address was carried, and several resolutions afterwards moved against the armament were rejected by large majorities. The armament therefore continued, and the Czarina was soon compelled to give up Oczakow with all her other acquisitions in Turkey, acquisitions which had cost her many thousand men to obtain.
BILL FOR THE REGULATION OF CANADA.
When Canada became a British colony the king had promised its inhabitants the benefits of the British constitution. Since that time the French settlers in that country, and the Canadians, had been joined by many British subjects, and by loyal emigrants from America, who were anxious to secure the advantages which the royal promise held out to them. Ministers had for some time directed their attention to the subject, and on the 4th of March Pitt moved for leave to bring in a bill for regulating the government of Canada, and entered into a minute detail of every provision which he meant to propose. He proposed to divide Canada into two provinces, Upper and Lower, and to establish distinct legislatures; the division being meant to separate the parts which were chiefly inhabited by French Canadians, from those inhabited by more recent settlers. The legislature of each province was to consist of a council and house of assembly. The members of the council were to hold their seats for life, with a reservation of power to the crown for annexing to certain honours an hereditary right of sitting in the council; and the members of the assembly were to be chosen by freeholders possessing landed property to the amount of forty shillings, or occupiers of houses worth twenty pounds per annum. The habeas corpus act was to be rendered a permanent law of the colony; and a provision was to be made for the Protestant clergy by an allotment of lands. Appeals were to be made to the privy-council in the first instance, and from thence to the house of lords. The British government gave up the right of taxation, asserting only that of regulating external commerce: no taxes were to be imposed except such as were necessary for this regulation. This bill was read twice; it passed the committee, and the report was received by the house, before any disapprobation of it was expressed. On the second consideration of the report, however, Fox condemned its every principle. He observed, that the object of all popular assemblies was that the people should be fully and fairly represented, but as the assembly of one province was to consist of sixteen, and the other of thirty, the people were deluded by a mockery of representation. Fox also objected to the representatives being elected for the term of seven years, and contended that there should be annual, or at most triennial elections. Even in England, he said, where the frequent return of elections was attended with great inconvenience, the propriety of the septennial bill might justly be doubted. Fox further objected, that the legislative councils were unlimited as to numbers by any other restriction than the pleasure of the king, to whom a power was reserved of annexing to certain honorary and titular distinctions an hereditary right of sitting in council. As to hereditary honours, he remarked, as a general proposition, it was difficult to say whether they were good or not, but he saw no good in their being introduced into a country where they had hitherto been unknown. It might not be wise to destroy them where they existed, but it was unwise to create them where they did not exist. He could not account for this step, unless it was that Canada having formerly been a French colony, there might be an opportunity of reviving those distinctions, the loss of which some gentlemen so deplored, and to revive in the west that spirit of chivalry which had fallen into so much disgrace in a neighbouring country. In the course of his speech Fox made one unhappy allusion to the extinction of nobility in France, and its forced revival by us in Canada: “nobility,” he said, “stunk in the nostrils of the people of America.” At this time, indeed, Fox and his party embraced every opportunity of extolling the “glorious revolution” in France, whence, on the re-commitment of the bill, Burke again sounded the trumpet of alarm at that event. In enlarging upon the importance of the act which they were now about to perform, he said, “The first consideration was the competency of the house to such an act.” “A body of rights,” he continued, “commonly called the Rights of Man, had been lately imported from a neighbouring kingdom; the principle of which code was, that all men were, by nature, free and equal in respect of those rights. Now, if this code were admitted, he argued, the power of the house could extend no further than to call the Canadians together to choose a constitution for themselves. But the practical effects of such a system might be seen in St. Domingo and the other French islands. Until they heard of the Rights of Man they were flourishing and happy, but as soon as this system arrived among them, Pandora’s box, replete with every mortal evil, seemed to fly open; hell itself to yawn; and every demon of mischief to overspread the country. Blacks rose against blacks, whites against blacks—and each against the other in murderous hostility: subordination was destroyed, the cords of society snapped asunder, and every man appeared to thirst for the blood of his neighbour. The mother country, France, not receiving any pleasure in contemplating this image of herself reflected in her child, sent out a body of troops to restore order and tranquillity. But these troops, well instructed in the new principles, immediately upon their arrival felt themselves bound to become parties in the universal rebellion; and, like most of their brethren at home, began the assertion of their freeborn rights by murdering their own general! Should such an example induce us to ship off for Canada a cargo of the Rights of Man?” Burke next proceeded to describe the deplorable condition of France itself, and to comment on the conduct of the national assembly towards their monarch. In the midst of his speech he was called to order by Mr. Baker, and a scene of indescribable confusion ensued, and much time was wasted in violent altercation: one side of the house contending that Burke was in order, and the other that he was out of order. In the midst of this discord Fox sarcastically said, that he conceived his honourable friend could hardly be said to be out of order, since it seemed to him that this was a day of privilege, upon which any gentleman might abuse any government he chose, whether it had any reference or not to the question before the house. Nobody had said a word about the French revolution, but nevertheless his right honourable friend had risen up and abused that event. Burke had certainly as much right to abase the revolution, as Fox and his party had to extol it; and he attempted to explain why he thought that he was in order, but the roar of voices which was raised from the opposition benches drowned his voice, so that he was compelled to sit down. Lord Sheffield now rose and moved, “That dissertations on the French constitution, and to read a narrative of transactions in France, are not regular or orderly on the question before the house.” Fox seconded this motion, and this gave rise to the utter disruption of the friendship which had subsisted between him and Burke:—there had been heart-burnings before, arising from a difference of opinion on the subject of the French revolution, but now their political union was brought to a close. After Pitt had defended Burke, and declared that he should give his negative to the motion, Fox rose to defend his former sentiments respecting the French revolution, and repeated that he thought it, upon the whole, one of the most glorious events in the history of mankind. As for the Rights of Man, which his right honourable friend had ridiculed as visionary, he contended that they were the basis and foundation of every rational constitution. The rights of the people, he said, were recognized in our statute-book, and no prescription could supersede, no accident could remove or obliterate them. This at one time had been the doctrine of his friend, who had said, with great energy and emphasis, that he could not draw a bill of indictment against a whole people. He was sorry to find, however, that his right honourable friend had learned to draw such a bill of indictment, and moreover to crowd it with all the technical epithets which disgraced our statute-book: such as false, malicious, wicked, by the instigation of the devil, and the like. He added, that having been taught by his right honourable friend that no revolt of a nation was caused without provocation, he could not help rejoicing at the success of a revolution resting upon the same basis with our own—the Rights of Man: no book his friend could write, no words he could utter, could ever induce him to change or abandon his opinion; he must differ with his friend upon that subject toto colo. Throughout the whole of his speech Fox alternately rebuked and complimented Burke, and while he vindicated his own opinion he questioned the consistency of his friend. Fox even ventured to speak contemptuously of Burke’s book on the subject of the French revolution, and to assert that he had written it in haste, and without due information. His whole speech, in fact was ungenerous in the highest degree, whence it is no wonder that when Burke rose to reply it was under the influence of strongly excited feelings. Having touched upon the main question, and vindicated his conduct in putting the country on its guard against the dangerous doctrines which prevailed in France, and which had found many advocates in England, he complained of being treated with harshness and malignity—of being personally attacked from a quarter where he least expected it, and that after a close intimacy of twenty-two years. His whole conduct, words, and writings, he said, had not only been misrepresented and arraigned in the severest terms, but confidential conversations had been brought forward in order to prove his political inconsistency. He had been accused of writing and speaking on the subject of the French revolution without due information, but nevertheless he was ready to meet Fox, hand to hand, and foot to foot, in a fair and temperate discussion relative to that event. It was his imperative duty, he exclaimed, to speak upon French affairs, and to point out the danger of extolling, upon all occasions, that preposterous edifice, the French constitution; an edifice which the right honourable gentleman had termed the most stupendous and glorious which had been erected on the foundation of human integrity in any time or country. Our own government, he continued, was in danger, for there were political clubs in every quarter, meeting and voting resolutions of an alarming tendency. Dangerous doctrines were also promulgated from the pulpit, and infamous libels on the British constitution were everywhere circulated. There might not, indeed, be any immediate clanger, since we had a king in full power, ministers responsible for their conduct, a country blessed with an opposition of great strength, and a common people that seemed to be united with the gentlemen; but, nevertheless, there was cause for circumspection, as in France there were 300,000 men up in arms, who would be glad to intermeddle, and as a season of scarcity might arrive, when the low intriguers and contemptible clubbists, which abounded on every hand, might rise in revolt against the government. Burke again adverted to the unkindness with which he had been treated by his old associate, and remarked, that though he had frequently differed with him there had still been no interruption of personal friendship. But, he added, although at his time of life it might not be discreet to provoke enemies or to lose friends, yet if his steady adherence to the British constitution placed him in such a dilemma, he would risk all, and, as public duty required, would exclaim with his last breath, “Fly from the French constitution!” Fox here whispered that there was no loss of friendship, but Burke rejoined—“Yes there is: I know the price of my conduct; I have done my duty at the price of my friend; our friendship is at an end!” Burke then addressing himself to the two great rivals, Pitt and Fox, expressed a hope that whether they hereafter moved in the political hemisphere, as two flaming antagonist meteors, or walked like brethren hand-in-hand, they would preserve and cherish the British constitution against innovation and new-fangled theories. Fox rose to reply, but the tears trickled down his cheeks, and emotion for some time impeded his utterance. He felt the loss of his friend: yet, on recovering himself, while he made an eloquent appeal to the remembrance of the past, and to the reciprocal affection which had subsisted between them, as dear as that between father and son, he still gave utterance to some bitter sarcasms, and repeated some of his objectionable remarks. Rejoinders on both sides followed, and the dispute was renewed on the 11th of May, the house being again in committee on the Quebec Bill, but no concessions were made on either side, and the connexion between these illustrious men were dissolved for ever.
They stood aloof; the scars remaining— Like cliffs which had been rent asunder.
The Quebec Bill, which had given rise to this dispute, was finally carried through the house of commons, with some amendments, on the 18th of May; and it subsequently passed the lords, though not without much opposition, and obtained the royal assent at the close of the session.