Fox called to order, and asked the Speaker, if that assertion was not a violation of it—“I ask the House their opinion,” cried Pitt; “and though the House should forbid me at the bar, as long as my mind reproaches the author of it, I will say it is my opinion that he was broken for his vote.” “He has changed his phrase,” replied Fox; “he asserted—he now believes. He cannot prove it, and it was kind to stop him.” “If the House commands me,” said the Speaker, “I will speak: who asserts, I suppose, is ready to prove. He may say he believes. They who advise a measure are responsible.” Pitt, fortified with this declaration (and without it he would not have retracted), persisted; bidding Fox, armed with arbitrary power, and with that majority of which he had heard so much, bring him to the bar: and he told him, it was the characteristic of the present Administration to break the Act of Settlement for pretended utility; and in this case the utility was so small, that it was stabbing that Act with a bodkin. Fox answered, that he should be ashamed to think this scheme had been altered for Pitt’s objections; and asked, how it was possible to Debate, without urging the expedience of what was contended for? that Pitt had asked, what pledge of fidelity these foreigners were to give: in three centuries what Swiss had ever betrayed any country? With regard to the dismission of Sir Harry Erskine, no apology was necessary. Twenty years ago, when Lord Westmoreland, Lord Cobham, and Mr. Pitt himself had been dismissed, the Opposition would have brought in a Bill to prevent such removals; but it would have been making officers independent both of the Crown and of Parliament, and was rejected. Pitt allowed, that he thought officers might be broken, even without recourse to a Court-Martial: and Sir Harry Erskine himself affected to say that he did not complain of his dismission: a civil or a military life was indifferent to him: yet he could wish, if there were any other cause than his vote, that Mr. Fox would declare it.
James Grenville, in a formal obscure speech, produced a clause of the Act of Settlement, by which he would have proved that this Bill could not be received, unless another were first passed, by which any foreigners to be naturalized must renounce employments; and he instanced in Bills of that purport passed for the marriages of King William and the Prince of Orange. The Debate took entirely this turn, the Opposition asserting that this would be a Bill of Naturalization; and if so, not receivable: the Administration, that it gave them something more than naturalization. Pitt declared himself struck with Grenville’s remark, which had not been communicated to him; and urged the Ministry with giving to these foreigners per saltum the very excepted parts, and with bestowing on officers in the dregs of the Republic of Holland what had been withheld from the Prince of Orange. Murray would have evaded this, by asking if anything in the Bill tended to naturalization? The Speaker declared there was such an appearance. George Grenville said, by this evasion the Ministry will have only to omit the word naturalization, and it may grant what advantages it pleases to foreigners. “But,” said Lord Strange, “in Arabia none but a native can purchase a mare: suppose the Prince of the country gave me permission to buy a mare, would he naturalize me?” It passed by 165 to 57 that the Bill should be brought in.
The Bill was read for the first time on the 12th. Pitt and Charles Townshend ridiculed the various forms into which the scheme had shifted. The former asked how the blanks were to be filled up, and if it was for ever to be a floating mark never to be hit! From Lord Barrington he did not expect much information, to whom, with Hotspur, he would say, “that which thou dost not know, that thou canst not tell:” and he said, the Ministers had got something in their hands which they neither knew how to hold or drop. The other went further, and insinuated expectations of seeing more foreigners brought over by side-winds. Lord Barrington replied, that no Government presumed to fill up blanks in an Act of Parliament. Proposals were made for taking the opinion of the Colonies on this plan. The Bill was ordered to be printed, and the Debate adjourned by agreement to the second reading.
The 18th, Charles Townshend presented a petition from the agent for the settlement at Massachusets Bay against the proposed Swiss battalions. Pitt moved to have laid before the House two petitions from Pensylvania, representing the distressed situation of their province. Fox, for seven more, in which they implore assistance. Sir Richard Lyttelton, for the list of officers on half-pay, insinuating how little occasion there was to employ foreigners. Lord Barrington then moved to have the Bill committed, which Sir H. Erskine opposed.
Horace Walpole the younger discussed the question, whether this regulation would be an infringement of the Act of Settlement, of which, he said, nobody could be more tender, as he had lately shown, by opposing the treaties which he had thought clashed with that Act. A literal infringement he allowed it would be, but merely literal, and the benefits to be reaped by departing from the letter, he was of opinion would come within the very spirit of the Act, were undoubtedly consonant to the intention of the Legislators who framed it, and tended to secure the blessings of that very establishment to a considerable number of our fellow-subjects. That the Legislators may be, and generally are, the greatest men of their age, yet their notions and ideas must flow, and are taken up from the views of their own age; and though they build for posterity, yet they build with materials of their own time: that they attempt to prevent as far as they foresee: that any constitution, however wisely framed, if once declared unalterable, must become a grievance: wise and happy as our own is, did it not grow so by degrees? should we presume to pronounce that it received the last perfecting hand in the reign of King William? subsequent alterations showed it had not. That the great purpose of the patriots of that reign, when by the misrule of their native Kings they were reduced to place a Foreign Family on the Throne, had been to guard against the predilection of their new sovereigns in favour of ancient subjects, and to secure their posterity from being enslaved by those who were introduced to protect liberty. This country had experienced how little even English Kings could resist practising against English liberty; a race of German Princes, accustomed to arbitrary government, was still more likely to grasp at arbitrary power. That these apprehensions had dictated that clause in the Act of Settlement which prohibits any foreigner born from being so far naturalized as to be capable of any employment, civil or military; and there the words did clash with the scheme in question.
The Swiss and Germans settled in Pensylvania were excluded by the Act of Settlement from the glorious privilege of defending the country they had preferred to their own; were debarred from fighting in an English quarrel, which at the same time was become their own. He was aware, he said, that the Act only specified that they should be incapable of commissions; but a raw, undisciplined multitude, not only not commanded by officers of their own, but not understanding the commands of those under whom they were to serve, would introduce confusion instead of utility; and unless they might have proper officers, it would be rashness to employ the men. The framers of the Act of Settlement did not foresee that a time would come, when, from the too Christian spirit of the Quakers, and the too unchristian ambition of France, our most valuable colonies would be in immediate danger. They did not foresee that this danger would meet with a providential resource on the very spot: that an hundred thousand Germans and Swiss, animated by the most amiable principles, zeal for religion, passion for liberty, and a spirit of industry, would be actually settled in the heart of the province most exposed—if they had, would they have been patriots, if they had still narrowed the Act of Settlement to the rigour it now wore?
“No, Sir,” said he; “nor when they formed a great act on the plan of their fears, did they apprehend that England would ever be enslaved by an Army of Germans that should take America in their way. But putting the most extravagant of all suppositions, that there could hereafter be an intention of employing these almost constitutional troops against the constitution, whether would it be most likely, that Swiss Republicans, and Germans fled from Monarchy, would fight for a King attempting to make himself arbitrary, or in defence of liberty which they had travelled even to America to seek? What should induce a Saltzburgher, for instance, who had abjured his own ecclesiastic tyrant, to serve an English King in a still more unconsecrated cause? Nobody, he believed, was so visionary as to impute any such scheme to the royal person on the Throne; nor would he dwell on the experience which the nation had had for near thirty years of how capable his Majesty was of attempting to violate the most minute part of the constitution. In his long and happy reign he could recollect but one instance, which, in the most strained construction, could make the most jealous suspect that his Majesty meditated even to surprise us into subjection; and that was, by governing Hanover with so parental a hand, as if he meant to insinuate to Englishmen that they might be the happiest subjects in the world, though under an arbitrary Prince.”
He was persuaded, he said, that no gentleman could disapprove the deviation in question from the Act of Settlement, but from apprehensions of its being drawn into a precedent—he would state the case. Could the most designing Minister come to Parliament (for before they get rid of Parliament, they must make use of it against itself), and say, in the year 1756 you consented to allow commissions to about forty foreign officers to regiment and discipline a proportion of Swiss and Germans, none of them Hanoverians, in Pensylvania, to defend that province against the encroachments of the French, when the Quaker natives would not, and you could not, raise troops to defend them; and therefore we hope you will have no scruple to violate it again now, perhaps in the year 1800, but will let us import into England some regiments of Hanoverians already raised and disciplined?—no; they could not say this; and when a precedent does not tally, it is in no danger of becoming a precedent. King William’s patriots could not mean that any part of the West Indies should be sacrificed to France, rather than suffer it to be defended by a providential supply of foreigners whom tyranny had driven, not invited, thither. Who was there, at this day, who did not commiserate the blind bigotry of the Jews,[53] who thought God capable of giving them so absurd a precept, as a prohibition of defending their country on a Sunday?
“This is the light, Sir,” said he, “in which I protest I see it. I think I execute the will of those great men better by departing from, than by adhering to the letter of that valuable testament they left us. Could it be possible for them to have been narrow-minded enough to have intended such rigid minuteness, common sense would teach me to reject so prejudicial a bequest; and yet, Sir, though I have declared my opinion so strongly, if even this clause in the Act of Settlement should still occasion difficulty, as I hope it will not be efficient to obstruct the scheme, I should not be sorry to see it. Even a literal violation of such an Act is too material to be passed over lightly. We ought to show that we do not supersede a single sentence of it without weighty consideration. I never wish to see unanimity on such a measure. Unanimity is a symptom of monarchy; jealousy is constitutional; and not only constitutional, but the principle of our existence. If our ancestors had intended only an assembly of deliberation, the Privy Council, or that more compact body of wisdom, the Cabinet-Council, might have sufficed to deliberate. We were calculated to suspect, to doubt, to check. I think, Sir,” added he, “we have already shown that we do not proceed wantonly or inconsiderately. One honourable gentleman (Pitt), with whom I must ever lament to differ, by standing up for the very letter of the Act, has given all the weight that can be given to it—his dissent is sufficient deliberation—and I flatter myself that my agreeing with those who think that in the point before us the letter and the spirit jar, and who, I know, feel as warmly for the constitution, and who have taken all imaginable precaution to preserve the integrity of the Act without losing so necessary a service, will not be interpreted as any want of attachment to so essential a bulwark of our liberties.”