“Charles James Fox”.

Fox responded in a most impressive speech. He said: “On any other occasion, he should have contented himself with returning thanks, but in the very peculiar embarrassments in which the country was now plunged, he thought it necessary to say a few words in the only place in which he thought it might be useful for him to deliver his sentiments. The circumstances and events of public affairs of late had induced him and many of his friends to abstain from their usual assiduous attendance in Parliament. Their exertions for the preservation of the Constitution had been of no avail; two years ago they had seen the repeal of the Bill of Rights carried by a triumphant majority; they had seen the functions of the Constitutional Law suspended, on alarm created by the Ministers themselves; and however well-founded the alarm might now be, he scorned the idea that it was necessary for him to attend in his place in the House of Commons, for the purpose only of vindicating himself from the vulgar calumny that he was not an enemy to a foreign invasion. It would be an insult on his whole life if such a declaration could be expected from him. He believed there was not a voice in the assembly he addressed which was not in unison with his own—namely, that every man who heard him was both ready and willing to stand forth in defence of his country, with the spirit that belongs to Englishmen. He found no fault with those who thought it necessary to make these professions elsewhere. Thus much only would he say in this place for himself. The present Government of the country, he had no hesitation in saying, was a Government of Tyranny. They had adopted the principles of Robespierre, and their object was to establish tyranny in England. Look at the situation of the Sister Kingdom; our own will soon be the same. He had no remedy to recommend but that the friends of freedom should be united and firm, and wait for better times. Tyranny was now the order of the day in every country in Europe. Notwithstanding the arbitrary proceedings of our own Ministers, he was persuaded the unanimous feeling of the country, the universal determination of every man in it was to be ready to take the field against a foreign foe; and, indeed, they had a powerful motive to do so, for if they were united, they had a better chance to get rid of the tyranny of their own Ministers than they could possibly have by the success of a foreign invasion. Even in his present retirement he should be ready to come forward, in every constitutional effort, to regain our lost liberties; and he should be in the foremost of the ranks to repel the invasion of a daring enemy.”

This speech led to a most important consequence—the erasing from the Privy Council Book the name of one of the most illustrious statesmen which had ever adorned it. Fox’s name was struck out by the King on the 9th of May.

On the 6th of June, after the dinner at the Whig Club, the Duke of Bedford proposed “The Health of Charles Fox,” and remarked in severe terms on Ministers having caused the King to strike his name out of the list of the Privy Council. Fox said: “It would be most unfit for him to say a word respecting the Noble Duke’s allusion to a circumstance personal to himself. Would to God the time of the Ministers had been always employed in such frivolous fooleries as settling who should be Honourable and who Right Honourable, and deliberating on the titles most befitting their friends and supporters.” Fox, with some of his supporters, seceded from Parliament in 1797, and returned to the House of Commons in 1802 to defend the Peace of Amiens, and he was persuaded to continue his parliamentary attendance by the urgent request of friends, with whose wishes he felt himself bound to comply.—Ed.]

No. XIX.

March 19, 1798.

For the authenticity of the enclosed Ballad we refer our readers to a volume of MS. Poems discovered upon the removal of some papers, during the late alterations which have taken place at the Tax-office, in consequence of the Reports of the Finance Committee.

It has been communicated to our printer by an ingenious friend of his, who occasionally acts for the Deputy Collector of the Parish of St. Martin in the Fields; but without date, or any other mark, by which we are enabled to guess at the particular subject of the composition.

CHEVY CHASE.[[171]]

God prosper long our noble king,