the house. Prince Maserano, after disavowing, BOOK in the name of his Catholic majesty, the violence used at Port Egmont, and engaging formally for 1771. the restitution of the islands, declared, that his Catholic majesty considers this restitution as not affecting the question concerning the prior right of sovereignty of the islands. The admission of this reservation was heavily censured, as leaving the main question still in dispute, and furnishing Spain with a full justification, should she immediately re-commence hostilities, or at any future period that she may deem more favorable to the establishment of her claim. If the right of Great Britain to the islands in question were just and valid, it was affirmed that no proper or adequate atonement had been made for the aggression committed by Spain: on the other hand, if the

BOOK right of Great Britain could not be sustained, XV. the impolicy of our conduct in forming this 1771. distant settlement could be equalled only by its injustice. An address of thanks and approbation being moved, a violent debate ensued, and it was not carried without a long and obstinate opposition, 159 members dividing against it in the lower, and nineteen peers entering their protest in the journals of the upper house against it. The last head or article of this protest concludes with the following remarkable words :"Any counter-claim or assertion whatever of his majesty's right of sovereignty has been studiously avoided from the beginning to the accomplishment of this unhappy transaction, which, after the expence of millions, settles no contest, asserts no right, exacts no reparation, affords no security, but stands as a monument of reproach to the wisdom of the national councils, of dishonor to the essential dignity of his majesty's crown, and of disgrace to the hitherto untainted honor of the British flag."

Upon the whole it must be acknowledged, that Spain, in this transaction, notwithstanding her reçent debasement, negotiated on at least equal terms with England: and though precipitately to have involved the nation in a war, for the sake of an object so insignificant and contemptible as the possession of two or three barren

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rocks under a stormy sky, would have redounded BOOK little to the honor of the present administration, great and heavy censure necessarily falls on the 1771. former minister, Mr. Grenville, who, knowing the nature and extent of the claims of Spain, and the eventual probability of a rupture, would rashly risque so great a calamity for what at the best could be considered only as a trivial, remote, and uncertain advantage*. It would not indeed be difficult to turn into ridicule the extravagant pretensions of Spain respecting the empire of Southern America, and the ideas entertained by her of British encroachment and usurpation; but this certainly would be neither politic nor just on the part of Great Britain, who advances pretensions in her own favor at least as chimerical and ridiculous: and if Spain had attempted to form a settlement, or to establish a garrison, in any part of the immense and frozen regions of Hudson's Bay, or the dismal wilds of Labradore,

* In the first edition of the justly-admired pamphlet, styled "Thoughts on Falkland Islands," by Dr. Johnson, that writer sarcastically remarks of Mr. George Grenville, " that he possessed talents not universally afforded to mankind; for had he gotten the Manilla ransom, he could have counted it." And it is elsewhere observed of him, "that his mind was so frittered by the spirit of detail and minuteness, that it was as incapable of comprehending the affairs of an empire as the eye of a beetle of surveying the horizon of the peak of Teneriffe."

1

BOOK stretching to the arctic pole, the pride of Great XV. Britain would have been no doubt equally alarmed, 1771. and her interests supposed equally endangered. Let us then at least act consistently, and respect those rights, whether real or imaginary, in others, which we dare unblushingly to claim for ourselves.

New Shorehan dis

A remarkable bill was introduced into the franchise- house of commons, and passed into an act, in the

ment bill.

course of the present session, which, by the unanimous and zealous concurrence of all parties in its support, reflected much honor on the house. This was a bill for disfranchising a very large proportion of the freemen of the borough of New Shoreham, and for extending the right of voting to the contiguous hundreds. It appeared in evidence, before the select committee appointed under the Grenville act to try the merits of the late election for this place, that a great number of the freemen of the borough had formed themselves into a society, under the name of the Christian Club. This christian club was in fact no better than a mart of venality. A junto was appointed to dispose of the borough to the highest bidder; and after the election was decided, the profits were shared equally amongst the whole. The attorney-general was, in consequence of an address of the house to the king,

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ordered to prosecute the persons composing the BOOK junto of this club, and who had distinguished themselves as the peculiar agents of infamy on 1771. this occasion. The nation, angry and disgusted as they were, could not avoid applauding the spirit and constitutional tendency of this bill, which shewed that the house was neither inattentive nor insensible to the preservation of its own dignity or the national honor.

Unfortunately, about the same time an accident occurred, which revived in an alarming degree the indignation and resentment of the people against their representatives. Though nothing can appear more reasonable than that the public at large should be furnished with all such means of information respecting the conduct of their representatives in parliament as may consist with the order and dignity of the house, it had been long a subject of complaint, that the speeches of the members were, in contempt of the resolutions of the house, regularly printed in the public papers; and several members of the house having formally stated that their speeches had been misrepresented in the report, although such misrepresentation, if of any real importance, might doubtless have been easily corrected, a motion was made and carried, not indeed unanimously, that the printers Wheble and Thompson should appear to answer this complaint at the