best actions of my life, when I inform him, that it was a meeting of freeholders of Surry, who wished to promote an opposition, at a general election, to a candidate who was supposed to have at that time the favour of the Court. But that was no meeting for reform, but an electionmeeting; and I cannot recollect that I was ever present at any other public meeting, of any sort, in the borough of Southwark. If the noble earl can by any circumstances bring it to my recollection that I ever was, I will not attempt to dissemble the fact: There have been few actions of my life that I wish to be concealed."

The Duke of BEDFORD rose, and said, that he was reconciled to the Bishop's doctrine, that “individuals had nothing to do with the laws but to obey them,” as he had now qualified it: That, had the Bishop stated it in the same unqualified manner as

before, he should have moved to have the words taken down; and would have taken the sense of the House upon them: He should have thought, in that case, the reverend prelate had deserved the "steppingstone to glory."

The Bishop of ROCHESTER rose again, and said, that the noble duke was mistaken if he apprehended that the Bishop now retracted any part of what he had before advanced: That he had not in the former debate gone so much at large into the subject, perhaps he had not expressed himself so clearly, and the noble duke might not have honoured him with an equal attention ; but that in the former debate he had advanced the assertion under the same express reservations: That he would be the last man to deny the subject's right of petitioning for the redress of grievances; that he knew that right to be a part of the

The Duke of BEDFORD again rose, and said, that he now recollected the fact to be as the Bishop stated it: That the Bishop had made the like reservations of the general maxim when he first asserted it; and had even alleged the particular instances of the opposition given by the West India merchants to the abolition of the slavetrade, and that of the manufacturers of snuff to the extension of the excise-laws to their trade, as instances of a legal opposition of subjects to pending laws."

ON THE ENGLISH MILITIA GOING

TO IRELAND;

JUNE 19, 1798.

ON

N the 19th of June 1798, Lord GRENVILLE laid before the House a message from his Majesty, stating, that several regiments of militia had made a voluntary tender of their services, in aid of the regular forces of the kingdom, for suppressing the rebellion existing in Ireland; and the message recommended to the two Houses of Parliament to consider the most effectual means to enable his Majesty to accept, for a time and to an extent to be limited, the services of such militia regiments. After presenting the message, his

Lordship moved an address to the King, signifying the readiness of the House to adopt the measure recommended therein. The Earl of CAERNARVON moved an amendment, avoiding any mention of that particular measure. Upon this the debate was taken; and the Bishop of ROCHESTER spoke as follows.

"MY LORDS,

"I never came to this House

with my mind so much embarrassed with doubt and difficulty as upon the present question; for none has arisen, since I have had the honour to sit in this assembly, in which the collision has been, to my apprehension, so stout and difficult, between the reasons for a measure on the one hand, and the objections against it on the other. And the thing proposed still appears to me