I know, will not agree with me in this. But, my Lords, the noble Secretary of State, by his official situation, possesses the best information upon that point. He has entered, I think, as much into the detail as the responsibility of his situation would permit. If he has misled me by a false statement, he must have wilfully misstated. If I conceived him capable of a wilful misstatement, I should think him unfit for his situation, and should join the band of his opponents: But as long as I think otherwise of him-as long as I think him fit for the station that he holds, I must credit his evidence upon this fact, as the best to be had. And, connecting the two facts, that a dangerous rebellion subsists in Ireland, and that a part of the militia is the force that can best be spared for the assistance of Ireland, I must support the present measure. My Lords, were noble

lords in earnest, when they said that by this measure Parliament would break its faith with the people? My Lords, I do not deny, that such acts of Parliament as the militia-laws, are, in a certain sense and to a certain degree, contracts between the government and the subject: But, my Lords, I do maintain that the first of all contracts between any government and the subject is the preservation of the constitution, of the independence of the state, and the liberties of the people: This is that to which first and most of all the faith of government is pledged: This is the first paramount contract; all other contracts are subordinate to this, and must give way to it; all the ordinary operations of the laws must be suspended, when that great article of public faith the conservation of the public safety cannot be kept without the infringement of them,

My Lords, we are at this moment under that necessity, a necessity which from time to time has arisen in all governments; and under it all governments resort to some extraordinary means of preservation. All the different ways that may be taken may be reduced, I think, to two general divisions. The one is that method which a coarse policy, as I think it, suggested in the ancient democracies; which was to erect a temporary despotism,-to set up a chief magistrate who should be released from all the ordinary restrictions of the laws, and have authority to do whatever his own discretion might advise for averting the danger of the moment. This was what the Roman republic did when it created a dictator, or invested the consuls with dictatorial powers; whenever the Senate came to the awful vote "Caveant consules ne quid detrimenti respublica ca

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piat." The other, the gentler and the better way, is that which we now take,-that the Legislature itself should by its own act, in times of great danger, suspend those particular restrictions of the laws which fetter the executive government in the exertions which the crisis may demand. Upon these principles, my Lords, I shall agree to the original motion of the noble Secretary of State, and vote against the amend ment offered by the noble earl."

UPON THE BILL TO REGULATE THE SLAVETRADE, WITHIN CERTAIN LIMITS;

JULY 5, 1799.

A BILL having been brought into Parliament to prohibit the trading in slaves on the coast of Africa within certain limits, the same was debated in a committee on the 5th July 1799; when the Bishop of ROCHESTER Supported the bill by the following arguments.

MY LORDS,

"I hope I shall not trespass too long upon your time; as I mean to confine myself, as far as the course the de