Star.
London, England, 1822-06-25 00:00:00

of the systens,was in laying dowlr pelsaltieEttlthrnw
the burthen of exculpative proof as much se possible'
on the accused. An informer, who, its all other.
countries. was considered a suspected person, was
in the Court of Exchequer, received very favoirably,
and his evidence considered as a thing of course.—
Another instance of the system of contrail' exercised
by Government, was to be found in the Glass Law, for
there was a separate code for almost every article.—
That law, by a singular regard for mathematics, de-
dared that the plates should be made rectangular,
with the sides and 'ends perpendicular ; for such was
the mathematical accuracy of the Exchequer. And,
under a penalty of £lOO the sides were also to be pa-
rallel with each other, in default of which the offender,
who must have committed an impossibility to respect
this law, would, as he before observed, incur a pe-
nalty of £lOO. This provision would be found in an
Act passed in the fifty•first year of the reign of the
late King. The greatest possible power was also given
over persons who had offended, or were likely to of-
fend against the revenue laws. A Bill had, one morn-
ing at two o'clock, been quietly brought into that
House, giving a power to relieve offenders against
the revenue laws, even after conviction. This Bill
had passed into a law, and had put the finishing hand
to the system of confront he had alluded to. Another
instance of this was to be observed in the Act against
mixing ale and table beer intended for sale. He knew
of an information on that Act which contained in
one count a claim for 105 penalties of £lOO each—
(Hear).—The changes had been rung five times upon
twenty, and had thus threatened, to overwhelm the
defendant. The number and amount of these penal-
ties were such that human nature could not stand the
trial; and in nine cases out of ten the defendant gave
in. He by no means intended to say that it was seri-
ously proposed to exact all these penalties; but the
suing for them drove them into submission. Thus
the increase of the revenue became necessary by the
increase of the debt; and the threatening of the
people with the infraction of revenue laws Which few
of them understood, made almost every trader a
suitor to the Crown, and sent many more Members
of Parliament than were usual as applicants to the
Treasury ; and, as a consequence, the direct influence
of the Crown was increased in the worst possible way.
The influence, too, was much better arranged than
it was formerly ; the real weight of the revenue was
considerably increased ; and the Treasury got' Its lofts
arms into every public department. It interfered I
more than it had ever done before; and in support
this assertion he had only to refer to the shifting of,
the Excise and Customs patronage to the Treasury;
and the compensation, as it was called, to the two for:1
mer in the shape of increased salary. It was• per-
feed), true that we had come down from an expendi-
ture of 182 millions, to the comparatively moderate,
but, not insignificant, sum of 77 millions. But the
close of the war had not brought a cessation of its
ordinary effects ; for many people were still looking
up to the Government as their first Ways and Means.
Formerly the people of this country were not accus-
tomed to look for a part of their income from the pub-
lic purse. They were accustomed to look upon their
industry as the source of their income; but they had
acquired vicious habits in the pursuit of army and
navy appointments, writer hips, cadetships, and si-
tuations of all kinds and sizes, from the highest,
which were good enough to tempt the highest fami-
lies, to the lowest, which were accessible to those in
the lower classes. This state of dependence, he was
sorry to say, was deeply rooted in the higher classes.
It had become.a _habit to look to the Court for the
means of subsistence. Though the amount of our
expenditure was a little diminished, the habit, the
struggle, and the subserviency still continued. When
all these were taken into consideration, he thought
that if Parliament had reason to pass the Resolution
of 1780, it had now much stronger reason to echo it.
If those w ho adopted that Resolution were now alive,
they would not be contented with re-affirming it ; but
would follow it up with measures of a most search-
ing and decisive nature. Mr. Dunning had spoken of
the corrupt pecuniary influence which prevailed
within those walls." He had said that " he knew fifty
Members of that House who held opinions in that
House opposite to those for which they voted within
the House." He added, "If you goad me I will
name them ;" but nobody challenged him. The pre-
decessor of the Right Hon. Gentleman in the Chair
had said, that he felt bound as an honest man to say,
that the influence of the Crown had increased beyond
the idea of that of a limited Monarchy. There was
another opinion, and one of a man who was no ve-
hement patriot, or one who was particularly conspi-
cuous in obstructing the measures of Government—
he meant Mr. Justice Blackstone, his opinion anterior
to the American war. Blackstone stated that, in his
opinion, the Bill of Right.; and other advantages we
had obtained since the Revolution, were more than
counterbalanced by the vast force of influence de-
rived from the Riot Act, the Standing Army, and
the increased National Debt. At the present moment
we had not only the Riot Act, but six other memo-
rable Acts ; an army, not of 17,000 men, which was
its amount when Blackstone wrote, but of 90,000
men; and a debt of 800 millions, instead of 130 mil-
lions. Could the House, therefore,l possibly doubt,
that if Mr. Dunning, Mr. Justice Blackstone, and
Sir Fletcher Norton had to revise their opinions, they
would now hesitate to re-enact their former measures ?
He now came to consider the answers usually given
to those who contended that the influence of the
Crown had improperly increased. The late Mr. Rose
had admitted that 1500 new places had arisen, but
then he urged that 500 had been abolished. The
places increased, however, averaged £3OO a-year,
while those abolished averaged but £5O a-year. Since
Mr. Roie's time many augmentations had occurred
in the number of places. The next answer was, that
there were fewer placemen in that House then, than
there were in 1780. At that time there were between
eighty and ninety, he would say ninety, for the be-
nefit of the argument, to be held by tlaropposite side
of the House ; by the returns laid before the House it
appeared there were now about 80 in that House. He
protested, however, against the argument to be drawn
from this fact. It was not of the number of placemen
actually in'Parliament that he complained ; it was
.of the number of persons purchased at elections and
county meetings: •To -him it was of little matter,
whether the man who was :corrupted held the dies
himself, or was influenced by one who did. l'heiipv
plication at the Treisury in the morning was always
accompanied by an understood promise of the rote