export trade to those Islands. I admire the noble Lord’s accuracy of computation. It is the first time that I have heard a matter of such importance so minutely and correctly stated; and it is the first time I ever heard that Bewdley was a place of such consequence, or that it carried on so great and extensive an export trade. But, my Lords, allowing that the borough of Bewdley advised with the noble Lord, and offered to address his Majesty unsolicited, as his Lordship says; supposing likewise that they were unanimous in their sentiments; I still beg leave to think that the West-India planters, and the great body of merchants concerned in the West-India trade in the cities of London and Bristol, are full as respectable an authority as the addresses from the town of Bewdley; and to show that the present bill will very materially affect the Sugar Islands, should it be passed into a law, they appeared the last year at your Lordships’bar, and this year at the bar of the other House; but I believe they will hardly trouble your Lordships on the present occasion, for experience has taught them to despair of obtaining any sort of redress. It is too often a misfortune in this country for persons to entertain very different ideas, when in and out of employment. I heard the noble Lord with great pleasure on the first of the session express sentiments of a very different nature; and still retaining my former opinions, I cannot say but I approved much better of the speech then delivered than of the sentiments now so warmly and so ably urged by his Lordship. When I make this cursory observation, I cannot but suppose that his Lordship’s change of opinion has arisen purely from conviction. On the whole, my Lords, I pronounce this bill, both in principle and in all its provisions and clauses, like those it is to succeed, to be fraught with all possible injustice and cruelty. I do not think the people of America in rebellion, but resisting acts of the most unexampled cruelty and oppression. [Here a cry of order, order!] I do not retract a syllable of what I have said. I think I am justified in the expression, by the uniform custom and usage of Parliament, which secures to its members the freedom of debate; or why else are they at all permitted to deliver their opinions? If the injustice of the bill be manifest, because it proceeds on an idea which is false in fact—that the Colonies are in open rebellion, the provisions of it are no less cruel. They subject the property of the innocent and unoffending to confiscation, without a trial; they give an undue preference to the Navy over the Army, or else establish a precedent of a most dangerous and alarming tendency, that of giving the possessions of one part of the subjects of the same empire to those employed to reduce them; but, more than all, they authorize an act of the most wanton and horrid cruelty—that of obliging such as are taken in the act of trading, for their maintenance and support, to enter and serve on board his Majesty’s ships-of-war.

Lord Lyttelton. I do not at all think it decent or Parliamentary to allude to anything said in a former debate; I am sure such a conduct has always been discountenanced in this House. I am happy, however, in seeing so full a bar, that I may have an opportunity of exculpating myself from charges and insinuations equally ill-founded and unjust. I cannot say that I literally remember the words that fell from me on the occasion alluded to; but I think my memory will sufficiently serve me to recollect the material scope and tendency of what I then urged. In relation to the foreign troops, I thought then, and I have not since changed my opinion, that the previous consent of Parliament was necessary to legalize that measure; that nothing could justify it but the necessity; and that an act of indemnity was requisite, in order to quiet the just apprehensions which such a measure ought to occasion in the breast of every person who wished well to the Constitution of this country, as established at the Revolution, if the necessity was not stated as the only true ground of justification. What happened afterwards? A bill of indemnity was brought into and passed the other House; it came to a third reading in this House; and such was the extraordinary conduct of the noble Lords in Opposition that they opposed it; and several Lords in Administration uniting with them on a different ground, the bill was lost and rejected unanimously. Whether the noble Duke’s friends and partisans, or I, acted most consistently on that occasion, I submit to your Lordships. As to the general measures to be pursued against America, I will remind your Lordships, that I voted and spoke uniformly in the sentiments I have this day maintained, till the first day of the present session; and on that day, too, I only differed from Administration because I thought measures of such wide and important extent, recommended from the Throne, called for information the Ministers seemed unwilling to give, or absolutely refused. Ignorant as I then was, I very properly refused to support measures the object of which, and the means of executing, I was totally a stranger to. On that ground alone I refused to co-operate with Administration. Here the matter rested, till his Majesty’s servants thought proper to give me that kind of information I thought necessary to direct me in my future conduct. They were pleased to repose a confidence in me, which I hope and trust I shall never abuse, and which perfectly satisfied me that their views were ultimately founded in wisdom, and directed to such objects as promised to give and ensure the most happy and desirable termination to the present unhappy disputes. Thus convinced of the rectitude and wisdom of Administration, I accepted of the place I now enjoy, but upon no other terms but those I have mentioned. I have always acted, and shall continue to act on the most conscientious motives, and upon reasons of the most perfect conviction. I do assure your Lordships, that I have never swerved from my integrity in a single instance. As to the place I have been appointed to, I received it as a mark of his Majesty’s most gracious inclination towards me. I have always looked upon it, in point of emolument, to be a matter of very trivial consideration. My fortune is too considerable to regard it in any other light. I did not seek it. I did not act the servile part of a placeman or a pensioner, by meanly stooping to apply and beg for it; and expect and think I have a right not to be included among such as do; for if it was an object of moment, which it is not, I never shall sacrifice my opinion to any personal or private consideration. I own I am greatly astonished to hear the noble Duke, who spoke last, affirm that America is not at present in a state of rebellion, though his Grace knows that the Colonists have been declared Rebels by the most solemn declarations Parliament is capable of expressing; by acts of the whole Legislature, stamped with the authority of King, Lords and Commons. This, my Lords, I think is a. precedent that should not be endured in this House; and, till the authority of it is again restored, I shall never think that we can expect to have a proper obedience paid to the dignity of Parliament. I think that laws, the justice of which are arraigned and condemned by some of the very persons who are supposed to have a hand in framing and assenting to them, will always lose a considerable part, if not all, their efficacy, while such liberties are permitted to be wantonly taken with them. I know if I were an American, and retained any doubt of the part I ought to take on the present occasion, and were to learn that a noble Lord in this House contended that the measures proposed by this bill were founded in injustice and cruelty, and that opposition to such measures was justifiable, I must confess it would go a great way in satisfying and removing my doubts, and determining my future conduct. I perfectly coincide in the opinion of Cicero, who was an actor in the scenes immediately preceding the destruction of the liberties of Rome, that such an improper licentious use of liberty is totally destructive of its essence. His expression was extremely applicable on the present occasion, Immoderata licentia conscionis. As well, therefore, on that account, as the general impropriety of such a conduct, I must tell the noble Duke that, if he should repeat the same sentiments, I mean to take the sense of the House, whether it be consistent with the decorum and dignity of their proceedings, to permit such an improper liberty of speech to pass without a proper animadversion and censure.

The Duke of Richmond. I imagine, if the noble Lord had properly conceived my meaning, he could never have possibly drawn such inferences from my expressions. What I said then, and what I still maintain, is, that, as a member of this House, I have a full right, as long as the freedom of debate is held sacred, to deliver my opinion without reserve. The point immediately under the consideration of the House is the present bill; the bill asserts that the Americans are in rebellion: I say they are not, and state that as my reason for opposing it. Is this indecent? Is this unparliamentary, or contrary to the uniform and established usages of