future contingencies, till the landed gentlemen shall consent to give six shillings in the pound.

I have endeavoured to draw up my motions, argumentatively dependant upon each other, in the manner and order that I have opened them, viz: The services of 1776; the debts outstanding; the ordinary ways and means; and the deficiency unprovided for; that they may stand upon your Journals as a caveat, at least, entered before these fatal measures are irretrievable. But as I do not mean to throw out any false colouring, either to the House or to the publick, by the means of your votes, and as one of my resolutions contains a recital of the total Navy debt, lest, therefore, it should appear that I made a demand for the payment of the whole, I shall offer to the House a subsequent resolution, explaining what proportion of the Navy debt I do think it necessary to have discharged for the better security of publick credit, viz: The Navy bills outstanding, or at least such part as now carry interest at four per cent., amounting to about one million six hundred thousand pounds, (exclusive of interest,) as appears by a paper laid this day upon your table at my request. The paper is intituled “An Account of Navy, Victualling and Transport Bills outstanding on the 29th of February, 1776.”

The reasons which induce me to offer this measure to the House are, in my poor opinion, of some importance. If you look at your Navy debt, or upon the paper just now presented, you will see that there are more bills of credit now outstanding than in any year for the first five years of the late war, when we had the greatest Powers in Europe to contend with. What description of mine, or even what possible exaggeration, could paint the present state of this country in more alarming colours! At the very outset of this war we are driven to the same shifts, which we were not driven to in the late war till we had attained every object of it, and till, by the vigorous exertion of a great Minister, we had girt the globe with conquest. When every nerve had been so long strained, and so successfully, something might then have been said for slackening the springs, and eking out with expedients; but to begin with secret shifts and hazardous expedients, what is that but confessing to a certainty that you foresee the enormity of the expense; that you take every means of concealing it from the publick eye; that you know and feel the inability of your country to support a civil war, which will destroy every source of its strength and power; but that you are secretly and treacherously meditating to lead us on, confiding, as we are, uninformed and unsuspecting as you would have us to be, step by step, to ruin?

The publick have been alarmed, and perhaps not without reason, upon some supposed measures of the Bank with respect to Navy bills. Whenever there are mysteries in matters of importance, suspicion is justifiable. Immediately after the Navy debt was moved for in Parliament, it was announced that the Bank had stopped their hands in buying up Navy bills, and they fell to a double discount. It was the calling for the Navy debt that first brought to light the total amount of the outstanding bills, which, on the 31st of December, 1775, was greater than in any of the first five years of the late war. The publick concluded very naturally that there was some secret understanding between the Ministry and the Bank upon this subject. Doubtless buying up the Navy bills by the Bank was a voluntary act of their own, even if it were concerted with the Ministry; but still the circumstances, taken altogether, appear suspicious. Why should the Bank have prevented themselves, as they seem to have done, from purchasing Navy bills at the double discount? For the moment they left off buying, the discount became double. Why should they even seem to be assisting to Government in their system of contracting debts secretly and underhand? This is tender ground. It was not originally any suspicion of mine; but I confess I took it from a paper circulated, and which I believe was sent to most members of this House, stating that the Bank had advanced above eight millions to the Treasury, upon distant funds, out of the reach of circulation, to the great risk of publick credit. If that be so, I still think, as I did when it was first suggested to me, that it is a most dangerous system. Its tendency is to convert the Bank of England into a Ministerial engine of State; and the danger nothing less than making the executive power independent on the knowledge and consent of Parliament for money. May not twenty-four directors, in some future time, be prevailed upon materially to sacrifice the interest of the proprietors at large to serve a Minister? Even in the case just mentioned, it was a fortunate incident for the Ministry that, just at a time when it was their object to get what advance of money they could in secret, the Bank should seem studious to take up their Navy bills at half the discount to which they fell upon the very day on which they ceased to purchase. I repeat it again, this is tender ground; more so than is generally imagined.

I believe no one can doubt the responsibility of the Bank of England; but any bank, whether publick or private, may be broken, notwithstanding a very certain final responsibility of paying twenty shillings in the pound, and even a great surplus remaining. It is a ready responsibility that must support any bank at a pinch; distant funds, out of reach, will not give support against a sudden alarm and run. Any indiscretion of the bank in advancing large sums upon very distant funds may be extremely hazardous to themselves, and to every shop which, by habit and gradual custom, considers bank notes to be as good as coin. They are all upon one bottom. I have not all the alarms about paper credit that some gentlemen have, particularly not about bank paper; but still I think it a point of material prudence that the Bank should not be too free in advancing millions upon very remote funds. This is a very important point. I hope I have touched it tenderly. I think I need say no more in support of my last motion, for making a satisfactory provision for the outstanding Navy bills.

I will now state my motions as they follow each other, argumentatively, in order:—

I have now stated all that I have to offer on the subject of the present state of the nation, and its revenue, which I address specially to the noble Lord who is Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is not the first time that I have addressed him upon that subject, and to this very effect. I have done it many times in this session, both before and since Christmas; but he has always confined himself to general terms. No repeated applications have been able to extort anything explicit from him. How can the noble Lord justify such secrecy and silence, and backwardness to communicate information to this House at this important crisis? It is the duty of his office to be active and vigilant, and forward to apprize this House in time, of every important circumstance, and not to leave the burden upon private and uninformed members of dragging every unwilling estimate into day-light. Why will he not cultivate the confidence of the House by fair and open dealing? What interest can the noble Lord have in keeping us in a state of deception? Is he afraid,