He meant the

some conversation about, before parliament rose. account produced to the house when the civil list was under consideration, which stated, that the arrear upon the last year amounted to £44,000. This account Mr. Sheridan declared to be fallacious and ill-founded. He said the expenses of the civil list did not come within his department when in office; and therefore, when the matter was last agitated, he was perfectly ignorant of the real state of the case; he had since inquired particularly into the matter, and he found the fact to be as he had stated it. The nature of the fallacy, he said, was this:-The account was made out so as to exhibit, on one side, the actual expenditure upon each quarter; and to set against it only the amount of a quarter's division of the £900,000 allotted for the civil list; whereas, it ought also to state on the side of the receipt, all the sums that came in aid of the civil list, which would, of course, go to the diminution of the excess of expenditure. There was, Mr. Sheridan said, the sum of £10,900, which fell into the first quarter of the year, when his right honourable friend was in office, and that ought to have been set against the excess of £13,000 upon the expenditure of that quarter. Mr. Sheridan moved, "That an abstract of the account of the civil list be printed."

This produced an altercation upon the subject between Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Rose, Mr. Steele, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. Sheridan persisting in his position; and the three last gentlemen denying that there was any fallacy in the case, Mr. Pitt said, he should be glad to have a little conversation with Mr. Fox upon the subject. To which Mr. Sheridan replied, that he certainly might have that pleasure, as his right honourable friend would be present when the matter came under discussion.

The motion was agreed to.

AUGUST 19.

CIVIL LIST.

As soon as the business of the day was gone through,

MR. SHERIDAN rose, and began with observing, that he feared he had given unnecessary trouble in moving for so many papers; because, as those papers had not been upon the table more than an hour, it had been impossible for gentlemen in general to have derived much information from them. At the same time that he made this remark, he said he was ready to

declare, that he had himself obtained a degree of information .f from them sufficient for his argument; and before he went into it, he begged leave to say, that he had not moved for the papers ⚫ to be laid before the house, or put gentlemen to the inconvenience of attending that day, solely with a view to support the assertion made some time since by his right honourable friend, and attempted to be refuted by a right honourable gentleman opposite to him; but chiefly in order to bring the state of the civil list, and the nature of the estimate upon the table, into consideration, that the house might be apprised of the manner in which the account had been laid before parliament, and of what the debt of the civil list really was, as well as of the periods in which the arrear had accrued. Having said this, Mr. Sheridan produced Mr. Burke's bill, and read the title and preamble, in order to show, that one of its principal objects was to prevent the civil list from running in debt, and to put a stop to the practice of ministers coming down to the house of commons year after year, to state that his Majesty's civil list was in debt, and to desire a vote of money to pay the debt. He also read the King's late message, stating, that he was concerned to find himself in debt; and he compared it with that part of the royal speech from the throne, at the beginning of the session of parliament, 1782 and 1783, in which his Majesty assures parliament, that he had made such regulations, with regard to his civil list, as should for the future prevent his expenses exceeding his income. Upon these documents, he reasoned to show, that the act of parliament, commonly called Mr. Burke's bill, and the royal word from the throne, had been violated, by the minister's having lately come to the house with the message, to which he had alluded, and obtained a vote for £60,000. He stated that the proceeding had been extremely reprehensible and improper; because, if Mr. Burke's bill had proved to be inefficient and inadequate, with respect to one of its principle objects, viz., the preventing the civil list from going into arrears, the regular and the right way would have been, to have moved for leave to bring in a bill to amend the act, and to have given such an addition to the civil list as experience should have proved was absolutely necessary.

Mr. Sheridan next called the house back to the recollection of what had passed on the day when the right honourable gentleman opposite to him had stated, that upon the four last

quarters of the civil list, there had been an arrear of £44,000. This he had, at the time, controverted; and he had since made a good deal of inquiry into the true state of the affair, and he flattered himself he should be able to prove that the debt, when the right honourable gentleman had asked for the sixty thousand pounds, was not forty-four thousand; and that the estimate upon the table was manifestly incorrect, no less than eighty places having been left out of it, the money to pay the salaries of which amounted to eleven thousand pounds, exclusive of that glaring error which Mr. Gilbert, the author of that estimate, had fallen into. He declared the estimate itself was fallacious-he did not mean that its title did not speak its import-it certainly did; but the whole of the estimate itself was delusive, because it only compared the actual charges incurred and paid out of the civil list, against an estimate of the four quarters' receipts of the £900,000 voted by parliament; whereas every body knew that there were various sums that came from time to time in aid of the civil list, such as savings, the suppressed places, fees, and sums imprest from the Exchequer, all of which ought to be taken into the account of the receipts, in order to distinguish between a bare exceeding upon a comparison of the expenditure against the £900,000 and an arrear actually incurred by the expenditure exceeding the gross receipt. By the mistake he had already mentioned, viz. the total omission of the mention of eighty places, the salaries of which amounted to eleven thousand pounds, the house would see, that even upon the statement of Mr. Gilbert, if the estimate had been correct, the expenses of the civil list would stand at £911,000 instead of £900,000. There consequently were £11,000 out of £44,000 which the right honourable gentleman had stated as the debt upon the four last quarters, and he would presently prove that a great deal more was to be taken off. In order to do this, Mr. Sheridan entered into a long train of arguments founded upon figures, through which it was impossible to follow him in detail from memory. We shall only, therefore, state the leading parts of what we understood him to reason upon. Added to the eleven thousand pounds arising from the eighty places omitted in the estimate, there was, he said, a surplus of the money voted in aid of the civil list last year, amounting to £10,900. There was also a sum in the exchequer

of two or three thousand pounds, and a sum of two thousand in the hands of the Lord Chamberlain. Upon the whole, Mr. Sheridan contended, that there had been no arrear incurred during the two first quarters; and that, including the four, the arrear had only amounted to about sixteen thousand pounds, which certainly was no great debt for the civil list to have incurred. He said, the Christmas quarter, ending January 5, 1784, neither he nor his right honourable friend was answerable for, as they had gone out of office on the 26th of December. He added a vast variety of ingenious reasoning to illustrate his positions; and before he made his motion, said, he flattered himself he had made good his word; and unless it was intended on the other side of the house to resort to a quibble between the word arrear and the word exceeding (which he should consider as the most pitiful of all quibbles) he conceived what he had said could not be denied, much less refuted; and for that reason he trusted, there would be no objection made to two motions that he should offer upon the subject. Mr. Sheridan read his motions, before he made them; the first was, a resolution, that a true estimate of the expenditure of the civil list should be prepared against the next session to be laid before the house; and that it should be drawn correctly, and agreeably to the direction of Mr. Burke's bill. The other was, that a complete and accurate account of the entire receipt and expenditure of the civil list for the past year, should be annually laid before that house, which Mr. Burke's bill also expressly ordered.

Mr. Fox rose and seconded the motion. Mr. Rose objected to both resolutions and moved the question of adjournment upon them, which was carried.

FEBRUARY 9, 1785.

WESTMINSTER SCRUTINY.

The order of the day being for the house to resume the consideration of this business, the Right Hon. Wilbore Ellis moved, "that it appeared to this house that Thomas Corbett, Esq., high bailiff for the city of Westminster, having received a precept from the sheriffs of Middlesex for electing two citizens to serve in parliament for the said city; and having taken and finally closed the poll on the 17thof May last, being the day next before the day of the return of the said writ, be now directed forthwith to make a return of his precept of members chosen in pursuance of it." This was opposed by Lord Mulgrave, Mr. Bearcroft, and the Master of the Rolls (Sir Lloyd Kenyon.)

MR. SHERIDAN replied to different arguments adverse to the motion that had fallen from Mr. Bearcroft, Lord Mulgrave,

the Master of the Rolls, and other speakers. He began with observing, that they had that day been honoured with the councils of a complete gradation of lawyers; they had received the opinion of a judge, of an attorney-general in petto, of an ex-attorney-general, and of a practising barrister. The encomiums passed on his right honourable friend by one learned gentleman (Mr. Bearcroft) were so applicable, that when the learned gentleman added, that, besides his other great and shining talents, his right honourable friend stood distinguished for his boldness and candour, for his quickness of discernment and good sense, every body who knew his right honourable friend thought the learned gentleman had really been successful in his description, and drawn a just portrait; but when the learned gentleman afterwards stated, at the time that his right honourable friend professed most candour he was then most dangerous, and that he was to be the least trusted when he wished to throw himself into the arms of the house, the learned gentleman completely did away the resemblance, and proved that he was wholly unacquainted with the true character of his right honourable friend, who was not more remarkable for his splendid abilities than for the genuine liberality and unaffected candour of his mind, and the manly, direct, and open conduct that he had ever pursued. Had the learned gentleman's statement been correct, his panegyric would have proved a satire, and it must have been understood, that when he talked of his right honourable friend's boldness, he meant his craft; and when he mentioned his candour, he designed to charge him with hypocrisy. It was not from such men as his right honourable friend that danger was to be dreaded. If the wolf was to be feared, the learned gentleman might rest assured it would be the wolf in sheep's clothing, the masked pretender to patriotism. It was not from the fang of the lion, but from the tooth of the serpent-that reptile which insidiously steals upon the vitals of the constitution, and gnaws it to the heart ere the mischief is suspected, that destruction was to be feared. With regard to the acquisition of a learned gentleman, who had declared he meant to vote with them that day, he was sorry to acknowledge, that from the declaration the learned gentleman had made in the beginning of his speech, he saw no great reason to boast of their auxiliary. The learned gentleman, who had with peculiar