be debated without regard to authority, which, as far as persons and personal considerations are in question, is seldom in favour of the poor. But the House, I well know, will not be the less disposed to support a just cause from its having nothing but its justice to recommend it. In

that has been given to the magistrates for the ruin of a numerous description of people; a power to commit without a trial; to condemn without a hearing; and to punish without even the suspicion of guilt? Sir, the law which gives that power

spoke last, and those of the noble lord he is not himself deceived. Upon these who delivered his sentiments in an earlier grounds I am anxious, that the clause prostage of the debate, the principal objec-posed to be repealed should, now at least, tions to the present Bill are founded on the idea of its being a breach of compact, and a total departure from parliamentary faith. They have not, indeed, asserted that any positive agreement expressed in words was concluded with the shopkeepers, for the provisions of the last year's bill; but they intimate that a sort of tacit bar-what light, then, are we to view the power gain, deducible from the nature of the case, is understood to have existed; a bargain that, if the specific impost should be laid on the stationary venders of goods, the itinerant sellers should be subjected to proportionable burthens. With this compact the noble lord and the hon. gen-violates the constitution, contradicts the tleman have endeavoured to shew that the provisions of the present Bill are altogether inconsistent.-Sir, the primary object of the present Bill is the repeal of that clause in the Act of the last year, which enables the magistrates of counties, without a hearing, without the proof of any crime committed, without the charge, or even the suspicion of offence, to dismiss an entire class of his Majesty's subjects from their only occupation, and to consign them to misery and want. In what respect is this clause connected with the compact of last year? In what respect is the entire proscription of the hawkers and pedlars essential to their just taxation? Foreign to the principle, and unthought of by the framers of the Act of which it forms a part, this clause was proposed in one of the latest stages of the Bill. Few persons were present, and of those few, the greatest part seemed little disposed to exactness of investigation or minuteness of inquiry. Some of us, indeed, had also a powerful persuasive for acquiescing in the clause, in the confidence we felt in the character of its hon. mover: to his known integrity we trusted, that nothing which he recommended to the House could be intentionally wrong; and we trusted to his acknowledged good sense that he was not likely essentially to err. Sir, the uneasiness and strong remorse which from that hour I have almost unceasingly felt, have convinced me, that in all cases, and more especially those in which the subsistence of many hundreds of my fellow subjects is at stake, a vote of confidence is a most unwarrantable thing; for though I may be perfectly sure that the hon. gentleman means not to deceive the House, yet I never can be sure, that

express words of Magna Charta, and wounds the security of every individual in the kingdom. What principle shall be deemed sacred, when the first principles of justice are violated? what obligations shall be valued, when those of humanity are despised? or what government can be thought permanent, when the basis of civil society itself is thus wantonly attacked? Has the Legislature a right to establish oppression by law; to connect punishment with innocence; to invest its magistrates with a power which even in governments the most despotic would be considered as a just ground of dissatisfaction and complaint?-I know I shall be told, that the clause which conveys this power is not of a judicial nature, but is merely a regula tion of police. Sir, to the subject, the name is immaterial; for, give to the Act whatever appellation you will, it still is an Act that renders the subject dependent for his safety, not on his own innocence, not on his strict observance of the laws of the land, not on the faithful discharge of every duty which he owes to the state, but on the casual opinion, the accidental humour, the mere caprice of the magistrate: nor is there the smallest pretext for giving this intemperate law the specious appearance of a measure of police; for measures of that sort can only be founded on necessity or expedience: now, of the first of these pleas, on the present occasion, the existence is not pretended; the law itself is a proof that the power which it gave to the justices, of proscrib ing an entire description of people, was not founded on necessity; for if the necessity of taking their livelihood from these unhappy men had existed, the law could not have left the execution of the measure

to the uncertain decision of the magistrates. Equally obvious it is, that this strange and unprecedented delegation of power was founded on, no expedience, for the persons to whose judgment you appealed for the propriety of the measure, the very magistrates themselves, by their almost unanimous refusal to execute the law, have emphatically declared, that the measure is inexpedient, is unjust, is inhuman. On what grounds, then, was this reprobated clause recommended to the Legislature? Unconnected with the principle of the Bill of which it forms a part; alien to the laws; incompatible with the constitution, and adverse to every principle of expedience, of justice, and of humanity, on what foundation does it rest? Sir, it rests on a foundation so abhorrent to every honest and honourable feeling, that I cannot without the deepest concern describe it to the House-it is founded on the spirit of monopoly; on commercial hatred; on the eagerness of one description of traders to ruin and destroy another: to such views the members of this House will never deliberately give the smallest support. They who advise an opposite conduct; they who propose that the measures of the House should take their direction from the dictates of private animosity, and of trading rivalship; they who would make the Legislature itself the instrument of injustice, and an act of parliament the mode of sanctifying oppression; are as careless of the honour of the House, as they obviously are of the happiness and prosperity of the kingdom.

hawkers and pedlars were useful, the magistrates, instead of forbidding their com-ing, would naturally encourage it; whereas in those counties where their presence, so far from being wanted, was deemed a nuisance, the magistrates were authorized to prevent their coming but they were not to be sent to prison without a hearing; they had an appeal to the quarter sessions, upon whose authority alone they could be committed and detained; nor was it to be imagined that any gentleman in the commission would wantonly exercise his power over poor hawkers and pedlars.

Mr. Courtenay said, that an hon. baronet had given good, and indeed excellent reasons, why the Bill ought not to pass into a law. He had stated that the hawkers and pedlars carried about oldfashioned goods; undoubtedly the hon. baronet would be exceedingly shocked at perceiving any thing old-fashioned about him. He had also said, the hawkers and pedlars had no resident place of habitation, and that they travelled about from one part of the country to another. This was also an excellent objection, for how dare such humble individuals follow the order of nature? Why had they not learnt the art of being in two places at one and the same time? And yet, no doubt, they had the impudence to justify their conduct, by declaring that they could not stay at home, and travel about with their packs at the same period. The justices also had acted wisely in prosecuting these hawkers and pedlars, and they had assigned admirable reasons, as justices always did, for their Mr. Marsham remarked, that when the proceedings. They had stated, and he shop tax was proposed, it had been ex- had that day read it, that the hakwers and pressly stated, that hawkers and pedlars pedlars imposed on the people, by carryshould be abolished, and under that sug-ing about English goods and pretending gestion, many gentlemen had consented to vote for the shop tax: afterwards, when the idea was departed from, and a tax on hawkers and pedlars had been proposed, and the subject came into discussion, it had been urged by several gentlemen, that there were parts of the kingdom in which hawkers and pedlars were extremely useful from the scarcity of villages and towns, their extreme distance, and the consequent difficulty of getting at shops without great trouble and loss of time. On the other hand, it had been stated, that there were other parts of the kingdom where villages and towns were numerous, and shops almost every where within reach; his clause, therefore, had been calculated to meet both these arguments: in counties where

they were smuggled from France. This was indisputably a gross and scandalous imposition; for what could be more nationally injurious than to cheat the public into the purchase of British manufactures ? There were other reasons of an equally serious tendency, to be urged in justification of adhering to the Bill of the last year. Perseverance was a noble and a magnanimous virtue, and surely perseverance in the wrong shewed more magnanimity and firmness than perseverance in the right. If the House made an egregious mistake in passing an unjust Act against hawkers and pedlars last year, why should they avow their pusillanimity by acknowledging their error? It was much better to be firm, and to prove

would maintain its proceedings right or wrong. There might, to be sure, be some weak-minded men, who, thinking that justice was a better cause than obstinacy, might be inclined to favour the hawkers and pedlars; and as their weakness was an amiable one, their want of magnanimity might be forgiven. Indeed, if the number of gentlemen of this description should prove successful, he believed the world would admit they were in the right, and that they stood fully justified to their constituents in particular, and to their country in general.

beyond possibility of doubt, that the House | taken to the prejudice of one set of men, and in alleviation of another, was, in his mind, proceeding upon a false principle of taxation. Equally false in principle and unwarrantable in practice, was it to take a load off the shoulders of one set of men, and place it on the shoulders of another set of men less capable of bearing it; and yet this had actually been done in respect to the country shopkeeper and the hawker and pedlar. As an inducement to the former to submit to a harsh and severe personal impost, the hawker and pedlar had been heavily taxed and rigorously restrained within certain convenient limits, and now, after the country shopkeeper had been relieved almost entirely from his burthen, the load was to remain on the back of the hawker and pedlar. This mode of proceeding was unjust and indefensible. He, therefore, felt himself obliged, in a conscientious discharge of his duty, and with a view to measure out equal terms to both descriptions of men, to give his vote in support of the Bill.

Mr. C. Robinson stated, that hawkers and pedlars were only forbidden from entering market towns, except on fairdays, but that cities and capitals were open to them; and that if the Act had not contained such a restriction, they all knew that by the charters of many old corporations, the corporations themselves enjoyed rights and privileges tantamount to the keeping out hawkers and pedlars. There was an implied compact held out to the shopkeepers during the last session; and under the faith of that, his constituents had cheerfully paid the tax.

Mr. S. Thornton declared, he had given his consent to the shop tax, under an idea that hawkers and pedlars were to be abo

lished.

The Lord Advocate said, he had been instructed by several of his constituents, who were shopkeepers, to support the present Bill, and to endeavour, as far as in him lay, to obtain a repeal of the severe clause against hawkers and pedlars.

Sir Adam Fergusson said, he had given himself the trouble of examining what the sum was, that the country shopkeeper paid for the shop-tax, upon which so much stress had been laid. The sum paid by shopkeepers renting houses from 5l. to 10%. and even up to 251. a year, was from 3s. to 6s. 8d. and up to 19s. He dwelt on the extreme injustice of depriving a large description of industrious individuals of the means of earning an honest livelihood, in order to compensate a shopkeeper of extensive dealings for the trifling tax of 19s. a year.

Mr. Windham declared, that however Mr. Pulteney, as the person who had confident he might be, from the liberality introduced the Bill, wished to offer a few of his constituents, manifested already to words upon the subject. With regard to wards him in a very exemplary manner, the idea suggested of the hawkers and that to vary from their sentiments would pedlars cultivating the waste lands, the not injure him in their opinion; yet that hon. gentleman, it was evident, had been opposition to their wishes must even but little used to cultivating land, or he on that account give him particular pain. must have known that it was very expenIt was not, therefore, without a sacrifice sive. The hawkers and pedlars who had of his private feelings to his sense of pub-formed a settlement in Staffordshire, had, lic duty, that he rose to declare he held for a number of years, applied the profits the singling out of any particular de- of their industry as hawkers and pedlars, scription of persons, as the objects of to the improvement and cultivation of the taxation, to be to the full as unjustifi- soil around their habitations. If they were able, as it would be for the minister to suffered to continue their industry unre at his hands into the pockets of an in- strained as before, they would be enabled dividual, and insist on the state's sharing to continue their agricultural improvewith him in the contents of his purse. All ments; but the hon. gentleman wished to taxes should be governed by some general deprive them of acquiring an honest prorule or other, indiscriminately applying to fit, and yet would set them down as culti the people universally; and any distinction vators of the soil, without any money to +

carry on that business. He stated the extreme difficulty that must attend their complying with the clause of the Act, which restrained them from coming within two miles of the center of a market town. In some cases, two market towns were so near each other, that it was not possible to be at the distance of two miles from the center of one, without being within that distance of the center of the other.

same time to have left their competitors free from it. The intention of the Legislature in imposing the tax on retail shops was, that they should indemnify themselves, by adding an advance to the prices of their goods; but, if the hawkers and pedlars had been left upon their old footing, they would have been under no such necessity of increasing their prices, and consequently would have been able to undersell the shopkeepers, and by that means deprive them of their trade. To

there were in the city and neighbourhood of London eight distillers; would it not, he said, be impossible to impose a heavy tax upon seven of those persons, and to leave the eighth free and unincumbered, without doing a material injury to those who were obliged to pay it? Admitting, merely for the sake of argument, the propriety, and even the urgency of a repeal, it behoved the House not to suffer it without the utmost circumspection.

Mr. Wilberforce said, he felt himself warranted to declare, that he had good reason to think that the hawkers and pedlars were a very honest, industrious, useful description of men; that they had been too severely dealt with, and merited the attention of that House.

Mr. Pitt said, that the hon. gentleman opposite seemed to be mistaken in the statement he had made of the circum-illustrate this, he made a supposition that stances under which that Bill first came forward. It did not arise, as he had stated, from any opposition to the Shop-tax, but was in fact opened to the House at the very time that that tax was first mentioned. On his intention to propose a tax on retail shops, he had thought it necessary to consult some of the best mercantile authorities on the subject, and had collected from them that the only method by which that body of people which were intended to be made the vehicles of the tax to be raised for the use of the public, could be reconciled to it, would be by withholding the licences of the hawkers and pedlars; by which means, as a compensation for the new burthen to be imposed upon them, they would be relieved from what they already considered as a severe grievance, the unfair competition between them and the hawkers and pedlars. He disclaimed the doctrine of any pledge from the Legislature to a body of men, who seemed proper objects of a tax; and above all, a pledge that it would omit to do what might in future occur to it as just and politic; but yet, though he should by no means admit such a principle, he thought that the circumstances attending the introduction of the two Bills last year, and the one be ing made a palliative to the other, and many gentlemen having agreed to both, who would have objected to one of them separately, he thought, without admitting any idea of the public faith of Parliament being committed, that there was sufficient reason for the House to withstand any proposal of a repeal of one of them, unless upon the most mature deliberation and the strongest arguments. The justice of the restraints on the hawkers and pedlars arose out of the very nature of commerce, in which so much depended upon a competition, that it would have been the most unwarrantable measure to have laid one set of traders under a burthen, and at the

Mr. Gilbert, describing the large colony of hawkers and pedlars settled in Staffordshire, declared that it had been uniformly so unexceptionable, and at the same time so praise-worthy, that the House ought to consider hawkers and pedlars as objects of its protection and kindness rather than of its severity. That settlement was not the only stationary proof of the industry and laborious exertions of the hawkers and pedlars; they had furnished other proofs, and were really so well worthy the care of Parliament, that he trusted the humanity, as well as justice of the House, would be evinced, by their suffering the Bill to be read a second time.

Sir Watkin Lewes said, that with respect to the shopkeepers of London, he must beg leave to inform the House, that the restriction imposed on the hawkers and pedlars, was so far from being a relief to them, that they considered it as an additional burthen.

The House then divided on the question, that the Bill be now read a second time: Yeas, 49; Noes, 99. After which, the Bill was ordered to be read that day three months.