than the emperor Paul. But how stands the fact? He has certainly performed the part as to Austria (till the quarrel commenced) but then we paid him for it. What has he done for us? Where is he now? How stands the fact as to England? He has had his rotten ships docked, he has had his soldiers put into barracks at Jersey, at an expense to England of not less than 35,000l. In the course of the winter, sir Home Popham has been sent with a suit of officers to navigate his ships, and, I take it for granted, with some more British gold; and further, if I am rightly informed, this embassy has not been received; the credentials unaccepted; and an audience refused. Nay, further If I am rightly informed, the resident ambassador (lord Whitworth), is ordered home most peremptorily. I again ask, where is this mighty Paul? where is this mighty, mercenary monocrat, Paul the first? Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit. He march to Paris! he meant to go to Malta! He rebuild the Bastile! he meant to proclaim himself in Corsica! and, perhaps, in a deliberate act of mercy, to convert it into a mild Siberia! He re-enthrone the Bourbons! he pants to enthrone himself in India! The next account I expect to hear of him is, that he has formed a strict alliance with Buonaparté, and is marching to attack Constantinople; for we know that the family on the throne of the Russias have ever cherished the idea that Constantinople is a part of their inheritance. But I ought to be cautious how I speak against this emperor Paul, whose virtues have entitled him to become the theme of a most brilliant and beautiful poem, beautifully bound, and fit for the libraries of kings, or to be kept in cotton in the port-folios of ministers!

Farther, as to treaties-Since the defection of Paul, his Britannic majesty has entered into a treaty with the elector palatine of Bavaria, signed at Munich, March 16, 1800; whereby he is to place, at the disposition of his majesty, 12 or perhaps 20,000 men. If I may guess, moreover, from the answer which the chancellor of the exchequer gave me to a question I put to him concerning the army of Condé a few days since, we have also subsidized the Condeans. More British gold! His majesty's ministers appear to be the recruiting serjeants of Europe. But, Sir, before I go farther, I will tell them, that there are some things accomplishable by arms, and some which

You

no human force can accomplish. may ram down an union, you may ram down a Bourbon tax, with bayonets; but, with Austrians, Hungarians, Portugueze, Neapolitans, Condeans, Vendeans, and Chouans, you cannot ram down royalty in France. Moreover, I tell you, you ought not to try it: no book that ever I read on the law of nations, justifies so violent a procedure.

Now, Sir, as to the evils of war, I shall say but little, as we all know them, and lament them. But I must be allowed to say, that his majesty's ministers, placemen, pensioners, contractors, and (as the great lord Chatham most justly called them) remitters and clothiers, and the blood-suckers of the country, charge, as it were, in armour, by virtue of their places, their pensions, their contracts, their premiums, and their jobs; while the country gentlemen of England are shot through and through. I must add, speaking, of ministers in general, that, of all people in the world, they are the worst judges of the calamities of war. In the sphere they move, and in the train of majesty, they see nothing but gilded pa laces, splendid equipages, choice viands, gold and silver plate, patrician galas, and every thing that conveys magnificence and plenty. They cannot have any idea of the misery, the pinchings, the poverty, the grinding starvation, in many private, old and respectable families. But at this present period, when it has pleased Almighty God to deny most of the nations of the earth their usual fruits, it is peculiarly incumbent on its rulers to promote the ways of peace. Above all, England should show the example: and I take the liberty of saying to his majesty's ministers, contemplate the state of Europe; contemplate our sovereignty of the seas, our prosperity of commerce, our security in India, the possession of almost all the Dutch and French colonies, the extermination of Jacobinism; the ambition, the expense, and the selfish views, not to mention the swindling, of some of our allies: contemplate our internal strength, our universal loyalty, our unshaken religion, and our glorious constitution, impaired, no doubt, by the ravages of ministers, but not quite skeletonized: contemplate all these things; and then, in the name of God, carry not on the war until the people of England have nought to subsist on but the "Bread of Tears;" And for what? why, to set up what I have heard

the other hand, so long as the government of France was what it was, he also trusted that, whether we had the alliance of other powers or not, we should be a match for France. He admitted, that, so long as a war continued, it was so far legitimate to interfere with the hostile government to destroy it; but the interference of France with our government did not proceed on this ground. They had gone upon the principle of exciting the people against all governments, and had applied this principle to us and to other countries. Such a principle was contrary to equity and the rights of men, and inconsistent with the regard due from one nation to another.

Mr. Martin said, he was every day more and more convinced that the object of the war was the restoration of the Bourbon family; short of which, it appeared, nothing would satisfy his majesty's ministers. There was great merit in bringing forward such a motion as the present, and whatever might be the popufarity of it in that House, he was sure the country would consider it well-timed and praiseworthy. Instead of laughing at it, the gentlemen opposite ought to cry. The calamities brought on mankind by the war were not to be spoken of or contemplated without real sorrow.

Mr. Windham justified the opinions he had formerly delivered ocncerning the restoration of monarchy in France. He had never said that we were to have no peace until that event took place: what he had said was, that the war would not terminate happily short of the restoration of that monarchy. Without it, he still thought there would be no security, no permanent peace for this country, Europe, and the world. He would not say that no change of circumstances could arise when peace would be desirable without that guarantee, but it was nevertheless true that peace might be an evil. If we had thought otherwise, we should not have made choice of going to war. The hon. mover, after much search for the object of the war, had at length discovered that object to be the evacuation of Egypt. Now if the hon. member was right, this object found, the war must end. But the object of the war was more comprehensive. What had been said of the success of the last campaign, and of the commencement of the present, being an inducement to peace, was idle. Certainly the last campaign was most brilliant, and

he hoped the accounts of the successes stated to have attended the opening of the present would be fully confirmed. But, as he thought reverses would not have justified peace, so he must think successes would not justify it. Success was a means, but only a means, to attain that most desirable end. We were not in a situation to attempt peace: yet with the apparatus of war drawn forth, the combatants arrayed, the hon, member, like Richard 2nd, comes down to this House to separate the combatants. The question of war is now decided; the die is cast, and we must not desert our allies: yet though so decided, the question of peace remained always open to the rulers of a country. Such motions as the present were, however, not fitted either for a state of war or peace. Gentlemen might talk of humanity, and of the miseries of war, which no one denied, but such language was not in its right place, unless good could be done by using it. Human means, like human virtues, depend on time and circumstances. A great writer defines a weed to be a flower out of its place. So of the virtues; they may in some soils be flowers out of place, rank and noxious. If again, suffering were the question, the criminal at the bar was an object of real pity; yet the judge must not let the feelings of humanity weigh in his mind; on the contrary, he is to preserve an even frame of mind. It was the same with governments. Those who administer in them are to consider what the interests of their country require, not the feelings of humanity.

Mr. Buxton said, that security was the grand object, and on this ground he supported the prosecution of the war; as he did not see that the principles of the rulers of France were at all changed.

Mr. J. Smith declared, that with him the prosecution of the war was not the restoration of the Bourbon family, but security to this country. At the same time, he considered the restoration of that family to be the most likely way of obtaining that security.

Mr. Robson said, it was impossible to define what ministers meant by continuing the war, unless it was for the restoration of the house of Bourbon.

Sir W. Pulteney said, he was convinced that the restoration of monarchy was an unattainable object; even the 200 millions that the minister was willing to squander upon it would prove ineffectual.

If France could be brought to confine herself to her original territories, we should have all the security that could reasonably be expected. That France should give up Holland, Belgium, and Savoy, was all we could wish. From France then, weakened as she necessarily must be, we should not for a long time have any thing to fear. If we were not content to make peace now on reasonable terms, we might hereafter be compelled to make it on disadvantageous ones. Peace was absolutely necessary to save the country from ruin: the voice of the people loudly called for it, and their voice should be attended to.

Colonel Elford said, he had never given his support to carrying on the war for the purpose, abstractedly considered, of replacing the exiled family on the throne of France; but, at the same time, he most earnestly hoped, that that event might take place, as the most likely means of procuring a secure and honourable peace for this country and for Europe. The House divided:

Debate in the Lords on the Adultery Prevention Bill.] April 2. Lord Auckland said, that he rose with reluctance to present a bill which might have come from others with more propriety and effect. But such of their lordships as had attended a late debate, respecting parliamentary proceedings in cases of divorce, would recollect, that he had happened to advert to a suggestion which received the concurrence of the whole House. From that moment he had thought it his duty to come forward; and he was now prepared to submit to their lordships the justice, propriety, and expediency of providing, that "It shall not be lawful for the person, on account of whose adultery a marriage shall be dissolved, to intermarry with the person with whom the adultery shall have been committed." Such a restriction was not new. It might be traced through different periods of history in the laws and practice of other nations. Indeed, in many of those nations, adultery had been punished as a capital crime; and even in this country, during the Commonwealth [VOL. XXXV.]

in 1650, it had been made felony without benefit of clergy. He was not desirous to imitate republics in the excesses of their puritanism or profligacy; but perhaps he ought to wish for the sake of the public morality, that the crime of adultery were subject to some chastisement beyond that of a civil action for pecuniary damages. And surely it was a strange system, which permitted the offending parties not only to go unpunished, but to form with each other that sacred contract which they had grossly violated, and in many cases to derive benefit from their offence. By the law of Scotland, in 1600, it was made unlawful for the adulterers to intermarry, and that law still continues in force. And even in this part of the united king dom it is the law of the land, and recognized in the 107th canon of the church, that neither of the parties when divorced, even for cause of adultery, shall marry again in the lifetime of each other. Their lordships would recollect that with us, as in Roman Catholic countries, there exists no jurisdiction which can give divorce d vinculo matrimonii, except for causes which existed anterior to the marriage; a parliamentary bill of divorce is therefore a special interference, in a case for which the law has not provided; such bills in their origin were merely remedial and solely in favour of the injured party; but the offending party not having been excepted or restricted, had acquired, by inference and acquiescence, the supposed right of contracting a new marriage, even with the person with whom the adultery had been proved; and thus it was, that the interposition of the legislature was made beneficial to criminals, and that it gave hire and salary instead of punishment to an offence of heinous magnitude, both in its example and consequences.-The incongruity and evil tendency of such a result, had been strongly felt, as soon as parliamentary divorces became frequent. To the end of the seventeenth century, in a period of 150 years from the Reformation, the whole number of bills of divorce for adultery had not been more than three or four; the particulars might be found. in the proceedings on the Duke of Norfolk's case, reported in the State Trials;* and even during the first fifty years of the eighteenth century, the instances were rare. But the applications for these re

*See Howell's State Trials, Vol. 13, p.

1283.

[Q]

medial bills having become scandalously frequent, towards the year 1771 the duke of Athol proposed a bill to prevent the intermarriage of the offending parties. That bill passed through the House of Lords without opposition, and was rejected in the House of Commons by a small majority. A similar bill was again brought forward in 1779, by the then bishop of Landaff, and it met with a similar fate.* Was it, then, reasonable to expect that the present moment would be more favourable to the same measure? He believed that it was. The promise of marriage in the event of detection and divorce, is a notorious ground of seduction, and the prohibition of eventual marriages, cannot fail to operate as a strong prevention of the crime in question. Under these impressions, he entertained the most sanguine hopes that the bill which he meant to propose would be adopted. He had, therefore, postponed for the present the intention of seeking the same object through the mode of a standing order. The bill would contain two provisions; the one to make it unlawful for the offending parties to intermarry; the other, to require that every bill of divorce shall contain a clause to prohibit such intermarriage. The noble lord then presented a bill," for the more effectual Prevention of the Crime of Adultery." The bill was read a first time, and ordered to be printed

April 4. On the order of the day for the second reading of the bill,

The Duke of Clarence rose to oppose it. That the crime of adultery was a most pernicious crime, that it struck at the root of all domestic comfort, and was destructive of the best interests of society, was an idea not more strongly impressed on the minds of the right reverend prelates opposite than on his own. Happy should he be, therefore, to support any measure that had a tendency to give a check to the increase of adultery; but, highly as he thought of the talents of the noble lord who introduced the bill, and much as he admired the motives that had induced the noble lord to introduce it, he felt it his duty to oppose the bill, because it appeared to his mind as more likely to increase than to check the career of adultery. When he considered the consequences that would follow the operation of such a bill, he could not but

* See vol. 17, p. 185, and vol. 20, p. 601.

consider it as a measure of the most fatal nature, to that description of persons who from the amiableness of their sex, were best entitled to compassion and liberality. His main objection to the bill was, that it contained no provision for the poor unfortunate female who should fall a victim to her own vanity, or weakness. It, on the contrary, took away from her almost the only means of remedy and satisfaction that the practice of the legislature in respect to divorce bills at present allowed her-the hopes of salving her reputation by a marriage with the man, whose arts had beguiled her of her virtue, deprived her of her husband's affections, and destroyed her domestic happiness. Let their lordships recollect, that as divorce bills were only within the reach of persons of property and some rank in life, the wives of such persons, when fallen from their respectable situations, were in a manner expelled society, and deprived of the usual resorts for obtaining a livelihood. They could not work as menial servants; they were not instructed in any line of business: they could not beg. And what other line of providing the means of life was left open to them, but abandoning themselves to prostitution? It was a fact, to which he adverted with great pain, that among the divorce bills which had come to their bar in the course of a few years, several of them had been petitioned for by persons of high rank and title. Let their lordships therefore consider the case as their own. Let them ask themselves, whether they thought their own ladies, if by any misfortune it should be their fate to be parties complained of in divorce bills, ought to be turned over from their exalted situations, to all the misery and wretchedness to which, under the operation of the present bill, they would stand exposed! However deeply the prevalence of the crime of adultery was to be deplored, surely all considerations for the unfortunate of the most amiable sex was not to fall a sacrifice to their lordships zeal to prevent a crime confessedly most pernicious to society! It had been said, that many of the recent divorces originated in a previous contract, between the offending parties, to intermarry when the first marriage should be dissolved. He greatly doubted that fact. He rather thought the virtue of the woman had in most cases been undermined by the artful persuasions of the man, to whose intrigues the consequent injury of the husband's honour