On the subject of the defence, and particularly naval defence, it must not be omitted to mention a petition to the house of commons, from the corporation and inhabitants of Liverpool, for leave to arm them selves for the defence of that port, at their own expence. It stated the danger which menaced the docks and shipping of the port of Liver pool, in case of the enemy directing his attempts to that quarter. It was, therefore, the wish of the petitioners to erect batteries, fit out gunboats, and to prepare any other means of defence that might be deemed necessary, at their own expence: one half to be paid by the corporation, and the other moiety to be raised by a rate on the inhabitants. Mr. Pitt said, that this was measure which did the highest honour to those with whom it originated. He could scarcely bring himself to consider that as a private petition, which offered a most useful suggestion, and might be made the groundwork of a most excellent general defence. It is scarcely necessary to mention, that the prayer of this petition was granted.

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The attorney-general, in the course of this session of parliament, brought in a bill, intended, at once, to prevent the machinations of foreign enemies, to preserve our internal tranquillity, and secure the peace and happiness of individuals.

This was a bill for regulating the proprietors and publishers of newspapers. On the third reading, on the thirteenth of June, it was opposed by Mr. Jekyl, from a motive of constitutional jealousy of every thing that appeared to be an attack on the liberty of the press. The censorial power of our press, was the great guardian of British liberty. This bill would make men of property and responsibility retire from newspapers altogether; and they would then fall into the hands of men of desperate fortune and low character. The consequence would be, an increase instead of a diminu tion of the liberty of the press. Handbills on crown paper would be substituted, every day, for a use ful well-regulated paper. This bill would render innocent persons liable to prosecution, merely because they were proprietors, although they had no share in the manage. ment of the publication.

The attorney-general said, that his object was not to infringe on the liberty of the press but to restore it. The liberty of the press was, that every man might publish what he pleased, but he should be responsi; ble to the public for what he published. The bill only secured to the public what it had a right to demand; the appearance of a responsible party in a court of justice, so as to be amenable to law. So far from flinging the newspapers

branching forth from conjugal into parental, fraternal, and filial affection, an attachment to kindred, neighbours, countrymen, and all, in some degree, who partake with us in the same common nature. To violate a respect and reverence for marriage, is to degrade human nature into the rank of the brute creation, and to poison the sweetest emotions (the charities, as Milton calls them) of life. It was high time for the British legislature to take the alarm, when divorce-bills, according to the observation of the chancellor Loughborough, had become so common, that they were considered as little more than matters of course.

On a motion, the second of March, for the second reading of a bill for granting a divorce between one Mr. Esten and his wife, lord Auckland professed himself anxious for calling the attention of their lordships to the circumstances under which the present application was made; as these carried with them strong suspicions of a collusion between the parties. The plaintiff was married in 1784. Some years after, he fled from the country, in order to elude the pursuit of creditors, leaving his wife, under a dubious kind of protection, at the Dublin theatre, and under articles of separation between them. They continued thus; nor was there any thing heard of his complaint till Hilary term, 1797, when the plaintiff alleged, that she had been living six years in a state of adultery. There was, there fore, every reason to believe the existence of a collusion between the parties, to which the justice of the house would surely lend no countenance. In this question the cause of morality was very deeply

involved: and it highly favoured of those principles which the French moralists were so industrious to propagate: to him, the introduction of such principles was a sub ject of much more anxious alarm than all the dangers that hung over us from their threatened invasion: and, in his mind, it was of the most serious importance, that the house should resist them, whatever shape they might assume.

The sentiments expressed by lord Auckland were assented to, as ap peared by the looks and gestures of the whole house; but, by the duke of Athol and hishop of Durham, warmly commended and urged.

The bishop took the present oc casion to observe, that the French rulers, while they despaired of making any impression on us, by the force of arms, attempted a more subtle and alarming warfare, by endeavouring to enforce the influence of their example, in order to taint and undermine the morals of our youth. They sent amongst us a number of female dancers, who, by the allurements of the most indecent attitudes and most want on theatrical exhibitions, succeeded but too effectually in loosening and corrupting the morals of the people. And, indeed, if common report might be relied on, the indecency of those appearances for out-shamed any thing of a similar nature that had ever been exhi bited he would not say on any Christian theatre, but even on the more licentious theatres of Athens and Rome. If the progress of such scandalous immorality were not ar rested, the malignant influence of such contaminating example must finally corrupt both sexes, and their lordships time and sittings would

henceforth

henceforth be wholly engrossed by cases of divorce. Such, therefore, was his conviction of the necessity of applying some remedy to this evil, that, should no noble or learned lord, higher in ability, authority, and consideration, than himself, he would, assuredly, take the first opportunity of moving, that an humble address be presented to his majesty, praying that his majesty would be graciously pleased to prohibit the exhibition of those indecent spectacles, and to order those who performed in them to be sent out of the country

Counsel having been heard for Mr. Esten, and the house resumed, the lord-chancellor observed, that the articles of separation formed an insuperable barrier to any divorce, and that the circumstances of the case rendered it the duty of the house to reject Mr. Esten's application. On the motion for the second reading of the bill, it was accordingly thown out.

The lord-chancellor then expressed his hope, that what had been said by the reverend prelate would have its weight. Something cer tainly was necessary to be done by their lordships, as guardians of the public manners, to check the number of cases in which they were called upon to give their sanction to divorces.

The attention of their lordships was called again by the chancellor, to the same subject, on the twentyighhth of March, when certain resolutions were agreed to, for the regulation of their proceedings respecting divorces, which, without effecting any alteration in the legal code, by removing from the public mind the idea of the facility of ob

taining a divorce, might contribute at least to a more general regard to good example and public de cency. Thus, said the chancellor, it was to be hoped, that, by turning a current of fashion against open profligacy, a more effectual reformation would ultimately be effected.

The evil propensities of mankind are very properly divided, by a sacred writer, into lusts of the flesh, and lusts of the spirit. At the same time that the attention of the British legislature was called to the former, by lord Auckland, and that noble, reverend, and truly respectable and dignified prelate, the bishop of Durham, to the former, in the house of lords, it was called also to the latter, in the house of commons, by

Mr. Wilberforce, who, on the third of April, made his annual motion for the abolition of the slave. trade; the usual debates on which derived, now, a degree of novelty and additional interest from certa discoveries and events that had passed since the time when they were last noticed in this work. Mr. W. found greater and greater cause for his motion, the more he contemplated the subject in various relations; with new emotions of grief and shame, indignant pity, and disappointed hope. Though he had often laid before the house the dreadful catalogue of crimes to which the slave-trade gave rise, he again recited some of the leading enormities. Having expatiated on the injustice, the cruelty, and im moral tendency of the slave-trade, and on a certain esprit de corps among the West-India planters, which defeated and disappointed [Q 4]

all

all hopes from any effectual interference, in behalf of the slaves, from the colonial assemblies, to whose care, in consequence of an address to his majesty, they had been recommended, by a circular letter from the duke of Portland, he moved, "That leave be given to brag in a bill for the abolition of the slave-trade, at a time to be specified."

This motion was seconded by the chancellor of the exchequer.

It was opposed by Mr. B. Edwards, who was clearly of opinion, that the measures recommended to the colonial assemblies, if adopted, would certainly effect, though gradually and progressively; the extinctron of the slave-trade. This opinhe supported, by a review of the conduct of those bodies. With regard to the mode in which the slave-trace is conducted in Africn, he had for a long time concurred with Mr. W. in opinion, that the Arcan nations were involved in perpetual wars, by the instigation of this traffic. But the veil, which had long concealed the interior of Africa from our view, was now removed. A missionary, sent by the African association, three years ago, by the way of Gambia, was just returned from thence, after having penetrated fifteen hundred miles towards the east, unknown, even by name, to the geographers of Europe. This missionary, Mr. Park, found the whole body of the people, in all parts of Africa, in the condition of absolute slavery, and the country itself every where divided into petty states, which are perpetually engaged in wars with each other. That many of these wars arise from causes to which the slave-trade can no way contri

bute, Mr. Park asserts of his own knowledge. In proof of this, he relates an instance, which came under his own observation. Soon after he had passed through a kingdom, called Kasson, the king of that country died; and, the succession being disputed by his two sons, the youngest prevailed, and drove his elder brother from the country. He fled to a territory called Kaarta, where Mr. Park then was, and, being pursued thither, the Kaartens took up arms. In this contest, seve. ral towns were destroyed, and a vast number of prisoners taken on both sides. "And now, sir, said he, we shall discover what effect the slave trade produced. The king of Kaarta made it a constant practice to put all his male captives to death. He caused them to be brought before him, and had their throats cut in his presence. On the other hand the king of Kasson, having received information of the French traders, on the Senegal river, spared the lives of the captives, made on his part, and sent them thither for sale. On this occasion, at least, the slavetrade promoted the cause of humanity; for, it can hardly be doubted that the king of Kasson's prisoners would have shared the same fate as the others, if avarice had not prevailed over revenge in the mind of their savage king. I may be told perhaps, by gentlemen who make no distinction between civilized and savage life, first, that the king of Kasson had no right, by the laws of nature, to sell his prisoners; and, secondly, that the purchasers had no right to reduce them to slavery, for having redeemed them from death. Sir, I am not now disputing about abstract propositions, I am stating an instance of

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