y our
own authority, and taken on the sanction of our public faith: that is to
say, when we had inveigled them with fair promises within our door, we
were to shut it on them, and, adding mockery to outrage, to tell
them,--"Now we have got you fast: your consciences are bound to a power
resolved on your destruction. We have made you swear that your religion
obliges you to keep your faith: fools as you are! we will now let you
see that our religion enjoins us to keep no faith with you." They who
would advisedly call upon us to do such things must certainly have
thought us not only a convention of treacherous tyrants, but a gang of
the lowest and dirtiest wretches that ever disgraced humanity. Had we
done this, we should have indeed proved that there were _some_ in the
world whom no faith could bind; and we should have _convicted_ ourselves
of that odious principle of which Papists stood _accused_ by those very
savages who wished us, on that accusation, to deliver them over to their
fury.

In this audacious tumult, when our very name and character as gentlemen
was to be cancelled forever, along with the faith and honor of the
nation, I, who had exerted myself very little on the quiet passing of
the bill, thought it necessary then to come forward. I was not alone;
but though some distinguished members on all sides, and particularly on
ours, added much to their high reputation by the part they took on that
day, (a part which will be remembered as long as honor, spirit, and
eloquence have estimation in the world,) I may and will value myself so
far, that, yielding in abilities to many, I yielded in zeal to none.
With warmth and with vigor, and animated with a just and natural
indignation, I called forth every faculty that I possessed, and I
directed it in every way in which I could possibly employ it. I labored
night and day. I labored in Parliament; I labored out of Parliament.
If, therefore, the resolution of the House of Commons, refusing to
commit this act of unmatched turpitude, be a crime, I am guilty among
the foremost. But, indeed, whatever the faults of that House may have
been, no one member was found hardy enough to propose so infamous a
thing; and on full debate we passed the resolution against the petitions
with as much unanimity as we had formerly passed the law of which these
petitions demanded the repeal.

There was a circumstance (justice will not suffer me to pass it over)
which, if anything could enforce