udden and unexpected check, Mr. Fox rose to reprobate the
conduct of those members who had receded from the solemn engagements
into which they had so recently entered. A rude roar of voices was
raised to put him down, but Fox would not be silenced; and his friends
appealed to the chair to stop by its authority the disgraceful disorder.
Silence being imposed on every tongue in the house by the speaker, Fox
then delivered one of the severest philippics that was ever delivered
within the walls of the house of commons. The vote of that night, said
the impassioned orator, was scandalous, disgraceful, and treacherous:
it was impossible to contemplate without surprise and indignation, the
conduct of men, who, after resolving that the influence of the crown
was increased, and ought to be diminished--that the grievances of the
people ought to be redressed--and who had pledged themselves to that
house, the nation, and their constituents, to redress the grievances
complained of, now shamefully fled from their solemn engagement. It was
not against ministers and their friends that he lodged this complaint,
he remarked: it was against the men who sat on his side of the house,
and who had voted with him on the 6th of April. As for the ministerial
phalanx, he observed, he held them in the greatest contempt. They were
slaves of the worst kind, because they had sold themselves to work
mischief. Yet, base as they were, they had some virtues to pride
themselves on. They were faithful to their leader, consistent in their
conduct, and had not added to their other demerits the absurdity and
treachery of one day resolving an opinion to be true, and the next day
declaring it to be a falsehood. They had neither deceived their patrons,
their friends, nor their country with false hopes and delusive promises.
Dunning spoke after Fox, and declared that the division of that night
was decisive as to the petitions of the people: it amounted to a total
rejection of their general and ardent prayer, and that all hope of
obtaining redress for the people from that house was at an end. Lord
North replied in a long speech, in which he endeavoured to throw a
protecting shield over those who had subjected themselves to Fox's
reproaches, and to show that Dunning's fears were unfounded. The
resolutions of the 6th of April, he said, were still in existence, and
that other measures might be proposed on them in which those who did not
approve of the means of redress p