r2 the gentleman from South Carolina, [Mr. Rhett,] and subsequently by the member from Alabama, [Mr. Belser,] I may here be permitted to be brief, and to content myself with stating simply the conclusions to which history irresistibly leads. Not to go father back in point of time, it is sufficient to state that in the thirteenth year of the reign of Charles II, an act of Parliament was passed abridging the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition for a redress of grievances. This act created great and universal dissatisfaction among the people, in prohibiting them from assembling, preventing their petitioning, and punishing with incarceration all who attempted its infringement. The oppressive operation of the riot acts being sensibly felt in this country about the time of the formation of the constitution, and the obnoxious statute of Charles II being still of force here, led to the adoption of the first amendment of the constitution. “it was the right of the people to assemble and petition” which they held most sacred, and to the invasion of which they seemed most strongly opposed. ' It was this subject, and not the reception of petitions, that elicited the thrilling eloquence of Fox to which the gentleman from North Carolina alluded. It was his opposition to “the proclamations of 1795” against seditious meetings. It was because the liberty to assemble was considered the more important right, that Fox contended for it, instead of for the reception of petitions; and not for the reason Btated, that the “proposition to receive petitions was never at that time disputed.” Let me tell that honorable gentleman, and also the member from New York, [Mr. Beardsley.,] who stated that Parliament never rejected petitions, that the “proposition was ut that time never disputed” that Parliament was possessed of, and exercised fully the right of receiving or rejecting petitions at pleasure. But the gentleman from Massachusetts, [Mr. Winthrop,] not content with mere assertion, has endeavored to sustain the position by reference to authority. But although assertion, in matters of law or precedent, is the feeblest and most unsatisfactory aid which can be invoked, yet, from the result of his effort, it is but too perceptible that those who proceeded him, and who relied upon assertion alone, pursued at least the more politic and prudent course. After a laborious search (I have no doubt) through Hatsell’s work upon parliamentary precedents, he has succeeded in discovering a single sentence which seemed to sustain his point; and it is not surprising that he should have grasped at it with the avidity which he manifested, and to have desired for it the enviable distinction of a golden inscription upon upon the pillars of this hall. This sentence, the mere dictum of the author, is in opposition to the practice of Parliament, as manifested in almost every page of the work, and contradicted even by the sentences which immediately precede and immediately follow it. (Mr. S. here read the passage relied on by the gentleman from Massachusetts, and the ones immediately before and after it.) By the preceding sentence, then, the “practice of refusing petitions” is clearly, acknowledged; whilst, by the subsequent one, the “declining to receive a petition” is “not considered as a hardship. From a hasty examination of the work introduced by the gentleman from Massachusetts himself, (and as to the merits of which I will not dissent from the hf^h eulogium he has pronounced upon it,) I find a continued practice of rejecting petitions not confined to the period referred to by that gentleman—1668; but extending from that time down to 1795, commencing Hatsell, p. 166, as follows:. “9th April, 1894, petition against duties on tonnage rejected. “28th April, 1698, petition against duties on pit coal rejected. “29th and 30th June, 1698, petition against duties on Scotch linens and whale fins rejected. “5th January, 1703, petition against duties on malt liquor rejected. “21st December, 1706, Resolved, That the house will receive no petition for any sum relating to the public service but what is recommended by the crown. “11th June, 1713, this is declared to be a standing order of the house. “23d April, 1713, Resolved, That the house will receive no petition for compounding debts, &c. “25th March, 1715, this is declared the standing order of the house. “8th March, 1732, a petition being offered against a bill depending for securing the trade of the sugar colonies, it was refused to be brought up. A motion was then made that a committee be appointed to search precedents in relation to the receiving, or not receiving, petitions against the imposing of duties; and the question being put, it passed in the negative. “28th January, 1760, a petition against duties on malt liquor being offered, on motion ‘that it b« brought up,’ it passed in the negative, nem. con. “15th February, 1765, a petition from Virginia, Connecticut, and Carolina, against the bill imposing a stamp duty in America being offered, upon question of its ‘being brought up,’ it passed in the negative. “On the 1st July, 1789, a petition pf newsmen against a bill for granting additional stamp duties on newspapers, being offered, it was passed in the negative. “On the 4th of March, 1189, a petition of certain importers and dealers in foreign wines, praying against an augmentation of duties, on motion ‘that the petition be brought up,’ it passed in the nego- tive, nem. con.” I am authorized, then, in stating, that Parliament was not only in the practice of rejecting petitions, but, by resolution, of excluding whole classes of them; and that, too, upon the matter of taxation—of all others the most important to the subject, and one upon which the right of petition should be held, most sacred. The course proposed to be pursued by the opponents of the rule, viz: that of receiving all petitions; is not sustained by parliamentary practice; but as we are referred by the gentleman from New York,' [Mr. B.] “for instruction to England”—(instruction in humanity and liberty, I suppose,)-—let us look beyond the acts to the motives of Parliament. Let us see how the reasoning of the opponents of this rule corresponds with that of Parliament in the rejection of petitions. Hatsell, page 206, after laying down the rule by which petitions were rejected, states: “The principle upon which this rule was adopted appears to be this: that a tax extending, in its effect, over every part of the kingdom, and more or less affecting every individual, and in its nature necessarily and intentionally imposing a burden upon the people, it can answer no end or purpose whatever, for any set of petitioners to state these consequences as a grievance to die House.” Now, how do the opponents
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