What were your inducements for fubfcribing to the late Affociation of the town of ******, to which I faw your name affixed in the papers?

Mr. GRANTLEY. My inducements, Sir? A defire to join a body of peaceable and substantial inhabitants and traders of the town, in order to fecure our common property from any attacks of lawless violence, and the excellent government under which we live, from any of the wild fchemes of Republicans and Levellers. My property, my good friend, has coft me a great deal of time and pains to accumulate; and I am not willing to be deprived of it, or that it should be put to hazard, in order to comply with the reveries, or to gratify the wishes, of those who have no property to lose.

Mr. MORDAUNT. I take it for granted, my dear friend, that your defigns were good; and you were certainly right to endeavour

endeavour to fecure your property, if it was in danger. But I have no conception that it was in any danger; and it appears to me, that the paper you figned was drawn up in terms, and contained fentiments, not very congenial to what used to be the free spirit of this country. No man is more an enemy than myself to any acts of violence against the persons or property of individuals, and to the idea of promoting liberty by a difregard to law. But we fhould remember, that the fecurity of property, which has long obtained in this country, has resulted from the freedom of our constitution, and not from affociations for the fupport of prerogative. If our ancestors had not been wifely jealous of authority, and folicitous to keep it within proper bounds, we fhould not at this time have any fecurity either for our property, or for our perfonal liberties.

Mr.

Mr. GRANTLEY. Sir, the very title of our Affociation implies, that we had not forgotten the importance of liberty; for it is ftyled "an Affociation for the preferva❝tion of Liberty and Property."

Mr. MORDAUNT. I obferved that it was fo styled, but, as I think, with very little confiftency; for I have no idea of that fort of liberty, which excludes the freedom of fpeaking, and of writing. You fay in your declaration, "We will exert our "moft diligent endeavours to suppress se"ditious clubs, feditious converfation, and "feditious publications.'

"

Mr. GRANTLEY. But furely, my good friend, Mr. Mordaunt, men cannot fairly be faid to be deprived of the freedom of fpeaking, or of writing, because they are prohibited from fpeaking feditiously, from publishing feditious books, or from forming themselves into feditious clubs,

Mr.

Mr. MORDAUNT. Sir, the words spDITION and SEDITIOUS are very vague words, and of very indeterminate meaning. There can be nothing that deferves the name of liberty in any country, in which every kind of fpeaking or of writing is prohibited, that will be termed feditious by placemen, penfioners, courtiers, and crown lawyers. And every society which can be instituted, though on the pureft and best principles, in which political questions are discussed, and in which a just attention is excited to the general rights of the community, will be termed by such men feditious. If LOCKE on Government, or SYDNEY on Government, were new treatifes, no doubt can be entertained, but that many of the modern affociators would confider them as feditious publications, and proper fubjects for profecution. Some of the associators also profefs themselves to be

united,

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united, not only for the fuppreffion of feditious publications, but for the fuppref

fion of feditious opinions. But in a country, profeffedly free, are opinions to be combated, not by reafon and argument, but by force and violence?

Mr. GRANTLEY. I admit, that too great restraints ought not to be laid either on speaking or writing. But can it be wrong to put a stop to the publication of fuch books, as tend to fubvert all order and government, and to throw the nation into a state of anarchy and confufion?

Mr. MORDAUNT. I know not, that any fuch books have been lately published; but whatever may have been published, the law, or what is called the law, respecting libels, and the powers vefted in the crown and the crown officers, are more than fufficient for profecuting and punishing, with great rigour, all who can with the leaft

fhadow

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