He, lamented that the Privy
Council, who had received no petitions from the people on the subject,
should have instituted an inquiry, and that the House of Commons, the table
of which had been loaded with petitions from various parts of the kingdom,
should not have instituted any inquiry at all. He hoped these petitions
would have a fair discussion in that house, independently, of any
information that could be given to it by His Majesty's ministers. He urged
again the superior advantages of an inquiry into such a subject, carried on
within those walls, over any inquiry carried on by the Lords of the
Council. In inquiries carried on in that house, they had the benefit of
every circumstance of publicity; which was a most material benefit indeed,
and that which of all others made the manner of conducting the
parliamentary proceedings of Great Britain the envy and the admiration of
the world. An inquiry there was better than an inquiry in any other place,
however respectable the persons before and by whom it was carried on.
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