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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 205: MOTION FOR EXCLUDING CONTRACTORS FROM PARLIAMENT.
By Edward Farr
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About This Book

The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

MOTION FOR EXCLUDING CONTRACTORS FROM PARLIAMENT.

After various debates on the iniquities practised by contractors, and the badness of the provisions which they supplied, Sir Philip Jennings Clarke introduced a bill for excluding contractors from parliament, unless their contracts were publicly obtained by competition. In this debate ministers were coupled with the offenders, and Lord George Gordon, who afterwards rendered himself so notorious, declared that Lord North was the worst of all contractors—he was, he said, a contractor for men, a contractor for parliament, and a contractor for the representatives of the people! Lord George advised the minister to save his country and rescue his own life from popular vengeance by calling away his butchers from America, by retiring with all the rest of his majesty’s evil advisers, and by turning away from his own wickedness. The first and second reading of the bill was carried, but the motion for committing the bill was negatived on the 5th of May, by a majority of two, and it was consequently lost.