s no danger of indecency from the most licentious tongue: for
what calumny can be more atrocious, or what reproach more severe, than
that of speaking with regard to any thing but truth. Order may sometimes
be broken by passion, or inadvertency, but will hardly be reestablished
by monitors like this, who cannot govern his own passion, whilst he is
restraining the impetuosity of others.

Happy, sir, would it be for mankind, if every one knew his own province;
we should not then see the same man at once a criminal and a judge. Nor
would this gentleman assume the right of dictating to others what he has
not learned himself.

That I may return, in some degree, the favour which he intends me, I
will advise him never hereafter to exert himself on the subject of
order; but, whenever he finds himself inclined to speak on such
occasions, to remember how he has now succeeded, and condemn, in
silence, what his censures will never reform.

Mr. WINNINGTON replied:--Sir, as I was hindered by the gentleman's
ardour and impetuosity from concluding my sentence, none but myself can
know the equity or partiality of my intentions, and, therefore, as I
cannot justly be condemned, I ought to be supposed innocent; nor ought
he to censure a fault of which he cannot be certain that it would ever
have been committed.

He has, indeed, exalted himself to a degree of authority never yet
assumed by any member of this house, that of condemning others to
silence. I am henceforward, by his inviolable decree, to sit and hear
his harangues without daring to oppose him. How wide he may extend his
authority, or whom he will proceed to include in the same sentence, I
shall not determine; having not yet arrived at the same degree of
sagacity with himself, nor being able to foreknow what another is going
to pronounce.

If I had given offence by any improper sallies of passion, I ought to
have been censured by the concurrent voice of the assembly, or have
received a reprimand, sir, from you, to which I should have submitted
without opposition; but I will not be doomed to silence by one who has
no pretensions to authority, and whose arbitrary decisions can only tend
to introduce uproar, discord, and confusion.

Mr. Henry PELHAM next rose up, and spoke to this effect:--Sir, when, in
the ardour of controversy upon interesting questions, the zeal of the
disputants hinders them from a nice observation of decency and
regularity, there is some indulgence due to