“But there is a new resource for an incompetent Administration—there is the ingenious device of open questions, the cunning scheme of adding to the strength of a weak government by proclaiming its disunion. It will be a fatal policy, indeed, if that which has hitherto been an exception, and always an unfortunate exception in recent times, is hereafter to constitute the rule of Government. If every government may say, ‘We feel pressed by those behind us—we find ourselves unable, by steadily maintaining our own opinions, to command the majority and retain the confidence of our followers, our remedy is an easy one—let us make each question an open question, and thereby destroy every obstacle to every possible combination;’—what will be the consequence? The exclusion of honourable and able men from the conduct of affairs, and the unprincipled coalition of the refuse of every party. The right honourable gentleman has said that there have been instances of ‘open questions’ in the recent history of this country. There have been; but there has scarcely been one that has not been pregnant with evil, and which has not been branded by an impartial posterity with censure and disgrace. He said, that in 1782 Mr Fox made Parliamentary Reform an open question; that Mr Pitt did so on the Slave-trade; and that the Catholic Question was an open one. Why, if ever lessons were written for your instruction, to guard you against the recurrence to open questions, you will find them in these melancholy examples. The first instance was the coalition of Mr Fox and Lord North, which could not have taken place without open questions. Does the right honourable gentleman know that that very fact—the union in office of men who had differed, and continued to differ on great constitutional and vital questions—produced such a degree of discontent and disgust, as to lead to the disgraceful expulsion of that Government? The second instance was that of the Slave-trade; but has not that act of Mr Pitt (the permitting of the Slave-trade to be an open question) been more condemned than any other act of his public life? The next instance cited was that of the Catholic Question. I have had some experience of the evils which arose from making Catholic emancipation an open question. All parties in this House were equally responsible for them. Fox made it an open question; Pitt made it an open question; Lord Liverpool made it an open question; Canning made it an open question. Each had to plead an urgent necessity for tolerating disunion in the Cabinet on this great question; but there cannot be a doubt that the practical result of that disunion was to introduce discord amongst public men, and to paralyse the vigour of the executive government. Every act of administration was tainted by disunion in the Cabinet. Every party was jealous of the predominance of the other. Each party must be