would be competent for him to arraign their misconduct, and to call upon the house for the inquiry he now proposed; but until such an occasion should occur, he hardly could conceive the house would be disposed to comply with the honour able gentleman's wishes for such an inquiry, until some just ground should appear to impeach the conduct of the commissioners. Mr. Robson rose with much emotion to reply, and said, that if his eyes did not convince him to the contrary, he should have conceived the answer of the noble lord to have come from the ghost of the deceased minister whose place he now filled; for it was an answer, word for word with the objection made by that minister four years ago, to the motion which he had made for inquiring upon the same subject, and he had in his pocket the Parliamentary Register to prove the fact. But, notwithstanding the disappointment he felt at such an answer coming from the noble lord, as one of his majesty's present ministers, he should persist, aye, inexorably persist, with the leave of the house, in his determined purpose of instituting the inquiry: it could not interfere with the business of the military commissioners. But was he to be told, that the house of commons had, in any case, abandoned its inquisitorial authority, and delegated it to any board of commissioners, so as to preclude itself from investigation upon any similar subject it might think necessary? Those military commissioners had now been sitting almost a year, and what had they produced? Why, nothing but this report upon the table; and this report, notwithstanding the enormous, corrupt, and profligate profusion it had exposed, had now lain nearly six weeks upon the table of the house; and he took shame to himself, as a member of that house, to say, that not the slightest notice had been taken of it to that day by any member of parliament. Was he' to be told that the house of commons, apprised as it was of such an enormous and wasteful profusion of the public money, was to delegate its privilege of inquiry to any commissioners of barracks, or commissionners of accounts, or commissioners of any sort, military or civil; and then wait a year or two until those commissioners should think fit to report their opinions? He would admit no such argument. What did he sit in that house for, but as a guardian of the public purse? What was the duty of the house of commons, but to watch over and control the public expenditure? Was he, then, as a member of parliament, to be denied the right of calling for papers, to inform himself, and that house, upon the subject of public expenditure, in order to institute inquiry, if necessary, or to aid the commissioners already appointed? He never would submit to it, as a member of that house: he never would listen to such an argument, as that parlia ment was bound to wait, year after year, upon the slow progress of a board of commissioners, before they could proceed to the prompt steps necessary on any prominent or enormous instance of profusion or peculation. What had he said before? but that 275 accounts on army affairs were then before the commissioners, not yet entered upon. Let not the house be told, then, that this subject was before commissioners of inquiry, who might sit year after year, before the result of their inquiries was known, while the house was, in the mean time, called upon to vote, year after year, new and enormous supplies, without inquiring how the past had been expended. The house, without the grossest dereliction of its duty, could not any longer persist in such mode of proceeding. How long, he would ask the noble lord, had this account of the barrack de of settling his accounts. The ques tion was at length put upon Mr. Robson's first motion, and agreed to. In the house of peers on the 20th of May the order of the day being read, for the second reading of the additional force act repeal bill, Earl Spencer rose and observed, that if there were no other grou d upon which to justify a call upon their lordships to pass the present bill, than the experience of twentytwo months, which proved the ut ter inefficiency of the measure, for the repeal of which the present bill was introduced, that alone would have been a sufficient reason in his mind, why the house should, without further discussion, agree to the second reading, which he now rose to move. After the usual mode of recruiting had been 'carried on with the utmost exertion, for increasing cur army to its necessary strength, it was still found partment been bandied about from one office to another for investigation without effect? First, it was sent to the treasury; from thence it was referred to the auditor of public accounts; then it was sent to the secretary at war; and, at last, the system blew itself up, and corruption and venality had wrought their own reform. But the fact not to be denied was, as he had said four years ago, that the expenditure in the barrack department had grown to an enormous amount, and assumed the merit of every bad and indignant name that could be given to it. Why had not parliament done its duty, and prevent-requisite to suggest some other ed the progress in time? The purpose he had in view was, to examine the old accounts, in order to prevent similar profusion from happening in the new. He wished also to procure the protection and justice of parliament for many of those persons who had the misfortune to give credit to a considerable amount to the barrack depart ment, whose accounts now remained five years unsettled, and who might be driven to ruin and beg gary while waiting the tardy investigation of the military commissioners, He did not mean to charge any individual with a climinal mis. application of the public money: he merely wished to do justice, and ascertain where the fault lay; and he believed the barrack-master ge. neral would turn out to have been a very ill-used man, in the delay modes than those already employed for that purpose, and with this view the army of reserve bill was adopted. But after that had been tried to its utmost extent, without being productive in the degree expected, the measure of the additional force bill was then propounded, as one which was to cbviate all the inconveniences arising from the army of reserve bill, and all the other modes of recruiting then in operation; and to supply all these defects by immediately procuring the number of men necessary. This was the object avowed by those who brought forward the additional force act; but, as he had then predicted, it had utterly failed, and turned out to be a measure, not for raising men but money. His lordship entered into a minute detail of extracts from the documents on the table, in support of his opinion, and show- ed by moving, that instead of the ed the progressive deficiency of word "now," in the motion of men, and growth of penalties, in his noble friend, for the second successive periods; and he observed, reading of the repeal bill, the words, that having in fact completely fail-this day three weeks" be inserted. ed in effect under its natural operation, when it did become under recent and extraordinary exertions in any degree productive, it was rendered only so by a violation of its own principles, viz. by the employing crimps, by recruiting out of the limited districts, and by offering bounties considerably higher than the regimental recruiting officers, and thereby not only creating a rivalry in bounties with the regular service, but impeding the business of recruiting. He trusted it would not be thought too much for him to ask, that this obnoxious and unproductive measure might be removed out of the way of the recruiting service, to which it had been an impediment. Earl Camden admitted that the bill had not been so productive as was originally expected; yet it certainly had been, in a great degree, much more so upon a comparative scale than his noble friend had seemed disposed to allow. He was not however so wedded to the bill, as to insist upon retaining it at all events; but still he thought it would behove their lordships to pause before they consented to repeal a bill which had been productive of considerable advantage, until at least they saw some measure proposed as a substitute to it. The noble lord went into a short series of comparative calculations, to show that the bill, even under all the objec. tions made to it, had not been so unproductive as had been represented. He wished to give his majesty's ministers time to prepare such a measure as was fit to be substituted in its place; and he conclud Lord St. John thought the best substitute for the act would be to repeal it, and to leave the recruiting service to act freely and without impediment. He contended that the act had in its operation been found totally inefficient, and that it was absurd to suppose that parish officers should be converted into recruiting officers with any beneficial effect. The act, he asserted, had been invariably found either nugatory or oppressive in its operation, without producing any benefit whatever to the army, but, on the contrary, impeding and embarrassing the recruiting service, and therefore he should support its repeal. The earl of Westmorland considered the present measure as connected with others which it was intended to propose, and the stating of which had spread alarm through the country. He conceived that some measure was absolutely necessary to enable us expeditiously to recruit the army at the commencement of a war, so as to attack with effect the possessions of the euemy, or at least to place ourselves in a proper state of defence. The want of some such measure had been felt repeatedly by this country at the commencement of wars. At the beginning of the present war we were, with respect to the army, in a miserabiy unprovided state. was then found necessary to raise a large force by means of a ballot; a large force was raised, and the ballot continued to operate until it was found that, in a great measure, it defeated itself, in consequence' of the high price paid for substitutes. After After this the act was brought in, which it was now proposed to repeal, but which had not had full time allowed for its operation. He called upon a noble lord opposite, who had formerly opposed the repeal of this act, on the ground that it ought to have a fair trial, now also to oppose it on the same ground, as the act had not yet been sufficiently tried: it had now begun to be efficient, and this was the period chosen to propose the repeal of it, without proposing any substitute. Lord Sidmouth delivered an animated speech, in which he justified his own conduct, and declared himself an advocate for the repeal of the bill. His lordship was followed by several other noble lords; when the bill was read a second time. And on the 22d it was read a third time, and passed. CHAPTER VI. Delates on Lord Henry Petty's Motion on the Public Accounts, and West India Abuses-Mr. Fox's Motion for the Abolition of the Slave Trade -Lord Grenville's Motion on the Abolition of the Slave Trade--Lord Henry Petty's Motion for auditing the Public Accounts-Lord Henry Petty's Motion on the Subject of Vaccine Inoculation. TH HE subjects most interesting in the following chapter, are, the motions made in the house of commons on the public unaudited accounts, and the motions made by Mr. Fox and lord Grenville, in the different houses, on the abolition of the slave trade. This subject will be renewed in the next volume; in which will be recorded the account of the abolition of that abominable traffic, so honourable to the British legislature, and to every individual who embarked in this cause of humanity. Lord Henry Petty on the 21st of May, pursuant to his notice given upon a former day, of a motion for instituting a new commission of inquiry into the system of military expenditure in the West India islands, rose now for the purpose of bringing it forward. In calling the attention of the house to this subject, he should feel it necessary to advert to the modes by which the public accounts were heretofore examined and controlled. Previous to the establishment of the board of commissioners for this purpose, instituted under the auspices of a late right honourable gentleman whom he had succeeded, the important of fice of examining and auditing the public accounts of the receipt and expenditure of the nation was vested in two officers of the crown, and so continued down to the year 1785. But those officers, like many others, were charged with duties so far beyond the reach of their exertions, and vested with powers so inadequate, that although their services were not to be deemed as entirely useless, they were certainly very inefficient. The noble persons who had then, for some time, held those official situations (lord Bute and lord Sondes), although they remembered tolerably well that there were salaries to be received, yet, in process of time, forgot that there were also duties to to be performed; and though they never omitted regularly to receive the salaries attached to their situations, their official lassitude sunk at last into a total neglect of those duties. The consequence was, that, the business being now much in arrear, the accoun's, which accumulated during the progress of the American war, became so complicated, and expanded to such an extent, as to impress strongly upon the minds of the legislature and the public the necessity of some more efficient plan of in estigation. Foremost to participate in this feeling, the late right honourable gentleman, then at the head of the finances, formed the project of instituting commissioners to inquire into the public accounts; and he therefore brought in this bill to suppress the offices of joint auditors held by the two noble persons before alluded to, and to institute a new board of commissioners of accounts. But notwithstanding the herculean labours encountered by the gentlemen who composed that board, and notwithstanding the immense mass of public accounts through which they waded; yet under the various vicissitudes in which the country had been since involved, such an arrear of unexamined expenditure had accumulated, as to render it absolutely necessary that some system of examination should be instituted, to draw the national accounts out of the confusion in which they now stood, and, if possible, to bring up the arrear which had been so long growing, and had at length arrived at a magnitude scarcely credible. Besides the five commissioners of accounts who were appointed under the bill to which he alluded, two other commissioners, totally distinct, were appointed to investigate the mili tary accounts; but here again accumulation had so completely outstripped research and industry, that the principal share of the ar rears had occurred under that head. But though it had appeared, that, under the plan instituted by a late right honourable gentleman, an endeavour was made to esta blish a control over the army expenditure, under the authority of persons appointed for that purpose, yet the effect of that authority had, in a great degree, ceased; the persons intrusted with the duty very seldom reported the abuses which had accrued; and at length their authority fell so much into lassitude and negligence, that large issues of public money had been made for the service of the army, from time to time, which ought to have been submitted to them, according to the original rules of their institution, but of which they had no cognizance whatever. He alluded to sums issued for hospital stores and field works, which always form a very extensive branch of the military disbursements, and for which, during six successive years in the late war, a sum of not less than 700,000 annually was paid to a Mr. Trotter; and such were the zeal and industry of that ingenious gentleman, and such the variety of avocations in which he was desirous of distinguishing himself for the service of the public, that he was at one and the same time the manufacturer of some of the articles of stores, the purveyor of other articles, the contractor for others, the comptroller of the expenditure, and finally the auditor of his own accounts: besides, generously feeling that after so much zeal and industry exerted for the accommo |