his honourable friend and others to introduce a bill at once to render it the law in future; but they, not conceiving se veral other provisions necessary to the safe custody of the public money, thought proper rather to postpone bringing forward any bill until next session. The pay-master, however, had now no connection with any of the public money; and he would hold him inimical if he should attempt to draw a guinea from the bank for any purpose whatever. Such was the practice which the right honourable gentle'man declared his intention to maintain, while he had the honour to hold the office of treasurer of the navy, at least until it was otherwise enacted by law.

Mr. Perceval threw out for the consideration of gentlemen who proposed to bring in a bill upon this subject, whether, if the arrangement were enacted, such as the right honourable gentleman had just described, the subaccountants might not be open to the same objections which were applied to the pay-master: that is, whether those sub-accountants might not be open to a similar abuse of the public money.

Mr. Whitbread thought such a consequence improbable. It was to be recollected that the sub-accountants on the trial refused to withdraw the public money from the bank at the particular instance of Trotter, and by no means in consequence of their own wish, for it appeared that inconveniences resulted to them from the transfer.

Mr. Sheridan could not admit that the case, with regard to the sub-accountants could ever br subject to the same objections as those which applied to the pay-master. It was obvious that they could not be so to the same extent. Indeed, he thought it quite practicable so to watch the subaccountants-so to establish a check between the bank directors and the navy pay-office, as to detect any drawing of money not necessary for, and immediately applied to, a naval purpose; and, should such a thing appear on the part of any sub-accountant, he had no hesitation in saying that he should feel it his duty on the instant to dismiss him.

Mr. Perceval explained.

Mr. Fuller adverting to a notice of a 'motion which he had given some time since, relative to the expences incurred by Lord Melville during his fate trial, stated, that in consequence of the declaration of the noble lord's son, that no delay had occurred in preparing for the trial, or in its

subsequent

subsequent conduct no more expence had occurred to the noble lord than if the trial had taken place in the chamber of Parliament, he was induced to wave his intended motion.

Mr. R. Dundas asked whether it was the intention of the noble lord on the treasury bench to bring forward the proposition respecting the northern fisheries, which he had mentioned in the early part of the session?

Lord Temple answered, that the measure referred to required more consideration than he had been yet able to give it, and therefore he did not mean to bring it forward in the course of the present session.

Mr. Huskisson yielding to the pressure of the important business, which stood for the present evening, postponed till Monday, his proposed resolutions upon the subject of finance.

Lord H. Petty postponed till next session the motion of which he had given notice, for a certain compensation to the commissioners of the land tax. From the nature of that commission he thought it would be more satisfactory to Parliament, the country, and the noble lord concerned, to have the motion he meant to submit, preceded by R committee to inquire into, and report, the grounds upon which the proposed compensation should rest.

THE ROYAL FAMILY.

Upon the motion for the second reading of the junior. princes' provision bill, &c.

Colonel Wood repeated his objections to this measure the subject of which ought, in his opinion, to have been previously submitted to the consideration of a committee, consisting of independent members, free from party feelings, to report their judgment thereon to the House. Before such a committee the means of each of the illustrious persons alluded to in this bill might be inquired into, and the salary might be distributed according to the circumstances of each. There were some of them to whom, in fact, no increase was at all necessary, for they were unequally provided; each of them having a snug civil or military appointment, with the exception of the Dukes of Clarence and Sussex. The honourable gentleman exhorted ministers to attend to economy, which for the last twenty years they professed so much to esteem, and took occasion to deprecate the idea of patching up any peace which VOL. III. 1805-6.

41

should

should not be productive of complete security; for without such security it were better to have eternal war,

Mr. W. Smith thought the statement of the efficient revenues of the different princes ought to have been laid on the table, as he recommended on a former evening. Had that been done, the House would have seen which had the greater occasion for an increased allowance, and might distribute accordingly, and the public would have been better satisfied with the proceeding. The Duke of York. having declined to put in any demand upon this occasion, did, the right honourable member was ready to say, reflect great honour upon that royal person. But then it was to be considered, that his royal highness's revenue was very much indeed beyond that of any of the other princes. For his roval highness had an allowance since his marriage of 26,000l. a-year, independently of the revenue and emoluments arising from his regiment, and his office of commander in chief.

Colonel Wood in explanation disclaimed the intention of cen uring in the slighest degree the conduct of Lord Henry Petty, whose character and gentleman-like deportment he highly esteemed.

Mr. Rose supported the bill.

Lord Henry Pelty, observed that the simple question for consideration was this, whether they would rigidly ap ply that principle of economy to the royal persons to whom this bill referred, while they had relaxed in favour of the minor clerks in office, and upon nearly the same grounds as those which prompted the introduction of this bill? That the salaries of the one were not proposed to be augmented in the same proportion as those of the former, he was prepared to state. Nothing more was offered to the House than to make an adequate provision for those illustrions persons, and he could hardly think there was a man in that House, or the country, who would hesitate to assent to that proposition, when assured that their present allowance was quite inadequate.

The bill was read a second time, and after a few words from Lord H. Petty, Mr. W. Smith, and Mr. Rose, or dered to be committed the next day..

THANKS TO THE VOLUNTEERS.

Sir Henry Mildmay rose and said, that he should have been much better satisfied, if the resolution of which be

had

had given notice had originated with his Majesty's ministers, because such a proceeding would have been more con formable to the wishes and feelings of the country at large; and he thought more appropriate to the merits of those who were the objects of it, if it had come forward with all the weight and authority of the executive government. It would have become ministers to have been the foremost to shew every mark of public gratitude to that numerous and respectable body, who had not only exhibited so much zeal and alacrity in coming forward, but, during more than three years, had continued with unexampled assiduity and perseverance to contribute their services to the defence of the country; and the more did he think it the duty of government to have done so, from the general opinion which prevailed, that ministers were unfavourable to the volunteer system. But the regulations which they had adopted were calculated to check their zeal and impair their discip line, if they did not mean that the whole of that force should moulder away; but as no such step had been adopted by government, for satisfying the feelings of the volunteers, by those whose language and conduct had given them so much cause of complaint, he thought it his duty to call on Parliament to express what were their sentiments on the subject, to avow their acknowledgments for the past, and their anxious wish for a continuance of those exertions to which the country had already been indebted for having preserved it from all miseries and calamities of invasion; he would not suffer the present session to pass without doing so, lest, in another, we might have no volunteers left to thank. In laying the grounds of his resolution, it would be necessary to advert to the state of the country when the volunteers were incorporated, and their conduct since that period. They were established at the commencement of the war, at a period of immediate and imminent danger, when our military establishments had been reduced to a low scale, and we had to contend with an enemy who had a numerous army on foot, that threatened us with immediate invasion. The government then thought it necessary, very wisely, to call on a considerable proportion of the population to arm in defe 'ce of their country. The zeal and alacri y with which persons of ail ranks, ages and descriptions obeyed that summons could not too often be repeated, or too loudly applauded; that zeal, so far from abating, had encreased as the volunteers improved

412

improved in discipline. Though no hostile army had ac tually reached our coasts, several alarms had taken place in different parts of the kingdom, and the promptitude with which the volunteers had flocked to the spot where it arose, was a proof of what would have been their conduct if those alarms had been real. A false alarm had been given in the neighbourhood of Sheffield, and it appeared by the return of the commanding officer of the vo Junteers there, that not only every individual who actually belonged to the corps, but every man who had at any time been a member of it and had retired, flocked to the volunteer standard, and they actually marched many miles in the expectation of meeting an enemy. Circumstances of a similar nature had occurred in Scotland, and the same zeal and intrepidity had been exhibited by the Scoich volunteers; they had, in one instance, marched three hundred miles in the depth of winter, in frost and snow ;' and such was the opinion which a noble and gallant ford, who coramanded in that part of the united kingdom, entertained of their spirit and of their discipline, that he had declared, in his place in the House of Lords, that he would willingly encounter any number of the enemy who might and without the assistance of a single regalar battalion. With such instances before their eyes, no one could doubt that the zeal and alacrity of the volunteers had in no degree abated; what they wanted in experience they had made up in diligence, assiduity, and perseverance; and there are many corps of them as forward in discipline, and as ready and accurate in military evolutions as regi ments of the militia, or even some of the new raised regiments of regulars. The evidence of the perfection which they had attained would be seen in the report of the inspecting field-officers, which had been laid before Parlia ment; the persons who had made these reports, were men of the highest character and military science, and who would not for a moment be supposed to have falsified the truth, to flatter the volunteers, or condescended to deceive government on so important a point. Did they agree with those who represented the volunteers as scarecrows, who stigmatized Fem as the depositories of panic, who stated them as calculated only to carry dismay and confu sion among regular troops, and formidable only to their friends? No such thing: the report of these officers is directly the reverse; they describe many corps of volunteers

as