of financial and commercial arrangement. Here the noble lord adverted to the pig-iron tax, and private brewery tax, the first obstinately maintained and then abandoned; to the recurrence to old systems of taxation, instead of any thing new being provided; to the obnoxious modifications in the property tax; the American intercourse, and the slave trade prohibition bills. He was proceeding to expatiate on those several measures, when he was called to or der by Mr. Hawthorne, who said that such observations were totally irrelevant to the bill before the House. Lord Castlereagh resumed, however, his observations, and was again called to order by Sir William Young, who observed, that if the noble lord was to be indulged in this field of allusions to former mea, sures and debates, and in the repetition of arguments used an hundred times before, and served up in almost every discussion that had occurred within the last two months, a precedent would be created which would really render it impossible to go on with the public business. The noble lord might as properly expect to be allowed to read, as part of his speech, a volume or two of the parliamentary history of the country. He put it to the noble lord's discretion, whether some consideration was not due to the time and patience of the House? or whether the attendance of members was to be protracted in this manner, night after night, to unseasonable hours, in the unnecessary, and, he might almost say, captious repetition of such discussions? the honourable baronet was unsuccessful in the appeal to the discretion of the noble lord, he would appeal to the autho rity of the chair. Lord Castlereagh rose again, and concluded by obserying, that if he was disposed to trespass upon the attention of the House, by uttering all he felt, and exposing all the inconsistencies and absurdities that challenged observation in the conduct of his Majesty's ministers, the honourable baronet might indeed have cause to complain of the length of his speech, which might last for some days. He would, however, relieve the honourable baronet, by abstaining at present from adding more, than that our history presented no period similar to that since the appointment of the present ministers, so marked by procrastination, incons sistency, and buugling on their parts, and in which so little real business had been done. For his own part, he should R2 feel feel it a disgrace to be a member of any administration marked by such conduct. Mr. Windham observed, that the noble lord had made at speech which it was extremely difficult to answer, not on account of the logical precision and clearness of the noble lord's positions, or the convincing force of his arguments; for of those properties in the noble lord's eloquence he had really no perception; but it was very possible to make a speech composed of heterogeneous materials, like that of the noble lord, and so inconsistent and contradictory in itself, as to be extremely difficult to be answered in a regular way, The noble lord's speech on this occasion, and which would do just as well for any other, exhibited a melange of all those topics of assertions and arguments, which had been used by himself and his friends so repeatedly of late, and so repeatedly and completely refuted, that he did not mean to follow the noble lord round the sort of grand tour he had made, feeling, as he did, some consideration for the pas fience of the House. The noble lord had talked much of the military plans he had introduced, and had talked of this bill having been preceded by four mutiny bills; and he had adverted to this assertion nearly as often as four times four, like the story of the four pilgrims, or, as if there were some peculiar virtue or conjuration in four, like the mystic number of Pythagoras. But he begged to remind the noble lord, that there were but two mutiny bills for that period, brought forward upon grounds with which the House seemed very well pleased; and he begged to ask the noble lord what injury had accrued to the country, or inconvenience to the public service, from the manner of passing those bills? The present bill was said, one time, to do the most alarming mischief, and the next moment it was a mere skeleton, a caput mortuum, and did nothing, or worse than nothing: one time it was totally ineflicient, and again it was most mischievously efficient. It was at first utterly inadmissible, on account of certain obnoxious clauses, and now it seems it was rendered much worse by the expunging of those clauses. Now really, with all due deference to the profound logic and consistent precision of the noble lord, these were properties which could not by possibility exist in the same measure. The bill, in a committee, had certainly undergone considerable alterations. It had been reduced in point of volume and extent; but it was thereby rendered more compact and precise, and therefore more simple in its operation: but, perhaps, the noble lord thought this an imperfection, and judged of it, not by its strength and clearness, but its bulk, as ignorant people do sometimes of a medicine, conceiving that a pill can have no virtue, because, instead of being like a musquet ball, it is no bigger than a pin's head. But the value of a thing did not always consist in its bulk, and it was by no means impossible to render either a speech or a bill better by abridgment, as the present bill and the last speech would evince. The bill, in fact, in its present shape, did every thing which it ought to do; it established and declared a principle, and left the applica tion of that principle, where it ought to be left, in the hands of his Majesty. It did by legislation all that legislation ought to do, and left to regulation what properly belonged to it; and as to the performance towards the soldier of every thing the bill promised, it stood upon the same ground as the pay of the army, the provisions of the mutiny bill, and the present allowances of Chelsea hospital, namely, the faith of parliament, which was not the less honourable or the less punctually kept because its votes were only an nual. The noble lord complained that the bill was unintelligible as to its objects; but he had made a very long speech to prove the contrary, at least so far as respected himself; and he believed the noble lord was the only person in the House who could plead weakness of intellect on the subject. Another charge was, that he had not made a speech to explain his own view of the subject, or the mode by which he meant to carry the bill into effect. But he should conceive, if that were really necessary, the charge of unintelligibility would be justly incurred. The bill had gone through its regular stages; every regular opportunity for discussion had been afforded, and if the noble lord was still unenlightened upon the subject, he must refer him to the bill, which would speak for itself. Mr. Perceval, after some preliminary observations, said, that whether this all-wise, this all-perfect administration ought to form an exception, whether the House could safely confide in them to the extent demanded, was a question upon which, perhaps, there might be some difference of opinion upon the different sides of the House; but after the experience we have had of the inaccuracy, in all de tail, the imprudence, and the peculiar indiscretion of the right honourable gentlemau (Mr. Windham), who presided, as it should seem, with such uncontrouled sway, over this branch branch of national service; whether the House should vote away thus blindfold the money of the people, reposing implicit confidence that it would be discreetly applied, was a question on which, he believed, there could be no diffe rence of opinion on either side of the House. Yet that was what the House would be called upon to do; for he defied any man to say when he voted for the passing of this bill, whether the pension to the discharged soldier was to be one shilling a day, or two, or five, or ten. That all was to depend upon the orders hereafter to be made by his Majesty, which orders the prudence of the right honourable gentleman (Mr. Windham) would have to frame. And the disgraceful state in which the House, as the guardian of the public purse, was placed by this proceeding, was the more remarkable, when it was recollected what had been said by the right honourable secretary for the war department. For it had been admitted by him, that the House could not possibly discuss or consider the alteration which had been adopted in the mutiny bill without having under consideration at the same time these Chelsea regulations. Ror this purpose, the two bills were to be in the House together, their progress through the House was to be concurrent, and they were to be taken into consideration, as far as the forms of the House would admit, at the same time. To enable the House to do this, he said, the bill now under consideration was originally introduced with several clauses, affecting to detail several of the regulations which were to be adopted; they were clauses, which, till the blanks were filled up in them, it was impossible to understand; and the enly mode which the House had had of guessing even at what the effect of them would be, was by such recollection as might remain of the right honourable gentleman's speech (Mr. Windham's) ten or twelve weeks before. But when this bill went into the committee, the. House, he said, had some hopes that these blanks would be filled up, and that it would come out of the committee in a state in which it could be understood. But no; the very reverse of these expectations took place; the committee instead of filling up the blanks in the clauses, struck out the clauses: instead of filling up the blanks, made in this respect one great blank; one great blank una litura was the amendment. And here again, he said, the right honourable gentleman has miscon ceived his oble friend (Lord Castlereagh); for imagining that the noble lord had objected to this course of proceed ing, as taking the House by surprise, he had reminded the House that there could be no ground for that charge, because the bill had been recommitted. But his noble friend, he said, had not adverted to this circumstance with a view to charge any want of candour on the proceeding. He had mentioned it only to account for his having delayed, till so late a stage of the bill as the third reading, to make any observations upon it. In the stages prior to the committee, the noble lord had shewn that it was impossible to make any, because, till the blanks were filled up, there was no understanding the clauses; when the clauses were struck out, there was no possibility of doing it on the recommitment; unless it could be supposed that it was the duty of the noble lord on the recommitment, to try what he could do at framing clauses to execute the right honourable gentleman's idea, which the right honourable gentleman scemed to have despaired of being able to do himself, and therefore had struck the clauses out altogether. When therefore these clauses were struck out, the objections to the bill assumed a new shape; a formidable objection to its principle arose, that, namely, which he had already adverted to, and which had upon the recommitment been pointed out to the right honourable gentleman by an honourable friend of his near him (Mr. Huskisson). For that gentleman, he' said, did upon that occasion point out the objections which then existed for the first time; namely, that of enablingthe king to make any orders, and incur any expences by those orders, which he might please; and pledging Parliament before hand to undertake to ratify those orders, and bear, their expence. And he said it was just worthy of remark, that this objection, which was so urged by his honourable friend, (Mr. Huskisson) had at the time been treated by the right honourable gentleman, as every thing which came from the side of the House where he stood was uniformly treated, as the mere objection of party, which had nothing in it, and bespoke only a determined spirit to oppose every thing. But when the bill was reported, at three o'clock in the morning, after the House had been tired by a long debate, the notable amendment was introduced, which the House was then considering; and when the bill came yes. terday to be read a third time, the side of the House on which he was standing was for the first tine acquainted with its existence. At that time the House was extremely thin, and it was proposed to the right honourable gentle шад |