hackney-coach office, a comparison which the right honourable gentleman's (Mr. Rose) experience enabled him to make. He would state the particulars of that transaction, and leave the matter to the judgment of the House. In the year 1797 several bills had been drawn on the treasury, which applied to the bank to discharge those bills, and bills to the the amount of 1,600,000l. were discharged, and when the subsequent loan was made the bank detained the amount. They presented their accounts to the auditors, the latter refused to allow the sum which had been drawn by Mr. Jones, which the bank had also withheld. In 1798 an ex post facto clause was introduced into the loan bill, sanctioning this conduct of the bank, empowering the auditors to admit the account, and making Mr. Valentine Jones insuper on the bank account. This sum, therefore, had something more to do with the bank account than it had to do with the hackney-coach office. He would not accuse the right honourable gentleman of ignorance on this subject; he would only call it a sort of want of recollection. Undoubtedly, however, he allowed, that with regard to the far greater part of the bank account there was no risk, and as to the paymaster, he allowed that the paymasters themselves were very honourable persons, yet the persons under them abroad, and in many places at home, might be of a very different description. But, however, he could not go on describing the different shades which might be pointed out on these topics. All that he wished to do was, to show, that great risk was, upon the whole, sustained from the unaudited state of the accounts. Besides this, he had no doubt that considerable sums might be recovered; and, at any rate, the example would be beneficial, and produce a considerable effect on all those who were entrusted with the public money. In this view the measure would be of immense utility. It had been said that the war office particularly required revision. In that he most perfectly agreed, and it was certainly extremely desirable that a new distribution and new regulations could be made in that office. But so many points had come under consideration, that he was not prepared with any measure respecting the war office at present. But this, however, would most certainly be speedily attended to; in the mean time the want of this would not take away from the value of the measure now proposed, as far as it went. He pledged himself that next session het would

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would propose some plan to regulate the accounts of the war office; but in the mean time we ought to proceed im mediately with all that could be done for the present. He concluded by moving for leave to bring in a bill for consolidating the two boards of commissioners, and for the more effectual auditing the public accounts in arrear. On recollecting himself after he sat down, he rose again and stated that the expence of the permanent commission would be less by 1000l. a year than the expence of the esta blishment at present. The expence of the present establishment was 28,000.-that of his permanent commission would be 27,000l.; the expence of the temporary addition would be 14,000l. more, which would make it in all 41,000l.

Mr. Rose followed the statement of the noble lord, but in so low a tone of voice, that we could not collect his observations with a satisfactory degree of accuracy. His ge neral deduction, however, was, that out of the whole 534 millions stated by the noble lord to be wholly unaccounted for by the commissioners of public accounts, and for the investigation of which he lately professed to bring forward the present measure, only eight millions really remained unaccounted for. The rest were, to all intents and purposes, accounted for as satisfactorily as was possible, though, perhaps, the whole had not passed the commis sioners of accounts; and of this eight millions, the only part upon which investigation could attach, with any hope of recovering a shilling for the public, was about 99,000l. So that the construction of all that expensive system of machinery proposed by the noble lord, of increasing commissioners, accountants, and all the other train of subor. dinate officers, was, in fact, doing nothing for the public. With respect to the accounts in the West Indies, an act passed in the last year for appointing new commissioners to follow up the enquiry in that quarter, from which commissioners no report had yet been made. In his opinion, therefore, it would have been much more advisable for the noble lord to have waited for the report of those commissioners, and taken more time to consider and ma> ture his plan, instead of precipitating the country into so much useless and unnecessary expence. Having concluded his observations upon the propositions of the noble lord, whose chief object seemed to be the censure of a former administration, and to create unnecessary patronage, he would now beg leave to advert to some allusions made Qq2 personally

personally to himself, on a former night, by a noble lord opposite to him (Lord Howick), and a right honourable and learned gentleman (the Attorney General), now in his eye. It had been observed that observations from him, tending to condemn the creation of sinecure places, came with a peculiar ill grace; and allusions were made to sinecure places and lucrative appointments which he was supposed to possess. On this point it was necessary to explain to the House the fallacy of such allusions. For the place he held under the administration of his late right hon. friend, as secretary of the treasury, he had resigned a certain, permanent, and lucrative employment producing him 5,1001. a year, arising from fees, to take up a precarious one, which reduced his income to 4,500l. a year; this income the lords of the treasury were afterwards pleased to reduce by a new regulation to 30001. a year, and upon the former resignation of his right honourable friend, he resigned this without any provision whatever. On the return of his right honourable friend again to office, he accepted of another office, which he again resigned without any provision; and as to the employment which he now held, it was one which had been usually conferred in reversion for a series of five centuries, and was given to him on a similar footing, upon a reversion of two lives, one of which continued six years after he obtained the promise; and the other was, at the time, of his own age,' and a life in every respect as good, and as likely to last as his own. This grant was the only favour he ever asked for himself or any of his family, close as were the friendship and intimacy which had for above seventeen years subsisted between himself and his late right hon. friend; and he believed that he, in this instance, stood the single exception to all men who had ever preceded him in office, under similar circumstances. The office of Secretary of the Treasury was after its first reduction, upon further consideration of the Lords Commissioners, raised to 4,000l. a year; and he was convinced that any man who considered the talents requisite to fill the situation, and the laborious extent of duties it involved, would not consider this salary at all immoderate; but besides this, it placed the man who held it in such a situation, as that no gentleman filling the office, could save one shilling from the income. He had heard that rumours prevailed without doors respecting the immense emoluments amassed by him, but without deign

ing to take any notice of such assertions; when, however, such allusions were made within those walls, he felt it his duty to answer, and he trusted that he had now satisfactorily refuted them. When his right honourable friend had formerly retired from office, he believed it was fully in the recollection of the right honourable gentleman (now a noble lord), who succeeded him, that he had been earnestly solicited to continue in office, but positively declined it; nor would he act under any other administration than that of his right honourable friend, while he lived; and he could now appeal to the noble lord at the head of the administration, whether he had not repeatedly pressed him to appoint a successor in the department he filled; so far was he from feeling any solicitude to continue in office. The part he had taken in this House since the change of administration, was one which he thought became him. He had vindicated the conduct of his late right honourable friend, and the administration in which he presided, from the censures so continually cast on them by the noble lord and his colleagues: and he could assure the noble lord, that, had it not been for those censures, he would have continued as silent a member since, as he had been before his departure from office.

The question being put, leave was given to bring in the bill.

MARQUIS WELLESLEY.

Mr. Paull now moved the order of the day for resuming the committee upon the charges against Lord Wellesley.

The House accordingly resolved into a committee, Mr. Hawthorne in the chair.

Colonel Baines, who had been aide-de-camp to Sir James Craig, was then called in and examined by Mr. Paull, on the number of troops kept in the territory of Oude.

Mr. Strachey, who was one of the Judges in India, was also examined, principally as to what he had observed as to the opinion of the natives relative to the changes made by Lord Wellesley in the territory of Oude. His answer amounted to this, that some seemed to approve and others to disapprove of them.

A conversation then ensued as to the propriety of examining Captain Salmon, who had been superintendant and auditor of accounts in India, on the fairness of the estimates

lying on the table of the expences of the troops employed in the Nabob's territories, and charged against him by the Company.

Mr. Paull and Dr. Laurence thought his evidence would come with more propriety when certain other accounts, which had been moved for, and which would go to shew the fallacy of those now before the House, were produced.

Sir A. Wellesley, Mr. W. Pole, Mr. Hurst, &c. on the "other hand, argued, that Mr. Salmon must be qualified at this moment, as being superintendant of accounts, to say whether these accounts were or were not correct. If there were occasion for examining him anew, the honourable gentlemen could move for it. The witness was then called in, and he in general stated that the orders of the Marquis Wellesley were, in making up the estimate of the extra troops employed by the Company in the service of the Nabob, rather to underrate than overstate the expence.

Being cross-examined, however, by Mr. Paull, he admitted that the calculation as to a regiment of infantry or of cavalry, &c. specially referred to the particular regiments employed in Oude.

The examination of this witness being finished, the chairman reported progress, and asked leave to sit again. On the motion of Mr. Paull, there was then ordered to be laid before the House an account of the extra expence paid by the East India Company for the number of troops stipulated to be engaged by them for the Nabob of Oude, from the first of November, 1799, to the 1st of November, 1801.

The other orders of the day were postponed, and the House adjourned.

HOUSE OF LORDS.

TUESDAY, JUNE 24.

In the appeal "Graham v. the Countess Dowager of Glencairn," the Lord Advocate of Scotland and the Solicitor General for the Respondent, and Mr. Alexander, in reply, were heard by Lord Ellenborough. Further proceedings postponed till Monday se'nnight.

The Tortola free port bill was read a third time and passed.

The