cluded with moving the following muneration would be still farther resolutions. 1. That it appears to this house, that to commit pecuniary trusts to any persons whatever, without providing any check upon their proceedings, without calling for any regular or periodical accounts, and without settling, during a long course of years, the mode or amount of their remuneration, is a neglect which must inevitably lead to the most prejudicial consequences, and a violation of the most essential duty of government. 2. That such neglect and deviation have been proved to exist, and might have been attended with, material loss to the public. 3. That the commissioners upon Dutch property have been guilty of gross misconduct in violating the act under which they were appointed, and appropriating to their own use, without authority, sums for which they ought to have accounted to the public. 4. That the accounts of the commissioners be referred to the auditors of public accounts, to be examined. 5. That all consideration of the remuneration to be allowed to the commissioners ought to be deferred till their accounts are finally settled. On the question being put on the first resolution, Mr. H. Thornton felt it necessary as chairman of the committee who had made the report, to state that he most cordially concurred in every part of the report. The remuneration to the commissioners as recommended in the report by the committee was now £10,000, no very inadequate compensation for the light business they had to perform. But this re reduced, by the sums the commissioners would have to refund by an act of parliament, as interest on the sums kept at private bankers, or otherwise withheld from the public. The committee had stated its opinion with respect to the duty of government, which was in substance precisely the same, and conceived in the same words with Mr. Ord's first resolution. But Mr. Thornton acknowledged a distinction between commissioners such as these, and a government. If the commissioners neglected the business to which they were appointed, their neglect must be wilful, and consequently highly criminal. But the members of a government had various other important functions to attend to. Besides, successive governments might not always be aware of the views of their predecessors. And even the secretary of the treasury has so much other business to attend to, that he might inadvertently omit some part of his duty. Upon these grounds he considered the neglect of the government, and the neglect of the commissioners as meriting different proportions of blame. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said, that when gentlemen considered that it was only on the 25th of March that the report had been presented to the house; that some delay had taken place in the printing of it; and that it was not in the hands of gentlemen until within a fortnight of the time when the notice was given, they would not think it surprising that no measures had been taken by the treasury before the notice of this motion. The treasury, however, had applied applied to the committee of the privy council, to call upon these commissioners to give in their accounts to the treasury, to be then transferred to the auditors of public accounts to be passed. Upon the whole, he did not think that any practical convenience could result from the adoption of the resolutions proposed. And certainly he was not more to blame than the noble lord (Petty) who had preceded him in office. But in fact neither was to be blamed. The effect of a general vote of censure on all the successive governments since the institution of these commissioners, would fall entirely on the present government. Seeing therefore that the act which had been in operation for the last four. years provided for the effectual check of these accounts, and that the business was now in train to be fully and finally settled, the house, he was confident, would not think it necessary to entertain the resolutions. And he hoped that Mr. Ord himself would withdraw his motion. But if he should not, it was Mr. Perceval's intention to move the previous question upon his resolutions.-< Sir John Newport said, that if there ever had been an instance of malversation of trust, it was that now under discussion. If such malproceeds, when proved incontestibly, should not be marked by the severest censure of that house, it would be an encouragement to corruption. The conduct of the commissioners was aggravated by the manner in which they had given their evidence before the committee. On their examination they gave amended and explanatory answers to the ques tions which were put to them, but which in fact amounted to nothing more than gross prevarication, and a direct falsification of their former testimony. Within the first year of their existence they had lodged £850,000 in the hand of their private bankers, though during that period, not a farthing had been paid by them into the bank of England. And within the three last years, the whole sum lodged in the bank of England amounted to only £90,000. He should support the resolutions. But whatever might be the fate of these, he should afterwards move for an address to his majesty, to direct the attorney-general to prosecute these commissioners for malversation in their trust. Mr. Rose said that if any blame was to be imputed in the present matter, it must undoubtedly be to that government by which they were appointed. But the act appointing them required them to produce their accounts when called for, and to take their instructions from the privy council. As to their remuneration his idea was, that it should be fixed when their business should be completed. Mr. Rose said that to him personally blame was to be imputed if it was imputable to any one. But as to what had been stated about a supposed leaning towards one of the commissioners, Mr. John Bowles, he did not so much as know that man's person, nor had he ever read any of his pamphlets, though he allowed that they were laid regularly upon his table. As to the neglect that had taken place of not paying attention to the production to the proceedings of the Dutch Dutch commissioners, it might happen, in the hurry of business, to any government. Mr. Whitbread began an animated and severe invective against the negligence of government, and the criminality of the commissioners, with the following striking proœmium. "A great smoke has long issued from the office of the Dutch commissioners. Persons have often said that the Dutch commission was a great job, and that if enquired into, it would be found so. But no mortal alive ever expected to find such a blazing fire as that which is now known to have been so long burning in Broad Street." Mr. Whitbread painted in lively colours the rapacity of the Dutch commissioners, their gross extortion, their prevarications, and their matchless impudence in attempting to set up a kind of defence of their misconduct, and even in canvassing the members of that house for their votes and interest. He was not acquainted with any of those commissioners personally. One of them however was sufficiently known to the public, Mr. John Bowles, a series of years, as a writer by profession, in high repute, of great estimation; a man receiving the reward of his literary labours; an unblemished servant of the public; a person who was writing to accuse others of not having made just and proper returns of their incomes upon which the tax might be levied, holding his head high in society; the censor of morals, and unsuspected of such a flagitious course of conduct against the public as had now come to light. Those were piping times with the antijacobins. One was fighting his way up to be an ambassador; another was preparing to govern the country in the shape of a secretary of state; and Mr. John Bowles *, their associate, who prepared the heavier parts of the composition, while the budding diplomatist and secretary were relaxing from their severer studies, in these humourous political effusions, which adorn the page of the anti-jacobin, was reclining in the dignity of his office in Broad-street, and launching forth his anathemas against all those who opposed that administration, which had so amply rewarded his past, and secured his future labours. Mr. Whitbread, with a feeling in which all honest men must fully sympathize with him, exulted not only in the detection of Mr. Bowles, but over the disappointment and chagrin that must be felt by that man. He would not, like the Athenian mentioned by Horace, have the satisfaction of * Mr. Bowles before he was appointed a Dutch commissioner was, as we believe he now is, a commissioner of Bankrupts; a place conferred on him by Mr. Pitt, on account of a pamphlet he had written against Tom Paine's Age of Reason. He wrote a great number of pamphlets on the "Political and Moral State of Society," and others, pretty much in the same strain, but under other titles. He was commonly called, by way of irony, by those who knew him, the Rev. Mr. Bowles. He had the most efficient hand in the establishment of the WEEKLY ANTIJACOBIN NEWSPAPER. The principal conductors and contributors, however, were Mr. Canning, Mr. George Ellis, and Mr. John Hookham Frere. Mr. Bowles was the most zealous member of the society for the suppression of vice, and a justice of the peace for Kent, Surrey, and Middlesex. contemplating contemplating his money in his chest as a salve for the ridicule of the populace: for he was persuaded he would be made to refund the uttermost farthing. A discovery so rare, and in all its circumstances so amusing, as the frauds and hypocrisy of John Bowles, had not been made since the moment when the philosopher Square was discovered in Miss Seagrim's garret. Mr. Whitbread concluded with reading several passages from the voluminous writings of Mr. Bowles in recommendation of morality and religion, in the last quoted of which passages Mr. Bowles says, "that these primary causes of corruption (which he had stated) operate in a most alarming manner in this country. At home, it is impossible to deny, that an inordinate love of pleasure, and an insatiable lust of gain, have produced an alarming indifference to every relative duty, and to every social feeling; a sensible increase of fraud, perfidy, knavery, and peculation, and a rapid approach to that state of selfishness, which involves a total disregard for the rights and advantages of others." The following (said Mr. Whitbread), which are the last words of the sentence, I cannot but suppose he amply feels, and that "by a just retribution" he has "completely sacrificed his own felicity." Mr. Huskinson said that the Dutch commissioners were parliamentary commissioners. When the immense increase of business in the treasury, since 1793, was consi VOL. LI. dered, and the inadequacy of the number of persons allotted to transact that business, it would appear morally impossible that some things should not escape attention. Thus Mr. Huskinson endeavoured to defend the treasury. But neither Mr. Huskinson nor any one else attempted to defend the conduct of the Dutch commissioners. Mr. Ponsonby produced some passages from the writings of Mr. Bowles, by which he was self-condemned, more forcibly and directly, if possible, than by those quoted by Mr. Whitbread. Mr. John Bowles, it was said, had published thirty-two pamphlets. Mr. Ponsonby had seen one of them, and as the title was tempting he had looked into it. It was termed "A Moral View of Society at the End of the eighteenth Century." And happy should he have been if at any time he could have presumed to possess that pure morality it professed to inculcate. Among the passages quoted by Mr. Ponsonby is the following: "A more convincing proof can hardly be conceived of the disregard of our duty than the growth of peculation; and that, so far from rendering to Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's, every person must be shocked at the gross defalcations which every where come within their view." Again, "Nothing can, without a sense of religious duties, get the better of temptation." It was clear, Mr. Ponsonby observed, that whatever might be the case of the other commissioners, this gentleman, was, at least, At mihi plaudo Ipse domi simul ac cerno Nummos in Arça, H not not ignorant of the public duties imposed upon him by his situation. Mr. H. Thornton, in order to obviate the objections to the several resolutions moved by Mr. Ord, proposed to consolidate them into one, and in such terms as should meet with general approbation. The resolution which he intended to substitute for the whole five was as follows: "that the commissioners appointed in the year 1795 for the disposal of captured Dutch property, taking advantage of the neglect of the government to enquire into their proceedings, have, without authority, appropriated to their own use large and unreasonable profits; that they have privately taken interest on large balances of money, which ought to have been lodged in the bank of England; that they have refrained from giving correct and explicit information respecting the interest so taken to the committee appointed for enquiring into the public expenditure; and that they had been guilty of a great violation of public duty." Mr. Ord declared his intention of taking the sense of the house on all his resolutions. The house then divided upon the first resolution, when there appeared For the first resolution 77. The other resolutions were withdrawn, and Mr. Thornton's resolution adopted, after a division upon the question for substituting the word omission for neglect. For the original resolution 78. The word omission it seems was thought less severe on ministry than neglect. But in fact the charge of neglect was less than that of omission. For whereas negligence argues only a want of due attention, and not any intentional breach of duty; omission carries in it, or may be supposed to carry, the idea of a voluntary forbearance to perform a duty. House of Commons, June 20.—Mr. Vansittart, in the course of a speech of great length, said, that at the time when, in stating the financial arrangement of the year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer disclosed his intention of charging the greatest part of the interest on the loan on the war taxes, he felt and intimated that it would be impossible for him to acquiesce in such an arrangement without remonstrance. But, on some occasions, when the subject might have been proposed he was prevented from attending by private circumstances. And he also felt that considerable advantages would attend the mode of proceeding he had now adopted. If he had opposed the bill for charging the war tax with the loan, and that with much more ability and eloquence than belonged to him, it might have been difficult for the right honourable gentleman, even if he had seen the force of his arguments, to have agreed to his conclusions. After having intimate in the speech from the throne, and deliberately proposed in his budget, that no new taxes should be brought forward for the service of the year, he might not have easily persuaded the country to acquiesce in the imposition of taxes which might be found burthensome; and which his proposed measures had shewn to have been, in his opinion, unnecessary |