The opinion of Nelson upon such a subject was deservedly considered as of the greatest weight; but what was it in reality that Nelson had projected?-an attack upon Flushing, which he said, would be a * week's expedition for 4 or 5000 troops. The possession of Flushing would have effected all that was desirable; that station in our power, it would have mattered not what might have been the number of ships which would then have lain rotting in the Scheldt. And if the conquest had been made at a fit season, we should have been left with unexhausted forces to maintain it; for to take and to hold is the only principle upon which any state should ever attempt conquest. The ill effects of the climate, had they been duly foreseen, might have been counteracted by proper precautions, and perhaps even the causes of the evil materially diminished by cover. ing as many of the drains as possible, and keeping those clean which were left open. The greater part of the troops would have been effectually secured by being hutted on the sand hills and kept in floating barracks, and means might have been devised for lessening the danger to those whom it would have been necessary to keep in the town. Generous diet, with the free use of tobacco and of spices, would have served as antidotes to the climate; the risk would have been greatly alleviated by quartering them in the upper stories; and if men for the service had been selected, who were natives of the fen countries, they would have found themselves in an atmosphere not very different from their own. These things had manifestly never been considered; the season was ill chosen, and the choice of the commander was, if possible, still more indefensible, from his vice of notorious and incorrigible sloth. Under a man of soldier-like habits and activity, the expedition might easily have succeeded, and in fact could hardly have failed of success, had the first operation been effected, that of landing upon Cadsand; the failure there drew after it all the other evils. But had the expedition succeeded in all its parts, still it would, at such a time, have been a miserable misdirection of such an armament. It was affirmed, that we could not have supported an army farther from our own shores, because foreign coin could not at that time be procured;-a strange argument, which the opposition seem to have considered as valid, for they made no reply to it. But, without referring to the manner in which the French make war, what is to prevent us from giving our own money currency wherever our armies go, by martial law, if foreign coin is not to be procured, or only at a loss?—The paramount object at that time should have been Spain. It is true, that a larger army could not have been employed under Sir A. Wellesley, because that which he had was not supplied; but there was another and even a more important scene of operations in Catalonia. Barcelona might have fallen, Gerona have been saved, and Zaragoza recovered for the Spaniards. If, however, it had been thought better to turn our views to the north, and the circumstances of Prussia, as Mr Canning so ably argued, rendered it unfit to land in Germany, one object, and only one, offered itself, which would have been commensurate to the means employed. We should * Clarke and M'Arthur's Life of Nelson, vol. ii. p. 229. have once more, and now with a justice which could never be disputed, have attacked the Danish capital, planted the English flag at Copenhagen, established a viceroy there, incorporated Zealand with the British empire, and admitted the inhabitants to a full participation of all the rights and privileges of British subjects. "If we pay a proper regard to truth," says Polybius, "we shall find it necessary, not only to condemn our friends on some occasions and commend our enemies, but also to commend and condemn the same persons, as different circumstances may require; for, as it is not to be imagined that those who are engaged in great affairs should always be pursuing false or mistaken measures, so neither is it probable that their conduct can at all times be exempt from error." The modern spirit of party, not having that regard to truth of which the historian speaks, either sees things falsely, or, if it sees them aright, wrests the consequences to its own perverse purposes. The opposition argued truly, when they maintained that the expedition to the Scheldt was impolitic and disgraceful; but the conclusion upon which they insisted was, that therefore the ministry ought to be displaced, and they themselves be appointed to succeed them; and they who agreed with them most entirely in the first part of their proposition, would have regarded the second as a worse evil than the expedition itself. The temper and the views with which this party called for a vote of censure, were exposed by Mr Stephen in a singularly felicitous allusion. "The public," he said, "were led to expect a redress of grievances, and punishment of delinquents; but the gentlemen on the opposition bench had the more substantial game in view of obtaining possession of the government; and this was the true cause of their impatience. They reminded him of the squire of the valourous knight of La Mancha. The knight, like the people of England in this case, was intent on generous purposes, though with mistaken views; but Sancho had always his eye to the main chance; and as soon as an adventure was atchieved by his master, he conceived, like these right honourable gentlemen, that his own end was attained; and said, 'I do beseech you, sir, give me immediately that same government." CHAP. III. Sir Francis Burdett's Motion for releasing John Gale Jones.-His Letter to his Constituents, Committal to the Tower, and consequent Proceedings. THE decision of the house upon the Walcheren expedition was so utterly discordant with the opinion of the public, that it would probably have excited a feeling throughout the country little less violent than that which had manifested itself during the inquiry of the preceding year; but the attention and the passions of the people had been effectually diverted by circumstances which, during the progress of the business, had grown out of the commitment of Gale Jones. On the 12th of March, Sir Francis Burdett moved that Jones should be discharged." He lamented exceedingly," he said, "that, in consequence of indisposition, he had not been present at the time the resolution forcommitting John Gale Jones to Newgate was passed, conceiving as he did that the house possessed no such privilege, and that no such privilege could legally or constitutionally exist. The law of the land was the standard by which the privileges of every individual, and of every body of individuals, in this country were to be measured; but he maintained, that the imprisonment of John Gale Jones was an infringement of the law of the land, and a subversion of the principles of the constitution. The question was, if the House of Commons had a right to imprison a person, not a member of that house, for an offence punishable by the ordinary course of law? This question involved the consideration of two distinct qualities,-privilege and power. The one, privilege, the house possessed for its own protection; the other, power, was a right to be exercised over others. Privilege they were to exercise to prevent the crown from molesting them in their proceedings; they were to use it as a shield for themselves; but they were not to allow it to change its character, to be converted into power, and to use it for the destruction of others." Sir Francis then entered into an historical argument, shewing how this privilege, according to his view of the subject, had arisen. "By the exercise of that privilege, in the present case," he affirmed, "the common law, Magna Charta, and trial by jury had been violated. Mr Jones was imprisoned for an act, the illegality of which had not been proved, the facts not ascertained, nor the law determined. And what was there to prevent Mr Yorke from preferring a bill of indictment, according to law, against him; in which case, if they could suppose that any twelve lawful men in England could find a verdict of guilty, then would he be punished twice for the same offence. If, on the other hand, a verdict of acquittal were returned, then would he have been sentenced to undergo the most severe punishment short of death, that of indefinite imprisonment, by an order of the House of Commons, for having done an act not proved to be a crime. It was a doctrine clearly laid down by Lord Coke, that no man could be fined, or confined, but by a Court of Record; no court but that in which forty shillings damages might be given could be a Court of Record; the necessary conclusion was, that the power of fine and imprisonment was not in that house. No right to fine was assumed. Why then was the greater power retained, when the smaller one was admitted to be illegal? The warrant of committal, too, he contended, was illegal in all its parts, but eminently so in its conclusion. A legal warrant must conclude with the words, 'till the party be delivered by due course of law;' this warrant ended with the words, during the pleasure of the house.' The house, by such a proceeding as it had resorted to, involved the assumption of the judicial, executive, and legislative powers, which was in the very teeth of the law. In the due administration of the law it was wisely provided, that the same men shall not take two steps together; one set find the bill, another decide on the fact, another the law; but that house, which administers no oath, which squares itself by no form, which makes no previous examination of the fact, jumps at once upon its dangerous and most alarming conclusion, and finds the accused guilty. And for what? for their pri vilege. The privilege talked of resembled the bye laws of a corporation, sufficient to bind themselves, but which could not overturn the law of the land. This was to shew the house to be as great as kings, lords, and commons. It was, besides, an encroachment on the prerogative of the crown, whose privilege it was to see that no unlawful restraint was laid on the liberty of the subject.” Sir Francis concluded in these words: "Sir Fletcher Norton has said, that he would pay no more attention to a resolution of the House of Commons than to that of a set of drunken porters in an alehouse. The observation was coarse, but it was just. If gentlemen, therefore, are of opinion that a resolution of this house is equal to that of all the branches of the constitution, they will then reject my proposition; but if, with me, they think that they cannot overturn the law of the land, and the acts of parliament solemnly passed, by any assumed power exercised by that house alone, they will agree with me that John Gale Jones must be discharged." Upon this Mr Williams Wynn said, that if a motion had been brought forward for the liberation of John Gale Jones, upon the ground of his contrition for the offence which he had confessed at the bar, he should not have objected to it; but the proposal of that liberation had been so interwoven with other topics, that he really knew not how to proceed." Then taking up the historical argument which Sir Francis had produ ced, he shewed him that there were cases on record of the assertion of this right as early as the reign of Henry VIII. "It was indeed true, that no instance of committal for a libel was to be met with prior to the reign of Elizabeth; but the fact was, that in the times immediately succeeding the invention of printing, there was no liberty of the press. The right of printing, and the liberty of publication, were so completely under the restrictions of the Star Chamber, and so liable to be limited by the king's proclamation, that there was no probability of any libel appearing against that house. The same reasons which justified a court of law in punishing any contempt or interruption of its proceedings, justified the privilege which the house had exercised in the case before them. Any offence to a court of law was deemed not only personal to the individual immediately presiding, but to the whole tribunal of justice, or (according to the older language of the law) to the king's person, which was considered as perpetually present there. So in this case, the libel was not treated so much as an offence to the member attacked, as to the whole house. He wished Sir Francis had waited till the discharge of Mr Jones from prison before he had brought on a question which was now moved in parliament for the first time in the present mode of proceeding there was this inconsistency, that the motion had nothing whatever to do with the speech by which it had been prefaced. Even now he wished that Sir Francis would propose a declaratory resolution on which to found his present motion, though he, for one, must vote against such a resolution, as tending to deprive the house of what it had enjoyed for above three hundred years, that of guarding its dignity against libels." Lord A. Hamilton and Mr Creevy both declared that they could not concur in the opinion of Sir Francis. The proper distinction seems to have been made by Lord Folkestone. "That house," he said, " was com petent, by its own authority, to pu nish any contempt or interruption of its proceedings; but he denied that a libel and a contempt of court were tantamount." The attorney-general and solicitor-general delivered their opinions decidedly for the privilege. The discussion led necessarily to much historical and legal argument, and many cases were cited; but Mr Sheridan said " he wished to draw the attention of the house to one simple and obvious one, the case of Mr John Gale Jones. The abstract argument of Sir Francis's speech had nothing to do with his actual libera. tion, and why should he be sacrificed to a theory with which he had no concern? why should he fall an un willing martyr to doctrines which he never propagated, and perhaps never entertained-It had been asserted, that a prosecution by the attorneygeneral would have been preferable to the course which had been taken in this case. This was a practice to which he could never give his sanc tion. The house never could delegate the maintenance of its privileges into any other hands than its own, with out a degradation of its dignity, and a dereliction of its duty. He well knew the consequence of confiding such a trust to an attorney-general: it had been done in the case of Mr Reeves, and the author of what had been unanimously condemned in the house as a gross and scandalous libel, was acquitted in the court below." Mr Sheridan then considered the parti. cular case which was before the house. "While he differed," he said, "from the doctrine of Sir Francis, that that house had no right to commit any person but one of its members, he could not, on the other hand, agree with Mr Yorke in his application of |