as if the amendment meant that the order was to be rati. fied at least in the next session of Parliament; but if that were so, nothing could be so unhappily chosen as the words of it for be observed that the words were "that he should be entitled to a pension, for the payment whereof money should have been voted, &c." Now the pension was not to be due in any case till 14 years after enlistment, and in many not till 21 years. Was it intended then seriously that the House of Commons should next year vote money for the payment of a pension which would not be due till 14 or 21 years hence; it could not be so meant. The House of Commons would, according to its usual course, not vote money for the payment of a pension till it was due; and consequently would not vote it till the 14 or the 21 years were elapsed; and during the whole period of the soldier's service it would depend upon the future vote of the House of Commons, whether he should or should not have the pension; and this was the vested right that the right honourable gentleman provided, in order to bring recruits in abundance to the army. But then he desired again to know what was meant by "voted by Parliament?" Did it mean the vote of the House of Commons; or the grant of the whole legislature? If it meant the vote of the House of Commons, he said it certainly did not express its meaning, because the House of Commons was not Parliament. If it meant the whole legislature, then the whole legislature never voted money, but granted it, or appropriated it And though he said the right honourable secretary for foreign affairs seemed to laugh at this observation, as a mere verbal criticism, yet he owned, he did not think that such incorrectness of language was at all that which was proper for Parliament to use: but he said the slovenly appearance which it exhibited, in common with every other act of the present administration; for if it only af fected them he should not care; for their character for accuracy, or any other merit, he did not affect any anxiety, but he did, he said, feel for the charac er of Parliament, and he pointed out his objection, which his learned friend (the Attorney General) might remove by a mere stroke or two of his pen, before the third reading of the bill, in order that the character of that House should not be involved in the disgrace of that slovenly inaccuracy which $o justly belonged to the administration itself. They will judge, indeed, he said, whether they will think it worth

while to make any alteration in this respect; possibly, as they must feel the whole act totally inefficacious, and merely waste paper, they would rather it should pass with this additional blemish upon it, than by submitting to adopt any alteration suggested by him, give another acknowledgment under their own hands, as it were, of the imperfection of their own unassisted exertions. But this was to give the soldier, he said, a legal vested right. Therefore the inaccuracy in the expression was not a mere clerical or critical error; for as no action could be brought till the money was not only voted, but was raised, and was got into the hands of some public oficer, and was appropriated in his hands to the payment of the soldier's pension, the words should not only be corrected, but the whole provision must be extended, otherwise, as it stands if the soldier is to have any legal mode of enforcing his demand at all, it must be by his petition of right alone. And then, he said, the upshot of the whole of this not able expedient to make the soldier so sure and certain of his future allowance was this, the King may make an order, under which if a soldier enlists he will have a legal right to his future pension, provided Parliament, 14 or 21 years after, shall think proper to ratify the order by granting money for the payment of that pension; and that right shall be so clearly and securely vested in the soldier, that he shall be able to enforce it by a legal suit, namely, a petition of right. Now that there can be no greater compli cation of absurdity in one little clause of one act of Parliament, he said, he would not aflirm, because the right honourable gentleman has other bills yet to bring in; and as he has great powers in this style of legislation, perhaps he may yet exceed what he has already done. But he trusted that he had made good his undertaking to the House, by shewing that the clause was totally ineffica cious and absurd, and that it amounts to no more than this, that they undertake to ratify an order which the King may make, provided always that they like to do so when they see it. This is the new power given by this act to the Crown: this is the great effect of this mighty act.

If he had been to be asked, he said, before the right honourable gentleman last come into office, what act in a statesman or public man that the right honourable gentle man would have considered as the most weak, and indicating & mind least capable of any wide range of useful thought, 4

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he should have answered, without any hesitation, the passing of an act of Parliament for the sake of passing it, where no useful and important effect was to be produced by it. And yet, he said, this very thing it was, that the necessities of the right honourable gentleman had driven him te do. For having been driven by the weight of the objection to it, to amend into nothing, the clause in the shape in which it was to have given the full power of legislating over the public purse on this subject to the King; having been obliged to abandon the operative part of his bill, he still adheres to the bill itself. And why? for this reason. To those who do not examine the matter closely, and who are contented with consulting only the titles of acts of Parliament, the right honourable gentleman will appear to have been doing something for Chelsea, and something towards making better provision for soldiers. And though he cannot avoid the fact of failure, he will, he said, in some degree disguise the appearance of it, he will have an act of Parliament in short to shew for his pains. Indeed, he said, it is in precise conformity with the other acts of the present administration, where little or no performance followed upon great promises. It is a precise counterpart to the operation of the chancellor of the exchequer with respect to the sugar tax. That tax made part of the ways and means of his budget, and was taken to produce 300,000.; the remonstrances, however, against the injustice of this tax, as it was originally intended, were so strong and just, that the chancellor of the exchequer very properly gave way to them, and admitted such modifica tions of it, as necessarily annihilated all prospect or possibility of its producing any thing;-but still he would not give up his act; and therefore this compromise was come to between him and those who would have opposed it-they consented not to oppose the act, provided he would consent that it should produce nothing-and so it passed; and so it will remain, he said, an ornament to the statute book; and a happy instance, if not of productive, yet, he trusted, of harmless financial legislation. But indeed, he said, it was not only in single measures that this quality of the present administration was to be found; if he was to ascribe to it any one marked characteristic, more appro priate to it than another, he should say it was an admi nistration of most splendid pretence, and most inadequate and contemptible performance-of performance not only unequal

unequal to its promises, but in most instances in direct contrast with them. This character, he said, was to be traced from the first original formation, and concoction of the heterogeneous mass, through all their measures down to the present bill. What, he said, was the profession with respect to the formation of their government: it was to be formed, he said, on a broad basis, to unite all the wisdom, all the virtue, of every division of parties: and how was this performed? The comprehension of all parties was illustrated by the total exclusion and proscription of every man who had happened to preserve his friendship, his po litical friendship and connexion, at least, with Mr. Pitt till his death. It might be contended, indeed, he said, that there remained no persons of abilities in that party, after the death of that great man, who were to be com pared with the transcendant talents which adorned the opposite bench. But if that were so, still he could not but think that there were some amongst them, who, from the habits of office at least, had acquired some useful knowledge, some experience, some facilities in the detail of bu siness, which he doubted not, if the present administra tion had condescended to think worth the attention of their superior wisdom, might have rescued them from the repeated disgraces to which their inability to do business, their total incompetency for all matters of detail, had daily, and was daily exposing them. He expected, he said, from the cheers of " hear him," from the opposite side of the House, that it was wished to ascribe this observation to some disappointment on his part, at not being honoured with a situation amongst this splendid assemblage of ta lents and of virtues. He was confident, however, that no man who heard him would so ascribe it. He did not, indeed, recollect ever to have professed in that House, what an honourable gentleman (Mr. Whitbread) had, as he understood, when he happened not to be present the other night, stated him to have professed-namely, that he would never form a part of such an administration; but undoubt edly, all that he had ever said on the loss of character, the disgrace, and the public mischief which he conceived to attach to the coalition of public men, with known differ ences on the great and leading principles of the existing politics of the day, that honourable gentleman had only done justice to him, in collecting from what he had so said, the sentiment which he stated him to have professed:

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It would indeed, he thought, have been presumption in him to have professed it; it would have implied an opinion in his own mind, that there was something in him which might have made it an object with the present ministers to have had him amongst them. But there were many certainly among Mr. Pitt's friends, to whom this did not apply, and whose exclusion and dismissal from office could hardly be ascribed to any thing but the prin ciple of proscription on which the administration was formed. He next observed, that the first thing, from all the professions of the right honourable gentleman opposite to him (Mr. Fox), whether in this House, or out of it, which might have been expected to be found to mark the formation of any administration to which he was to belong, was a great regard to the true principles of liberty, the principles on which it was established, and by which it was to be secured. The way, however, in which those professions were acted upon was by violating, in the formation of their cabinet, one of the very first and most acknowledged principles of liberty and a free constitution, by uniting the judicial and executive power in one person; he alluded to the appointment of his noble and learned friend Lord Ellenborough, the chief justice of England, to a seat in the cabinet; and however the right ho nourable secretary of state (Mr. Fox) had on a former night referred with triumph to the event of the discussions on that subject, he begged to assure him, that he was much mistaken, if he supposed that the impressions made upon the public mind, the disadvantageous professions to the character of the sincerity of his attachment to the real principles of liberty, had not been slight in point of effect; and would not be transitory in point of duration, The next thing he said, which might have been expected, from all their former declamations against supposed abuse of power was this, that if they came into the possession of it, nothing would be so strongly marked, as the temperate moderation with which they would use it: the happy illustration of this temperance and moderation, he said, was to be found in their late conduct to the directors of the East India company-an act, which, if report did not strongly calumniate them, could hardly be equalled by any former instance of the most immoderate exercise of power, or the most eager grasp at patronage. The next point on which all their professions raised the greatest exVOL. III. 1805-6. pectations,

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