person in the office, with a salary of 6001. and the discontinuance of the paymaster; but the Board of Admiralty, deeming it more expedient to reverse the suggested improvement, abolished the first, and continued the second; the great diligence and regularity of Mr. G. Villiers, who was represented in the report from the Admiralty of August 1799, G. 11. as an able and attentive officer, by whom, since his appointment in 1792, the business of nearly the whole of the marine department had been conduct ed, being given as a reason for disregarding this recommendation of the commissioners. The removal of the agent, after a service of twenty-eight years in the marine department, was attended with an annual expence in the nature of a compensation, paid out of the marine poundage and stoppages, and directed to be inserted in the paymaster's annual account.

The committee examined several persons of experience as to the propriety of abolishing this office. [Sir A. Snape Hammond, late comptroller of the navy, thought the office of no advantage. Sir T. Thompsou gave the same opinion less decisively. Mr. Rose, treasurer of the navy, thought the payments could be made at his office, together with the widows' pensions.]

The present paymaster of the navy, Mr. Smith, did not point out any objection to placing the officers now in the Marine Pay Office under the controul of the Treasurer of the Navy; who being in the course of paying about 120,000 seamen, could, in his opinion, without much inconvenience, pay 30,000 marines. Captain Vario, one of the four deputy paymasters, concurred in

the same view of the proposed alteration.

Captain Kempster, an agent for several officers of marines; conceived it to be essential, that either the paymaster or agent should be retained, and that it would have been much better if the latter had been continued, and the former suppressed.

Your committee therefore do not hesitate in recommending to the house, that this office should be forthwith suppressed; and that the business should be transacted in the office of the Treasurer of the Navy, under whose direction drafts may be prepared of such regulations, and an estimate of such an establishment as may be necessary for that purpose, which ought to be submitted to, and approved by the commissioners of the treasury.

It may derive consideration, whether some of the houses in Somerset Place, as they become vacant, may not be applied to the extention of such offices as are at present cramped for want of room. Your committee being of opinion, that official houses are (except in some special cases) an improvident mode of adding to salaries, or of paying public servants, inasmuch as the charges upon the public, for building in the first instance, and for continual repairs afterwards, are out of all proportion to the benefit or accommodation which is derived to the officers who inhabit them.

The discovery of Mr. G. Villiers's default, led to the detection of another of very inferior amount, but arising principally from the same causes, in the conductor's department under the Treasurer of the Navy.

The

The business of the conductor is to pay all contingent and incidental expences incurred in the Treasurer's office (amounting annually to 13,000 or 14,0001.) for which purpose money is imprested to him from time to time from the Navy Board, on the authority of letters from the Paymaster of the Navy, stating that the balance stands according to the certificate of the conductor, which is enclosed in each letter.

It is the duty of the Paymaster of the Navy to examine and certify to the Navy Board, the conductor's half-yearly account, retaining the vouchers in his own office. These half-yearly accounts do not exhibit the money imprested to the conductor, nor the balance due from him. The particulars of money imprested are kept in the books of the Navy Board; but the applications for imprests pass through the paymaster's hands, who keeps no account of those imprests; nor did he conceive that it was his duty to compare the sums advanced to the conductor with the sums expended by him.

The commissioners of the navy pronounced, after full deliberation, that the conductor was not an accountant with their board for money received, as they had no controul over it; and as it was totally out of their power to ascertain, whether the balances stated in his application for money were correct, unless they were in possession of his-accounts, and of the vouchers.for his payments up to the date of his application.

Mr. Charles Barrow (the late conductor) was responsible for the balance of 37131. at the end of

1808, which was increased to 56891. in January 1810.

An extent has been issued against him for the sum due, but there is no probability that more than 5001. will be recovered. No security was taken for the due discharge of his duty, nor has it been usual to require it in that department. A case has been laid before the crown lawyers for their opinion as to prosecuting him criminally.

A mode of effectual check, with regard to the future balances, has been provided; and security has been taken in the sum of 20001. from the successor of Mr. Barrow, in pursuance of a minute of the treasurer, dated the twelfth of March, 1810.

*

The incidental and contingent expenditure within any office ought unquestionably to undergo a strict examination, in the first instance, by the superiors in that department; but its final audit and allowance ought not to rest there as no office whatever should be suffered to remain responsible only to itself; and for this reason, as well as for those which are before stated with reference to passing the paymaster's annual accounts, your committee consider that the practice, which was established by the order in council, the ninth of August, 1806,

By which the Navy Board, to whose examination and coutroul the contingent expences were formerly subject, are directed to allow them on the certificate of the paymaster." (fourth report commissioners on fees, p. 136.) ought to be discontinued; and that the vouchers themselves should be transmitted together with each half-yearly account,

for final examination by the Navy Board.

A default, to the amount of 93,9261. in the account of the treasurer of the ordnance, would naturally have found a place in the present report, if it had not undergone the investigation of the commissioners of military enquiry, who have lately presented in their twelfth report, an ample and distinct detail upon this subject. Your committee however desire, in passing, to call again the attention of the house to the practical inefficiency of the late act for the regulation of this office, and to enforce the observations of the commissioners "that upon the second appointment of Mr. Hunt in 1807, the not taking any security from him," was a great omission of duty.

Abstract of the Bullion Report.

Your committee have found that the price of gold bullion, which, by the regulations of his Majesty's mint, is 31. 17s. 10d. per ounce of standard fineness, was, during the years 1806, 1807, and 1808, as high as 41. in the market. Towards the end of 1808 it began to advance very rapidly, and continued very high during the whole year 1809; the market price of standard gold in bars fluctuating from 41. 9s. to 41. 12s. per oz. The market price at 41. 10s. is about 15 per cent. above the mint price. It appeared to your committee, that it might be of use, in judging of the cause of this high price of gold bullion, to be informed also of the prices of silver during the

ounce.

same period. The price of standard silver in his Majesty's mint is 5s. 2s. per ounce; at this standard price, the value of a Spanish dollar is 4s. 4d. or, which comes to the same thing, Spanish dollars are, at that standard price, worth 4s. 113d. per It is stated in Wettenhall's Tables, that throughout the year 1809, the price of new dollars fluctuated from 5s. 5d. to 5s. 7d. per ounce, or from 10 to 13 per cent. above the mint price of standard silver. In the course of the last month, new dollars have been quoted as high as 5s. 8d. per ounce, or more than 15 per cent. above the mint price.

Your committee have likewise found, that towards the end of the year 1808, the exchanges with the continent became very unfavourable to this country, and continued still more unfavourable through the whole of 1809, and the three first months of the present year.

Hamburgh, Amsterdam, and Paris, are the principal places with which the exchanges are established at present. During the last six months of 1809, and the three first months of the present year, the exchanges on Hamburgh and Amsterdam were depressed as low as from 16 to 20 per cent. below par; and that on Paris still lower.

So extraordinary a rise in the market price of gold in this country, coupled with so remarkable a depression of our exchanges with the continent, very clearly, in the judg ment of your committee, pointed to something in the state of our own domestic currency as the cause of both appearances. But, before they adopted that conclusion, which seemed agreeable to

all

all former reasonings and experience, they thought it proper to enquire more particularly into the circumstances connected with each of those two facts; and to hear, from persons of commercial practice and detail, what explanations they had to offer of so unusual a state of things.

It will be found by the evidence, that the high price of gold is ascribed, by most of the witnesses, entirely to an alledged scarcity of that article, arising out of an unusual demand for it upon the continent of Europe. This unusual demand for gold upon the continent is described by some of them as being chiefly for the use of the French armies, though increased also by that state of alarm, and failure of confidence, which leads to the practice of hoarding.

Your committee are of opinion, that, in the sound and natural state of the British currency, the foundation of which is gold, no increased demand for gold from other parts of the world, however great, or from whatever causes arising, cannot have the effect of producing here, for a considerable period of time, a material rise in the market price of gold. But, before they proceed to explain the grounds of that general opinion, they wish to state some other reasons, which alone would have led them to doubt whether, in point of fact, such a demand for gold as is alledged, has operated in the manner supposed.

If there were an unsual demand for gold upon the continent, such as could influence its market price in this country, it would of course influence also, and indeed in the first instance, its price in the continental markets; and it was to be expected

that those who ascribed the high price here to a great demand abroad, would have been prepared to state that there was a corresponding high price abroad. Your committee did not find that they grounded their inference upon any such information; and so far as your committee have been enabled to ascertain, it does not appear that during the period when the price of gold bullion was rising here, as valued on our paper, there was any corresponding rise in the price of gold bullion in the market of the continent, as valued in their respective currencies.

With respect to the alledged demand for gold upon the continent for the supply of the French armies, your committee must further observe, that, if the wants of the military chest have been latterly much increased, the general supply of Europe with gold has been augmented by all the quantity which this great commercial country has spared in consequence of the substitution of another medium of circulation. And your committee cannot omit remarking, that though the circumstances which might occasion such an increased demand may recently have existed in greater force than at former periods, yet in the former wars and convulsions of the continent, they must have existed in such a

degree as to produce some effect. The two most remarkable periods prior to the present, when the market price of gold in this country has exceeded our mint price, were in the reign of King William, when the silver coin was very much worn below its standard, and in the early part of his present majesty's reign, when the gold coin was very much worn below its standard. In both