7th. Officers whose length of service may happen not to fall exactly under any of the preceding numbers, shall be pensioned agreeably to the rate which may come nearest to their length of service.

8th. Officers having a shorter period of service than the lowest of the foregoing, shall receive either the pension to which their services would entitle them from Greenwich Hospital, or such other sum, not exceeding 30l. per annum, as we, on a view of the individual case, may appoint.

9th. No warrant officer shall reckon as service, either for promotion or superannuation, any time for which he shall not have a certificate of good conduct from the captains or commanders of the ships in which he may have served; and if the certificate

should not state the good and meritorious conduct of the officer for the specified period, such time is to be disallowed him; but if the warrant officer thinks he has any reason to complain thereof, he may address his complaint to our secretary, for our inquiry and final decision; and in this case, we submit that we be authorized to allow the time or not, as we may judge proper.

If your Royal Highness shall be graciously pleased to sanction the foregoing propositions on this branch of the subject, we shall be enabled to superannuate several hundreds of wornout and disabled officers, who are at present on the ordinary, and of whom we cannot clear the list (which ought to be effective) with justice and humanity to these old servants of the public, while the present partial and inadequate rates of superannuation exist; but we have farther the satisfaction of stating to your Royal Highness, that this benefit to the naval service will not create any additional expense to the country; as the saving of cost now incurred for victualling and keeping in full pay so large a number of inefficient persons, will not only compensate the whole additional expense of the arrangement relative to warrant officers, which we thus humbly submit to your Royal Highness's gracious consideration, but will even diminish considerably the expence which, on the peace establishment, may arise from the other propositions which we have submitted.

IV. We now beg leave humbly to represent to your Royal Highness, that having had under consideration the numbers and ratings of the petty officers of his Majesty's fleet, we have found that there are several useful duties for which no proper ratings are provided; while, on the other hand, several ratings are preserved in the table which have become obsolete, and

which have no duties now attached to them, and which are now, we have reason to think, given to men whom the several captains think deserving of higher pay, and for whom they have no appropriate ratings.

With a view, therefore, of remedying these irregularities, and of giving fair encouragement to that useful class of men, the petty officers, we humbly submit that your Royal Highness may be pleased to sanction the establishment of the following additional ratings, the effective duties of which are now performed without any corresponding ratings.

Admiral's Coxswain,
Coxswain of the Launch,
of the Pinnace,
Captain of the Hold,
Yeoman of the Signals,
Cooper's Mate,

Crew,

Midshipman Ordinary, Coxswain's Mates, Swabbers,

Ordinary Trumpeter, Shifter,

Gunner's Tailors.

The expense to be occasioned by the establishment of the former ratings will, after deducting that of the ra tings proposed to be abolished, be very inconsiderable; namely, 31. 2s. per mensem in a first rate, and less in pro. portion in the others; being in the whole, on one ship of each class in the royal navy, only 121. 7s. per mensem. We beg leave farther to state, that, as the carpenters, and carpenter's mates, and carpenter's crews find their own tools, and are alone, of all the classes in the ship, liable to this species of extra expense; and as we have, by late regulations, given much more activity and employment to this description of persons, to the great benefit of the service, we propose to allow to each person of these classes 7s. per mensem, in addition to their pay, to supply themselves with tools; this allowance being, in fact, already, though partially, made.

V. We now beg leave to call the attention of your Royal Highness to the companies of royal marine artillery.

These companies were formed, one at each division, in the year 1804, for the purpose, in the first instance, of supplying the service of his Majesty's bomb vessels before that time performed by the royal artillery; but it was also intended that these companies should, particularly in time of peace, be employed at the respective divisions, in drilling the whole of the marines to gunnery.

We are so well satisfied of the great utility of having a considèrable body of marines trained to gunnery, that we are induced to recommend that the

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royal marine artillery be increased to eight companies, as well for the purpose of encouraging and training the other marines, as to enable us, on occasions, to embark a certain number of well-trained artillery-men in others of his Majesty's ships as well as in the bombs; experience having proved the great advantages to be derived to the service from this practice, which has been of late tried to a small extent.

We therefore humbly propose to your Royal Highness, to be pleased to sanction the establishment of eight companies of royal marine artillery; but in order that the whole establishment may not exceed what your Royal Highness has pleased to declare to be a fit peace establishment of marines, we humbly propose to transfer a certain number of officers and men from ordinary marines to the artillery, and we hereto subjoin schemes of the establishment of royal marine and royal marine artillery, respectively, which we think proper for the present period, by which the corps will consist of eighty companies, of which eight will be artillery.

This measure, which will give great efficiency to the corps of marines, and, to use the expression of the original promoters of the marine artillery, double its utility both ashore and afloat, will be a very inconsiderable, if any, expence to the public; because we have proposed to reduce an equivalent number of ordinary marines, and shall further submit some reductions in the number of officers attached to the artillery companies; and in time of war, a farther diminution of expense from what it would be under the present system, will, if your Royal Highness shall be pleased to adopt our suggestions, arise from the following circum

stances :

The royal artillery, when embarked in bombs, had certain advantages granted to them, in consideration, we

presume, of their being taken out of their natural course of shore service: these advantages the royal marine artillery have claimed, and hitherto enjoyed, under, we think, an erroneous construction of his Majesty's Order in Council, establishing the pay and allowances of these companies.

It is evident that, however just it was to grant such advantages to the royal artillery, when removed from their ordinary duties, it was certainly unnecessary to give them to the marine artillery, whose natural course of service it was to embark, and which in fact was formed for this especial purpose. We trust, therefore, that your Royal Highness will see the expediency of correcting this error, at this favourable opportunity, when it can be done without any immediate injury to individuals, because at present none of the marine artillery are embarked, nor, according to the original regulations, would they have been embarked, in time of peace; while we therefore propose to continue the increased shore pay, and to encourage the artillery and the corps in general, by doubling the numbers who will receive this increased pay, we think we may fairly propose to abolish the distant and contingent advantage of the extra sea pay, to which in fact we doubt that any other right has hitherto existed, than an erroneous construction of his Majesty's Order in Council.

We therefore propose, that when the royal marine artillery shall embark, the sea pay of all ranks shall bear to their pay ashore the same proportion that the sea pay of the marines in general bears to their shore pay.

For all these purposes herein before mentioned, we beg leave to subjoin to this memorial, a table of the rates of his Majesty's ships, and the force and complements of each rate, and also of the pays, numbers, and ratings of all the officers and men in the fleet, both

seamen and marines; and we humbly recommend to your Royal Highness, to be pleased to recal and annul the table now in force under his Majesty's Order in Council of the 31st December, 1806, and to sanction and establish in lieu thereof, the table hereunto annexed, on which, for the sake of perspicuity and convenience, we have distinguished the several classes for sharing the produce of seizures, agreeably to your Royal Highness's Order in Council of the 14th October last.

We now have to submit to your Royal Highness, in order that the funds of the Chest and Hospital at Greenwich, and of the Widows' Charity, to which the deductions, herein before proposed to be abolished, are applied, may not suffer by this arrangement, that your Royal Highness may be pleased to direct that the calculated amount of the said deductions, on the number of officers and men respectively employed, shall be paid over by the Navy Board to the funds of the said institutions, under such regulations and checks as we may think necessary, for ensuring the full and equi

table arrangement of this matter between these different branches of the service; which, we have no doubt, can be attained with great convenience to all the officers concerned, and with. out any increase of establishment, or any expense whatsoever to the public. And, finally, we have to submit that the whole of this arrangement shall be carried into execution from and after the 1st of January next, or as soon after as conveniently may be.

In proposing alterations in the present practice of the naval establishments, so important as those herein before submitted to your Royal Highness, we have thought it right to enter into a detail of the motives and principles by which we have been guided. We have, ourselves, in the investigation which has led to this memorial, found considerable inconvenience from the want of explanation as to the precise views on which former arragements were made; and we therefore humbly hope that your Royal Highness will be graciously pleased to excuse the length of detail into which, on the present occasion, we have presumed to enter.

GENERAL-I have received the treaty of the 3d of August, 1815, concluded between his Britannic Majesty the Emperor of Austria, the Emperor of Russia, and the King of Prussia, which accompanied your letter of the 23d of July.

The Emperor Napoleon protests against the contents of that treaty; he is not the prisoner of England.

After having placed his abdication in the hands of the representatives of the nation, for the advantage of the Constitution adopted by the French people, and in favour of his son, he repaired, voluntarily and freely, to England, with a view of living there, as a private individual, under the protection of the British laws. The violation of every law cannot constitute a right. The

person of the Emperor Napoleon is actually in the power of England, but he neither has been, nor is, in the power of Austria, Russia, and Prussia, either in fact or of right, even according to the laws and customs of England, which never included, in the exchange of prisoners, Russians, Prussians, Austrians, Spaniards, or Portuguese,though united to these powers by treaties of alliance, and making war conjointly with them.

The Convention of the 2d of August, concluded fifteen days after the Emperor was in England, cannot have of right any effect. It exhibits only a spectacle of the coalition of the four = greatest powers of Europe for the oppression of a single man!—a coalition which the opinion of every nation and all the principles of sound morality equally disavow.

The Emperors of Austria and Russia, and the King of Prussia, having neither in fact or in right any claim over the person of the Emperor Napoleon, could decide nothing respecting him.

Had the Emperor Napoleon been in the power of the Emperor of Austria, that Prince would have recollected relations which religion and nature have formed between a father and a son -relations which are never violated with impunity.

He would have recollected, that Napoleon had four times restored him to the throne, viz. at Leoben in 1797,at Luneville in 1804, when his armies were under the walls of Vienna,-at Presburgh in 1806—and at Vienna in 1809, when his armies had possession of his capital, and three-fourths of the monarchy! That Prince would have recollected the protestations he made to Napoleon at the bivouac in Moravia in 1806, and at the interview in Dresden in 1812.

Had the person of the Emperor Napoleon been in the power of the

Emperor Alexander, he would have recollected the ties of friendship contracted at Tilsit, at Erfurth, and during twelve years of daily correspond

ence.

He would have recollected the conduct of the Emperor Napoleon the day after the battle of Austerlitz, when, though he could have made him, with the wreck of his army, prisoner, he contented himself with taking his parole, and allowed him to operate his retreat. He would have recollected the dangers to which the Emperor Napoleon personally exposed himself, in order to extinguish the fire at Moscow, and to preserve that capital for himassuredly, that prince would never have violated the duties of friendship and gratitude towards a friend in misfortune.

Had the person of the Emperor Napoleon been in the power of the King of Prussia, that sovereign could not have forgotten that it depended on the Emperor Napoleon, after the battle of Friedland, to place another prince on the throne of Berlin. He would not have forgotten, in the presence of a disarmed enemy, the protestations of attachment and sentiments of gratitude which he testified to him in 1812, at the interviews in Dresden.

It accordingly appears, from articles two and five of the treaty of the 2d of August, that these princes, being incapable of exercising any influence over the disposal of the emperor, who was not in their power, accede to what may be done thereon by his Britannic Majesty, who takes upon himself the charge of fulfilling every obligation. These princes have reproached the Emperor Napoleon with having preferred the protection of the English laws to theirs. The false ideas which the Emperor Napoleon had formed of the liberality of the laws of England, and of the influence of the opinion of a great, generous, and free people over