tience to be acquainted with the system upon which they, to whom the safety of the kingdom was now confided, meant to proceed. The noble lord and his colleagues, like unskilful physicians, possibly grounded their alarms on a conscious sense of the danger in which they had left the patient, and wished now to exert their skill in advising their successors; but those successors begged leave to decline their aid, as wholly disapproving their system, and not conceiving their advice very conducive to the conva lescence of their patient. Both the hon. members were extreme solicitous to know whether the additional force act was to be continued, or what other measures were to be pursued. To this he would answer, that such was the situation in which the military system of the country was left by the noble lord and his colleagues, that it was extremely difficult to determine what to do. What was to be the general system, he begged leave to decline explaining at this moment; but it was likely that the bill alluded to would form no part of the system. The hon. gentleman had also expressed a wish to know what were the measures to be pursued respecting the volunteers; but upon that, or any other part of the plan, he would not now suffer himself to be betrayed into premature disclosure. Mr. Canning supported the arguments of General Tarleton and Lord Castlereagh; and, in allusion to the declarations of the secretary of state on a former occasion, respecting the imperfection of the military system of the country at that time, expressed his astonishment, that the right hon. secretary, who then thought a proper plan of defence a matter of so much facility as to be obvious almost to every man, should now find so much difficulty, and exhibit such palsied tardiness in producing any plan. The House had been occupied for four years past by the complaints and invectives of the right hon. secretary and his friends, against his Majesty's late ministers, and in impressing upon the House and the country the great hopes that were to be formed upon a broad-bottomed administration, including all the talents, character, respectability, virtue, rank, and eloquence, of the country. The object of the right hon. gentleman and his friends had been at length answered; they had got every thing their own way, and to the extent of their wishes; and yet, with all this concentration and conflagration of talents, six weeks were now elapsed, without their being able to propose to the VOL. 1. 1905-6, 3 F House 1 House any thing like a military system to please themselves, notwithstanding the promptitude and facility which the sight hon. gentleman had so often professed. According to the new system of the present administration, he under stood it to be a principle, that the person at the head of each department was to be solely responsible for the transactions in his department; but whatever degree of confi dence he might be disposed to attach to the general responsibility of the present administration, taken as a whole, he could not confide in them individually as their parts were cast, particularly in the war department; for he had no hesitation in saying for himself, and he believed he spoke the opinion of ninety-nine in a hundred throughout the country, that the right hon. gentleman, whatever might be his fitness for other departments, ought not to be looked to as a competent war-minister. There were many other instances to which he might apply similar objections; but, upon the whole, his confidence was rather directed to that. great and superintending spirit which was supposed to have the chief direction and management. Mr. Canning then made some pointed allusions to certain declarations on former occasions, which he attributed to Mr. Windham, one of which was, that he (Mr. Windham) had sat nine years in a cabinet, with which he differed upon almost every material point in discussion, and therefore he could attach no confidence to a minister who could make such a declaration. If he really had any plan to bring forward for military defence, with the approbation of his colleagues, he was inclined to suppose it theirs, and not his own. Mr. Windham explained, and totally denied the whole of the declarations attributed to him. The opinions in which he differed from certain members of that cabinet, he had expressed before he became a member of it. He was guarded against the stratagems of the hon. gentleman, to dead him into a disclosure of any part of his plan, until the whole should be submitted to the House. Any delay or difficulty on the point was entirely owing to the former administration. Br. Whithcad admired the candour of that open and manly enmity which the hon. gentleman had so early and pointedly marked to the presem administration, as well as the kindness of the noble lord who professed, in a manner which one would be inclined to consider as rather a little in sidious, sidious, that it was not his wish to press the right hon. secretary to premature explanations upon the plans in contemplation. Indeed he had said, that it would be highly imprudent for the right hon. gentleman to disclose any part of these plans, and yet the whole of his speech was composed of questions purposely directed to extort that disclosure.. The anxiety of the noble lord seemed particularly manifested by his curiosity to know what was to be done with the additional force bill; and by his extreme solicitude, lest the same penalties, and embarrassing exactions, to which one part of the country had been subjected, should not be extended to all the rest. He begged it, however, to be recollected, that the omission of raising men in those parishes, was not owing to neglect, but to impossibility; and that by much the greater number of them were unable to pay the fines they had thereby incurred. Rigorously to exact those fines would be a curious expelient, to prevent vexation in one part of the country, and of jealousy in another. The right hon. gentleman who spoke last, was uneasy lest the yolunteers should take alarm) at the present suspense, as to what measures were to be adopted respecting them. He had the honour to be a volunteer, and he, for his part, felt no such alarm; and he was confident also that no such alarm could be felt by the volunteers in general, as friends to their country, in consequence of any uncertainty under which they might remain until ministers brought forward their system. With respect to the wonderful efficacy so recently discovered in the operation of the additional force bill, he begged to know on what authority the right hon. gentleman made his assertion; or how that bill, when administered by him and his friends, should be so unproductive, and yet so effective now that they had ceased to have the management of it. The hon. member could not speak from oflicial documents, for he had recourse to none; but be could speak from the authority of those who had recourse to such information, and tell the hon. gentleman that this recent efficacy in the bill was not the effect of its natural operation, but the work of crimps and recruiting officers, in turning over to the parish levies, men under size for the line and militia. In respect to the delay of which he complained, six weeks only had elapsed since his hon. friend had come into office; a period surely not unreasonable to require for investigating the whole military system of the country, and endeavour 3F2 ing ing to form a bill free from those defects and blunders with which it was fraught under his predecessors. Mr. Fox considered it necessary for him, in consequence of the general observations made by the right honourable gentleman who spoke last on the other side, to say a few words. That right honourable gentleman had stated, that the present ministry comprised all the talent in the country; and he had even stated it in such a manner as might lead to a supposition that they had so represented themselves. He should be happy that the right honourable gentleman would state on what occasion he had heard them so represent themselves. It was impossible that they could have said so, when they saw the right honourable gentleman on the other side of the House. It would be ridiculous in any person to insinuate that ministry comprised all the talent of the country, when the right honourable gentleman was out of office. Not only the right honourable gentleman, but his colleagues on the same bench with him, had made such a representation impossible, particularly by the display of talent which they had already made in opposition. This declaration he (Mr. Fox) made for himself and his colleagues. It was possible some of the friends of the present ministry, thinking too highly of their merits, might from prejudice or partiality have so described them; but he thought it was hardly for the friends of a right honourable gentleman, lately deceased, to be the first to object to that species of compliment. He had never, so far as that right honourable gentleman was concerned, observed the right honourable gentleman opposite an enemy to panegyric; let him look to what he himself had said of his late right honourable friend, and he would not think the partiality of friends so unwarrantable. With respect to his right honourable friend near him (Mr. Windham), the right honourable gentleman had said that he had no opinion of him, nor any confidence in him as a war-minister, and that 99 out of 100 were of the same mind with him on this subject. This opinion he immediately took as granted, and then goes on-not to propose to turn him out--but to say, "Before you have fully matured your plan, explain to me the nature of it." Was it, he would ask, a fair inference of want of confidence, to require of his right honourable friend to tell them the nature of his plan out of time? His right honourable friend admitted he was not completely ready. In that case he presumed to think it 7 extremely extremely hard that gentlemen opposite. should say, Answer us on a point on which you confess you are not ready. It was well known that it was always the wish of the right honourable gentleman lately deceased, to endeavour to get the friends with whom he (Mr. Fox) acted, to make a part of his (Mr. Pitt's) ministry; and that such endeavours had been used with his right honourable friend Mr. Windham, atter he had made the speeches to which the right honourable gentleman opposite alluded. It might, indeed, be said, that it was not in the contemplation of Mr. Pitt, to have given his right honourable friend the war department, but to have placed him in some other situation. If he (Mr. Fox), however, understood the right honourable gentleman opposite, no change of place could have satisfied the right honourable gentleman, or removed his objections to his right honourable friend holding any situation. He would have said, "It is not to the head of the particular department that I give my confidence, but to the whole of the ministry." The right honourable gentleman talked of delay. It was not till the 7th of February that his right honourable friend's writ was moved. The right honourable gentleman (Mr. Pitt), to whom he was convinced the right honourable gentleman opposite would not willingly impute delay, or any other bad quality, did not for four weeks after his return to power bring in his additional force act. There the time which intervened was nearly as long as in the present instance. There too, a single act only was to be introduced. Here there was a new system to be founded. There, however, no objection of delay was started, neither were any premature inquiries made into the nature of the plan which he intended to adopt. If there had been any such, how awkwardly must that right honourable gentleman have found himself situated in declaring it to be built on a system such as he himself had been decrying within the last three weeks! The right honourable secretary declared that he could not figure any reason for putting any question like the present, but a wish to embarrass. What good motive could the persisting in it proceed from, when his right honourable friend had stated that he was not quite ready to bring forward his measure? If he was guilty of delay, why not bring forward against him a charge to that effect, and let his conduct be the subject of parliamentary inquiry? But what advantage could proceed from a premature declaration, similar to that now required? |