it wrong, therefore, so to misapply the public money, by giving it to those who had no claims whatever upon public justice. Hence he thought that the best possible remedy against all such misapplications, would be the publicity of the grants themselves; if they were all publicly given, if no compensation could be given without every circumstance of the grant, nature, and object of it being laid upon the table of that house, they would not have to complain of so many improper grants; and indeed in general, the best remedy against the evil they had so often heard complained of in that house under the term jobs, would be publicity in every thing relating to the disposal of the public money. He had now mentioned the evils, and he should state the means by which he proposed to come at the remedies. He had in his hand a series of resolutions, which he would submit to the committee, in case the house agreed in appointing it: Here the hon. gentleman read those resolutions, which stated in substance," The urgent necessity at such a period of the strictest economy in the disposal of the public money. That it was not so much the object to abolish certain offices as that the amount of those charges should not exceed the just estimate of the services rendered thereby to the public. That it was desirable that the emoluments of offices appertaining to courts of law should not be permitted to fluctuate or to go beyond their estimate at their first institution. That Mr. Burke's bill had wisely stipulated against the unnecessary creation of places and offices, and that it would be expedient to follow up that stipulation by providing for the annual publicity of all such places." He then concluded with moving, "That a "committee be appointed to take into further consideration the third report of the committee of finance "on this day se'nnight." [From the papers laid on the table of the house of Commons, Mr. M. divided the pensions, sinecures, &c. into two classes. The unobjectionable amounted to 697,7471. 12s. 5d, and the objectionable or questionable to 822,2971. 16s. 5d. Grand Total, 152,0451. Ss. 8d.] Mr. Thornton seconded the mo tion. He Mr. Perceval said, that the statement of the hon. gentleman had been perfectly fair and candid in all its parts, and that he (Mr. Martin) was entitled to his personal thanks for the manner in which he had brought this subject forward. It had been thought that it might have come better from a person filling his situa tion; but, from the extraordinary demand of the other duties upon his time and attention, he had not leisure since the commencement of the sessions to pay it the attention it required. I had, however, fallen It into very competent hands. admitted that the report in question had suggested a variety of regula tions, of which he approved. He approved of the public being fully and accurately informed upon every point of public expenditure. It had been the system that had been acted upon by the late Mr. Pitt, and there could be no doubt but that it was the best to guard them against their being deceived or abused with misstatements. He threw it out for the consideration of the hon. gentleman, whether the resolutions could be car ried into any effect in the course of the present sessions. He apprehended they could not. At present he should support the motion for appointing a committee. Lord H. Petty said, that the house could not expect any great saving could result from the curtailment of this branch of the expenditure. That out of an expenditure of 80 millions annually, it was to be ex pected that excesses and abuses should spring. He hoped, however, the house would be always ready to give their assistance in checking them so far as possible. Mr. Rose approved of the motions of the hon. gentleman. Mr. Creevey said he had no objection to the resolutions proposed by his hon. and learned friend; he only begged that it might be understood that he should not be precluded from founding any other resolution on the same report. He believed the right hon. gentleman (Mr. Rose) felt tender on this point. He wished to know, however, how it happened, that in defiance of Mr. Burke's bill, though no addition could be made to the allowance of a Prince of the blood, yet the treasurer of the navy, in addition to his 2000l. a year and his house, should have 1500/. more from a fund not existing at the time of Mr. Burke's bill. It was his intention to call the attention of the house to this subject. On the subject of patent places, he could not see why those two which had belonged to Lords Bute and Sondes should have been abolished, and those which were held by the Marquis of Buckingham, Lords Grenville and Arden, were suffered to continue. Mr. Biddulph was sorry that any thing should have occurred to induce gentlemen on the other side of the house to suppose that there was no necessity for carrying these resolutions into effect during the present session. If one million could be saved on the whole expenditure of the country, he should esteem it nothing; but if 100,0001. could be saved in any one department of the expenditure, that he should think a great deal. If services were to be rewarded, he thought sinecures the very worst mode of rewarding them. He wished, therefore, that sinecures should be done away, and that public services should be rewarded in a manner not liable to be mis understood. He hoped the house would not degenerate into listlessness and inattention on such a subject, but would carry their ideas into effect during the present session of parliament. Mr. Peter Moore said he had never till lately understood that sums voted by parliament were for any other than public services. All others he conceived misapplications of the public money. The 95,0001. under Mr. Burke's act he esteemed sacred, but all beyond that sum he conceived to be illegal; and, in the committee, he should move that all such excess should be expunged and disallowed, as an imposition on the public. A noble lord had said it would be no relief to the people. This he denied; it would be Mexico and Peru to them. He begged to mention an anecdote which had oc curred to him within these few days. The representative of a noble family (the Colberts) in France had called for him, and seeing him take up a volume of the Annual Register, observed that the Livre Rouge had been the ruin of France, for that there it had been thought more hos nourable for a man to have 100 livers a-year from this, than 10,0001. a-year from his own property. After a few words from Mr. Magens, the motion was put and agreed to, that the house do this day se'nnight resolve into the said committee. - Tuesday, May 9. Lord Temple said, that he felt it his duty to call upon the house for its decision upon the conduct of those persons to whose management the most important trust that ever was committed to the hands of ministers was given-the management of the war in Spain. In the month of May, the first deputies from Spain arrived in this country; in July, Dupont's army surrendered, and by the first of August Joseph Bonaparte was driven from Madrid. In September Bonaparte sent a message to the senate, declaring his intention to put himself at the head of his armies, and march in person to quell the insurgents. Ministers knew of the immense reinforcements that were passing over the Pyrenees, but it was not until September that they resolved upon marching an army into the North of Spain. In excuse of this resolution, they could not plead that they had been deceived by their military commissioners. The noble lord took an opportunity to remark, that Bonaparte flew to his object on the wings of an eagle, while the noble secretary moved to oppose him on the back of a tortoise. He concluded with moving a series of resolutions to the following effect; "That it appears to this house, from documents laid upon the table, that the spirited resistance to the unprincipled usurpation of France manifested by the people of Spain was not seconded by timely assistance from this country; and that time was allowed to the enemy to send large bodies of troops into Spain, before the British army was sent into that country to support the Spanish cause. That no plan of operations was ever arranged by his Majesty's ministers with the government of Spain, by which his Majesty's forces could have been enabled to have acted in concert with the Spanish armies. That the capture of the Spanish fleet in the port of Ferrol was to be imputed to want of foresight on the part of his Majesty's ministers; and, that, in the whole conduct of the campaign in Spain, the hopes of the nation have been disappointed, the national treasures wasted, and the lives of upwards of 7000 of our soldiers sacrificed, without any adequate advantage obtained." Lord Castlereagh entered into a vindication of the conduct of his Majesty's ministers, and deprecated in the strongest terms the resolu tions proposed by the noble lord, which, he said, were the most futile that could possibly be formed against any government, and were marked throughout by a complete mistatement of facts, and a misrepresentation of the occurrences to which they alluded. His lordship trusted his Majesty's ministers would receive full credit for the general spirit and zeal with which they had acted, and for the energy they had shewn in the cause intrusted in their hands, and concluded by expressing a strong hope that the house would give a decided negative to the reso lutions proposed. Mr. Ponsonby contended, that the rash precipitation with which his Majesty's ministers plunged into Spanish affairs, was a conduct which imperiously called upon the house for such an expression of its sentiments as would operate in future, to prevent a repetition of such conduct in any of his Majesty's advisers. Mr. Canning took a view of the merits of the question, and combated the objectious raised against his Majesty's government with regard to Spanish affairs, and defended Lord Castlereagh. Mr. Tierney spoke on the other side, and observed, that from the evidence before the house, the noble lord was not to be trusted with the management of a corporal's guard, Mr. Bathurst, Lord H. Petty, and Mr. Whitbread, spoke on the same side, and Mr. Perceval, com-~ bated their arguments. On the question being called for, the house divided on Lord Temple's motion. For it 111,-Against it 230, Wednesday, May 10. Mr. Wardle, in bringing forward his promised motion on this subject, was not aware that any objection could be made to the production of the documents which he required, In the year 1797, a new mode of conducting the accounts of the war office had been established; from that circumstance a number of additional clerks were employed, and the expence, of course, was greatly increased. The excuse was, that this was done with the view of expediting the accounts. If the documents for which he should move, however, were granted to him, he should be able to shew that the expediting of the accounts, instead of being thereby accelerated, had been retarded. If, then, it was considered, that there went through the war office the sum of 14 or 15 millions annually, and that there was a great deal of confusion in the accounts of that branch, the necessity of an inquiry into the mode of conducting the accounts must be sensibly felt. He proposed shewing that this was the case, and he pledged himself to prove it, if the papers were granted; that since the period alluded to, change had followed change, yet that every change had been for the worse, and that confusion in the accounts was now greater than when a remedy was first proposed for it. The amount of the accounts outstanding in the war of fice was great. For managing of these accounts the expence paid was upwards of 50,0001. yet the business was not done. He would undertake to have the whole business executed for 30,0001. and that it should be regularly and well done. In the different alterations on the system, the accounts had been made from annual into monthly, and then into quarterly; and all these accounts were so confounded together, that it was impossible to know what was doing in the office. It appeared from the sixth report of the military commissioners that in this way 30,0001, had been lost to the country. It was to the system, not to this or the other government that he objected. It was not change that he wished; that would only go, as it had hither to done, from bad to worse. The commissioners said, in the sixth re port, that they could place no con fidence in the conduct of the business of that office. It was an extraordinary circumstance, that this should be the case with an office such as the war office. Any house in the city with accounts a great deal more difficult than those in the war office, except the badness of the system, it was known could make up their accounts every year, and why should not the war office? It was worthy of remark, that a second war office had sprung up a few years ago in Great George-street, and that salaries were paid to clerks who attended there once or twice in the week, but generally lived in the country; and he would ask for what? For settling the accounts of the volunteers, who, probably, assembled in arms once a year. He concluded by moving for copies of the annual regimental accounts of the war office, spcifying those settled and those not settled; also those which were annual report accounts, and warrant accounts, from 1797 to 1808, and also sepcifying whether for infantry, cavalry, artillery, &c. Mr. Whitbread and Mr. Moore both rose to second the motion. Lord Castlereagh did not rise to object to the motion. It could do no injury, but it could do little good. The commission was now sitting on the subject of these accounts. He agreed there must be a radical change in the system. Some progress was already made in it; it was a subject fit only for the executive government, and he could not see any use in the motion. Mr. Long also attributed the delay to the great variety of the accounts, every soldier, on account of the de ductions for meat, bread, &c. having a separate account for himself. Mr. Windham bore testimony to the diligence and intelligence of the gentlemen of the office. What they did not do, he was satisfied could cumstances. Lord H. Petty did not think that the question of his hon. friend had been yet answered. The regulation was then agreed to in committee, and leave given in the house to bring in the bill. not be done by the present system. modified according to existing cir After a short conversation between Messrs. Thornton, Bathurst, Huskisson, and Peter Moore, the motion was assented to. Mr. Parnell intimated his intention of submitting to the house some motion, early in the next session, respecting the superannuated persons in the receipt of pensions in Ireland, and discharging the duties of offices by deputy. Thursday, May 11. Mr. Rose moved for leave to bring in a bill for the better regulating our Intercourse with America. Mr. Whitbread took that opportunity of asking what was the actual state of our relations with America, for it did appear the orders in couneil were virtually abandoned.-He wished to know what was our relations with America at present ? Mr. Perceval and Mr. Rose contended, that the principle of the orders in council had not been abandoned, but that they, according to the original stipulations, had been Mr. Maddocks introduced his CHARGES AGAINST Mr. PERCE VAL AND LORD CASTLEREAGH, by moving, that the resolution of that house on the 10th of December 1779, be then read: it was read accordingly, and stated in substance, that it was highly criminal for any minister or ministers, or any other servant of the crown in Great Britain, directly or indirectly, to make use of the power of his office, in order to influence the election of members of parliament, and that an attempt to exercise that influence was an attack upon the dignity, the honour and the independence of par liament, an infringement of the rights and the liberties of the people, and an attempt to sap the basis of our happy constitution." Mr. Maddocks next moved the resolution of that house on the 25th day of April, 1809, be then readit was read accordingly, and alleged in substance, "That while it was the bounden duty of that house to maintain at all times a jealous guard upon its purity, and not to suffer any attempt upon its privileges to pass unnoticed, the attempt in the present instance (that of Lord Castlereagh and Mr. Reding), not ha ving been carried into effect, that house did not think it then necessary to proceed to any criminatory resolutions respecting the same." Mr. Maddocks then said, that before he proceeded to redeem the pledge he had given to the house of bringing forward the charges he had that day to adduce, he thought it not amiss to remind them of the opinion they had recorded of that criminal conduct, of which he then arose to |