spirit of the act.-The hon. gentleman had proceeded to another objection, that when the memorials were presented for payment, the treasury had not, according to the direction of the statute, complied with the demands of the parties interested. To that, he trusted, he could give an answer, which even to the hon. gentleman himself would appear satisfactory. He grounded it on the plea of necessity: for at the time when the memorials were presented for payment, there was no money in the treasury. Perhaps, however, the hon. gentleman would ask, why the treasury had not provided the proper sums to answer demands which they knew were to be made on them? He should answer that question, by pleading the statements which he had formerly made on the same subject. The extraordinaries were of such a nature, that it could not be foreseen to what sum they might exactly amount; if they consequently exceeded any sum at which they had been previously calculated, they could not be otherwise provided for, than by taking from the establishment those sums which were necessary for defraying them. It should also be considered, that the extraordinaries were indispensable branches of the public service, which could not be carried on without the most rigid punctuality in the payment of them.

He should say a few words on the subject of the application of the vote of credit to past services, which the hon. gentleman considered as a proceeding for which ministers exposed themselves to blame. In direct opposition to the hon. gentleman, he would maintain, that the application of the vote of credit to past services, was not only proper, but just and necessary. Did the hon. gentleman mean to say, that the army money was not to be used for extraordinaries, and did he propose to establish it as a true proposition, that the exchequer bills were to be disposed of, and paid at a great loss, for the purpose of coming within the act of parliament? If that was his meaning, by such a system the public would suffer in a most material way, for government could not, according to that statement, dispose of money then in their hands, for the payment of extraordinaries, while, to the vast prejudice of the public interest, they would be obliged to part with exchequer bills at a considerable loss, and that to answer the very purpose for which they had already in their pos

session sufficient sums of money. Did the hon. gentleman call that measure economy? Was that a part of his plan for the public retrenchment?-He next came to the charge of falsehood in the disposition paper, which the hon. gentleman had so strongly urged. There had never been, he maintained, from the accession to the present moment, any disposition paper laid on the table of the House, which was not equally liable to the same charge as that brought forward by the hon. gentleman against the present disposition paper. During all that period the same kind of paper had been laid before the House, without any variation. Gentlemen would, therefore, judge with what justice the hon. gentleman could make a charge against ministers of wishing to deceive parliament. The paper had been signed during the present reign by Mr. Speer, the clerk of the revenue, a gentleman of great respectability, and was laid on the table of the House as a matter of course; and so lit tle did he conceive it to be an object of any consequence, that he had not at any time mentioned a word on the subject matter of it to the gentleman whose office it was to sign it. If, therefore, the hon. gentleman considered the paper as guilty of falsehood, he trusted he would acquit him of any share in that weighty charge. The hon. gentleman had set out with declaring that the statements contained in the paper were fallacious, and calculated to mislead the judgment of parliament; but it so happened that there was not one word respecting any particular statement to be found in any part of it. The title of the paper was in itself a refutation of what had been urged on the strength of it. It was an account of the sums of money expended for the public services in the year 1795, to March 1796, and was disposed under the several heads. It was liable to be taken in two senses: the first was, with regard to the items respectively applied, and so the hon. gentleman took it. But there was also another interpretation to which it was liable, and the hon. gentleman would find that it contained a distinct statement of the various heads of service which usually occurred in public accounts, such as navy, ordnance, land forces, &c. It was unquestionably true, that it took notice of every item of expense, and drew a total of the whole under the column of sums granted, and then gave separately the

sums granted and the sums paid; but the hon. gentleman had not, with his usual acuteness, observed, that it had only mentioned the items in general terms; for unhappily for that very material part of his charge, and on which he so much relied, instead of any sums being annexed to the items, there were only to be found opposite to them perfect blanks. -He had now gone through the different heads of charge advanced by the hon. gentleman, and had given such answers as appeared to him decisive upon the subject. He concluded by observing, that though he might not have much to expect from the candour of the hon. gentleman, he had every reliance on the candour and conviction of the House.

Mr. Fox said, he had listened as attentively as he could to the very able speech of the right hon. gentleman. What struck him first upon reviewing that speech was, that the right hon. gentleman had made great exertion where there was the least occasion for exertion, in point of real argument. Where his hon. friend who had made the motion, had dwelt the least, there the right hon. gentleman had been the most elaborate in his answer. Where his hon. friend had been the most forcible, there the right hon. gentleman had been the least explicit. The part on which the right hon. gentleman had been the most successful, was that which went simply to state, that the whole which had been done by administration, against the letter of the law, was the result of necessity. On this he had justified the whole of his extraordinaries. Now, if any gentleman had heard the defence, without having heard the accusation, he would have thought that the accusation was merely the incurring of any extraordinaries at all, not that they had been incurred improvidently, or that they had been withheld improperly from the House, or that when incurred or provided for, the money voted for them had not been applied to their discharge. With respect to army extraordinaries, he would say, in a general way that, to a certain degree, they were evils unavoidable. He said this without diffidence, because extraordinaries had been recognized by the House of Commons, precisely under the description which he was then giving of them. The minister himself had admitted extraordinaries to be an evil, but had contended that they were necessary. This was the answer which he gave to that part of the

charge, although, by what he had said, he had admitted them to be, to a certain degree, contrary to the principles of the constitution. He must, therefore, con tend, that these practices, which partook of an unconstitutional nature, ought to be avoided as much as possible. The right hon. gentleman had maintained, that if the expenses of the year exceeded what the executive government had foreseen, and that in matters which required immediate payment, we must pay that service which had that necessary demand upon us; and when that necessity demanded it, we must so far obey the act of appropriation. Undoubtedly, this would always be true, if it was to be argued generally, as the minister was pleased to argue it now; and this sort of argument would be applicable to any other law, as well as the Appropriation act, inevitable necessity being an answer to every thing. This certainly, taken in its full extent, would apply to any act of parliament, as well as the Appropriation act. It would, in short, apply to every thing as a general rule, and only be subject to some particular exceptions.-The right hon. gentleman had alluded to the case which was debated in 1744, where the House had inquired into the disposition of 40,000l. Upon that question the House had determined, that the conduct of the executive was deserving of praise, instead of censure. He had no doubt of the regularity of that determination. Had he been a member at that time, he believed he should have voted in the majority upon that occasion. What principle did the agitation of that question inculcate? It showed us this, that 145 members of the House of Commons of that day, thought that the slightest deviation from the letter of the Appropriation act deserved to be censured. But what was the accusation here? Not that the payment of a particular bill drawn should not be made, when that became necessary for the service; such an accusation his hon. friend was incapable of making; but that the extraordinaries had for a long time been studiously concealed from the House. It had been stated, that in a book, which he admired as much as any one did, and also in the report of a committee of that House in 1782, the extraordinaries of the American war were censured. They certainly were so. The right hon. gentleman had stated that the extraordinaries were very great in that

war, and that administration could not now be blamed for these extraordinaries, any more than they were at that time. But, the case was widely different between the condition of that administration and the present. However desirable it might be to put an end to extraordinaries at that moment, it was absolutely impossible. Was the case the same with the right hon. gentleman? Indignant as he professed himself to be at the amount of these extraordinaries, coming into power upon these principles, and presiding in the government of the country during seven years of peace, one would naturally have expected, that in this particular at least, there would have been some radical reform; instead of which, the present minister laid before parliament accounts of extraordinary expenses which far exceeded any that were ever incurred by his predecessors. The right hon. gentleman had talked of our extraordinaries being no more than four million in three years. The fact was they exceeded that amount in this very year; and upon this part of the subject the right hon. gentleman had made for himself deductions which he did not allow in his calculations to lord North. -He next proceeded to observe that the minister had that day defended himself by referring to the American war, the practice of which they had all reprobated, and the right hon. gentleman most of any, this was a little singular, but however, so it was, and the House would do well to observe it. The right hon. gentleman had taken up considerable time upon this, and he was sorry he had imitated him in that respect, for the point was too clear to require much argument. The great matter to be explained was, how did it happen that when the House had voted sums for extraordinaries, that these sums were not applied to the purposes for which the House thought they were intended? That the services were not paid for as provided? He wished to know why they were delayed after they were provided for? He wished to know in particular why the payment of the clothing of the army had been so long delayed, and that contrary to the express direction of the act of parliament passed for that purpose? Why! the right hon. gentleman would say, because money allowed for that purpose was applied necessarily to other services. Surely, however, that complaint should not have existed an hour after the vote of the next, which included all these

allowances, and made up all these deficiences. How did the minister answer this? By acknowledging a system which tended to bring our finances into a state of greater confusion than any man in this country had ever thought of before. The system of the right hon. gentleman was, that new votes for old demands should, at the discretion of the executive government, be applied to the discharge of still newer demands, so that to the uncertainty of the application of money voted by parliament, there was to be no end. How was it possible to come to any clearness in practice upon such a system? What excuse could there be made for such confusion? Why not apply money in general to the purpose for which it was specifically voted? The extraordinaries were generally voted early in the session. At least he was entitled to ask, why we did not pay off arrears of former years, for which sums had been specifically voted?-To put this point in another way, the minister should hereafter candidly declare, that although he called on parliament to vote a sum of money for a particularly described purpose, he nevertheless meant to apply it to another. He heartily wished that there might come a system by which they should understand directly what it was they were doing. That, if necessary, the House might vote so much occasionally for the deficiency of supply of each preceding year under that head specifically. Although this would appear extraordinary, he could not help thinking it would be a considerable improvement in the mode of transacting the business of the public. They would then annually see how much the preceding year was deficient, and clearness was essential in the transacting of business. That, therefore, instead of voting any extraordinaries, there should be voted sums to satisfy all demands for services, the payments of which had not been fulfilled on account (to make use of a favourite expression of the minister) of the diversion of former services. It would be better to do so at once; for that in substance, although not in letter, they had been a long time doing. That would not be a more substantial disobedience of the law than the present practice, and it would be accompanied with the advantage of being more intelligible to the public. On what principle was it, that instead of settling our arrears, they left those arrears standing on account of the necessity of settling

new demands? Let the House see to what this practice would lead. The minister said that new demands were often more urgent than arrears. Granted. The vote of credit was exhausted. These new demands might be stated to the House, and then they should provide for them as they occurred, instead of postponing the payment of arrears, instead of distressing those who accused them of that shameful and scandalous mode of conduct. These arrears fell heavy on the persons to whom they were due first; afterwards on the executive government, and finally heavy on the mass of the people, who must bear the whole of their load eventually. If some regulation was not adopted upon this, where were they to end? The minister said, that these were extraordinary services for which it was necessary to appropriate money in preference to other services of last year. If the fact were so, he must observe, that, unless some regulation be made of this, new services would follow one another, so that the House of Commons, or the people, could never know that the money was applied to the purposes for which the law required it to be applied. Besides the perpetual confusion which such arrangements must produce in our accounts, how was parliament to know where this system would end? We might go on perpetually contracting debt, and perpetually voting extraordinaries for past deficiencies, but which were applied to new demands leaving always the arrears unpaid.

Having said thus much on the violation of the Appropriation act, he came next to the consideration of the Paymasters' act; which, he contended, had also been most positively and unnecessarily broken. If the bank would not receive the exchequer bills, which it was admitted they had a right to reject, why did not government issue money in another way for the purpose for which these bills were issued? They afterwards, it seemed, came to some arrangement with the bank; but supposing that this arrangement had never taken place, to what situation would they have been reduced? Had the bank, or had it not, a right to refuse these bills? They certainly had. They did refuse them for some time; the consequence of which was a breach of the act of parliament. And if this arrangement had never taken place, ministers would have been precisely in the situation of doing for a longer time, what they actually did for a short time, and

then the inconvenience to the public would have been prodigious.

He then came to the disposition-paper. He had listened very attentively to what the minister called an explanation of that subject, and he must confess that he did not hear any thing that appeared to him to excuse or palliate the minister's conduct upon the subject; of what was in itself a breach of a positive law without a just cause for it. It was said, that it had been the constant practice of the House to violate the Appropriation act: that a committee had reported its disapprobation of the breach of that act, but that as parliament had never done any thing against the mode of appropriating money to the discharge of the extraordinaries from time to time, they seemed by that silence to admit there was no possibility of preventing the abuse. He would not then question the validity of that reasoning. He owned, however, it appeared to him to be at least doubtful. It seemed to him to be a little hasty, to say that parliament had made no law against this practice with regard to extraordinaries, and that therefore they did not disapprove of the practice. But when parliament had declared, as decidedly they had done, that it was contrary to the principles of the constitution, they must be supposed at least to think that the existing laws were sufficient, if properly enforced, to remedy the evil. But, said the right hon. gentleman, parliament, by making no provision to prevent these extraordinaries encroaching on the Appropriation act, showed they connived at it. He would grant the minister the whole force of this argument. If parliament were of this sentiment, the more force there must be in the acts which they had really passed, and which were declaratory of their sentiments on this subject, because those who connived at some abuses, must surely be well convinced of others before they prohibited them. Thus, by relying on what they had not done, the right hon. gentleman had given double weight to what they had done in the way of prohibition. What had they said on the clothing of the army? When parliament despaired, if the minister pleased, of adopting any general regula tion against extraordinaries, they declared certain things must be done, and ordered a strict and literal observance with regard to the clothing of the army. For this purpose they directed the paymaster to make certain memorials at certain times;