The Statesman.
London, England, 1823-02-20 00:00:00

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°T.

it were meant by the hon. member to retract what he
paid of the gallant Colonel, he should retract the terms
which he used to reply to it. The hon. member's speech
was occupied In statirg that the irquiry of the Military
Comtnisinetners should be followed up ; —but it by no
-metes followed that they should be bound hand and
foot by that terrible. (hear, hear) But what did these
favourite Commissioners recommend? Why, Commis-
• sinners at /,2061. ti-yeatin place of a Board, anti a Lieut.
t;enerul at tee rite of. 1,500/. a year. What then would
. he gained by ?Wading*? A continual change of
, officers, and that clump for 'the gorse. After all, the
• onestion lore Was, if led& lent ground were ;hewn I r
the elision of the office of Lieut.-General, and nothing
else; The Hon. Mernher sadly treated the Ordnance
Offire; but lie begged to ask him if he were ever at the
• Booed; ever raw the business there conducted; if be
• were aware of all that had been dove (during the inter-
gegnem, if he ninst sn tall by his gallant friend, the
Sterekeeper•general, who not oply devoted his mornings,
but his evenings to the discharge of his duties, forgetful
disk own rale and comfort? He (Mr. IV.) didriot-know
• if !oldie servants were cided upon to hr !Caves. He
was not so Riling as the Hon. Member; and he hop,ol
'he (Mr. itroulol come in without pay, patronage, and
• . power,to do thehmsiness of the Ordnance. fur he would
• ;. do to Komi by lois misrepresentation. The honourable
member hid alike& the honk, if they would endure the
• circumstance of thus members of the Ordnance Board
being p.id rodreliian the Lords of the Admiralty? There
was iometlibiesp• tious, but, at the same time, moat fal-
lavious in this attempt. Ife,(llfr. W.) would say that the
• hon. member was ignorantly honese—he meant nothing
• in the least off. nsive by the phrase--what he meant was,
that he n as honest when he was properly Informed on his
• 'abject. it ilt all his knowledge of every thing and every
office, he hilted toask him if he never heard ut' Comm's-
stoners of the Navy, of the Viet nalline Department, andof a
• Paymaster of the Navy, besides th Lords of the Admiralty?
Weretlimoa offices to lie romps.el with that of the Ord-
! ranee? DA the Nevy Boards, tke Het/Moaner.. manu-
facture various articles ?—had they f sundries?—an arse-
nal they contract for supplies? For himself he
tboueht the Lay Lords of the Admiralty very inade-
quately volt. Mr. Pitt said their money pay was no.
Oleg; lout that they were paid by the honour of doing
a Ferrite to their country. As to t'.e increase of sala-
ries. the Hon. Member (Mr. Hume) r. (toted to tLe
tied of 1796 ; but Though the sal 'ries were increased,
they did not eqn .1 in atiourit what in 1796 was obtained
in tees. In his own office he had 3001. a-ye or less than
hie predecessor hail in 1796 —the goolen period to which
the lion. Member was so fond of reterriug. There was
beside ten per Cent. now taken off his salary ; and alto.
},ether, as he had just stated, be was 390/. myeior below
his preJecessor, asth all the increased labor which lie
ha•l to undergo. It was not for him to say what he did
—(hear, hear l) —At all events I.e wonl.l feel much obliged
to the Hon. Member if he wood.: move for an increase
, of ois (Mr. W.'s) adore when lie would forgive him
too all the trouble he bad caused him (Mr. W ). In 1796
the Irish Ordnance was not attach-oh to the Enlist,; in
fact, tie- n hole of the Hon. Member's speech to night,
aas vitiating but a recliatiffe of what occurred two ye its
zoo, and he (Mr. IV.) would not travel over the Mile
gown Haying demonstrated that the Report of the
Commissioners was founded on no evidence; and, there-
for.., that their recommendations should be the less at-
tended •o—be though', eve if lie let the question here,
lie had dare enough to shew that the Office of Lieuten-
ant-General was of great utility, and ought not to be abo.
liaised. But he could not sit 'loon without stating testy
seasons ashy it mould be impassiWe to abolish it. The duties
wethe Barrack Board were nnw thrown upon the Ordnance ;
and was there soothing saved by it? TheComptrollirof bar-
racks had 1500/. a year, his Deputy 1,000, and the Irish
Comptroller above 20001. a year. Here then was 450111. a
year at once extinguished ; and yet the Hon. Member had
the grace to say, " We'll work yon to the last point apse
strength, and now we'll take 16001. a year from you."
Would en English House of Commons say that such a
Let:welling was just ? Did the Lieut.-Gen. of the Ordnance
410 nothing? if so, it would be fair to dispense with
him ; hut it only required to state what the Barreled( bit.'
sinew was, to prove how actively he was employed. Not
only the Barrack busineen hut, in other ways, the busi-
ness of the office, was generally enhanced by the late ar-
rangements of Use Master-lieneral. Stores and provi-
sions were formerly msraged in the Colonies by a num-
ber of clerk', who acted as checks; but this was liable
togreat abuse, and the source of great defalcations,
which for a time baffled every one's attention. Bat the
present Master-General, with that prevoyance which
eculisrly characterises hint, had prevented these abuses.
lie removed all the clerks of the checks, and issued Or-
ders that all these charged with the distribution of pay
or stores should, on pain of dismissal, send home month-
ly returns, to be checked by the issues at home. All this
maw fell upon the Ordnance. With respect to the Bar-
racks, there were 100 in Great Britain alone, the ac-
counts of *bit+ were kept under four beads—the corres-
ponding, the account, the store, aid the building—and
not a day passed without some business being done un-
der each. Was all that nothing? There were above 100
Barracks also in Ireland, equally pressing on the Ord-
napce Office here, and peculiarly cooling within the su-
pervision of the Lieut.-General of the Ordnance. Yet
this was the period at which the Hon. Member wished to
cripple the offite Then apain um; the Commissariat
Drpartinent thrown upon the Ordnance. Contracts
ere to lie made, packages for civil and military uses to
lie packed up and sent off ; and at present a plan was be-
fore the Ordnance for building an iron steeple to be
sent off for a church at Trinidad. If any Gentleman
would go through all this multifarious business for mere
honour, lie (Mr. W.) feared he would be soon heartily
tired of it. He did not know that he had much more to
say. He would not move the previous question, for he
considered he had offered sufficient grounds to reject the
motion altogether.—(Hear, hear!)—
Mr. WILLIAMS (Lincoln) observed, that the charge
of be:ng a good tactition, applied more forcibly to the
last speaker, than to hi, Hon. Friend (Mr. lime). The
lion. Member (Mr. W.) made many reprisals, ant ended
them by charging his Hon. Friend with a perversion of
the opinions of the Military Inquiry, and a misconcep ion
of the evidence on which it was founded. He, fur one,
slid not are why, if the situation which the Hon. Member
tiled was of such excessive labour as lie had described,
that Hon. Gentleman might not ease himself from those
laborious duties by retirement from the; office. He
thought the proposition of his Hon. Friend bail been
treated with ondoeerved and ill-thned jecelarity, not at
all suPed to the gravity of the subject.
.If the objection
urged against the Commissioners were well founded,
namely, that choir opinion was not to be received with
any degree of weight consideration 'from incompe-
'envy to discharge those duties as Commissioners of Mi-
l-tory Inquiry, why had Hot Iliovernmeet propue d the
appointment of more competent Coutinissioners: It was
Issithhose Gentlemen hail perverted the evideni e of Lord
Chatham. Now, that Noble. Lord only stated, generally,
that the Lieutenant Getierril of the dr.:lance bad very
serious olutio ato perform. Was it fit on this occa.ion to
coon the si hole of the Report of these Commissioners,
which formed at le.ist a goailly quarto volume? The
*hole night would not he sufficient fur 14.11 an un ler-
tak sag. he Comooissioners had, in fact, said the (Mite
of the Lieutenant tieneral should be abieished, with the
iew that the Master General shohl,l be confined to the
ntire pet foruaance of his duty. If it were to be abolished,
it most be through the interference of Government, or
else they had not dose their duty. Was this p'ace too
created unnecessarily, or for the sake of patronage ? But
eutwi hatanding this recommendation of the Commission-