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the disposal and patronage of the army, for which he would be accountable to that House; it would prevent young officers from commanding old ones; it would prevent the army being in such a situation as described by an hon. friend of his (Mr. Courtenay) some time since, when he said, they were not fit to meet an enemy in the field, and were only formidable to the constitution and liberties of their country. He could not consider the army estimates without at the same time considering the Ordnance, where he found sums for increasing fortifications, at some islands 2,000l. at others 3,000l. Though such sums were trivial, yet they put him under the necessity of combining the whole to form his vote, which confirmed him in his opposition; it was a change of the system of defence; a change which, he contended, was unwise, and proved by facts, that islands with garrisons that could not be forced, might be taken, instancing Gardaloupe in the year 1759, which was taken by the English troops, though the garrison was too strong for the English troops to attack.

should look for security in the internal defence of Great Britain. But the objections against a standing army in this country did not apply to remote settlements, where the situation was in islands of a small extent, at a great distance from the mother country, and therefore not so much within the reach of the assistance of the main body of our forces, and where the constitution could receive no check, no injury, no infringement from any inimical exertion. That the minister had reasons to produce, sufficiently cogent to convince any man in that House, he doubted not; and those reasons it would give him great pleasure to have brought forward; but, if they were of such a nature as ought not publicly to be promulgated, and the minister asked a vote of credit for his conduct, he was ready to grant it, and looked for his security on his conduct already past, which had brought the country to an ele vation of glory from a depressure of despondency. The manner in which this had been effected would make him wish to put in the mouth of the right hon. gentleman the words of a Roman orator, in a situation not totally dissonant: Sine cæde, sine sanguine, sine exercitu, sine dimicatione

Mr. Henniker congratulated the country, that after dangers nearer home had been diverted or subdued, our thoughts'me uno togato duce, et imperatore vicissis.' were turned to support, and to maintain the distant extremities of the British dominions. He had been one, and he boasted to have been one, of those who gave a vote against the system of fortifications proposed to be established in this country some time ago; and he agreed with a right hon. gentleman that in that he did essential service to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and stood forward, with many other of his friends, to shield him from the consequence of a measure, that in his opinion must have brought mischief both on himself and the country. But, however warmly he might disapprove of that system, he could see nothing similar to it in the present. A great respect he had for the individuals of both our armaments, naval and military; and yet, considering that the army might be converted to bad purposes, and that the navy could do us benefit without limit, and could not possibly do us injury; he confessed that it was with somewhat of a jealous eye that he beheld the one, whilst he looked up to the other as a potent, firm, and constitutional mode of defence. He wished not this country to be defended by a standing army; it was from the militia, the vital blood of the constitution, that he

Alderman Sawbridge said, that he did not put that implicit faith in the conduct of ministers which had been so unlimitedly granted by some gentlemen; he thought that the measure then under consideration, was sufficient to caution him against too great a confidence in their schemes; an augmentation of the army in this country might effectuate every design which an unconstitutional minister chose to adopt; the military would prove excellent collectors of taxes; they were capable of adjusting all disputes of a constitutional nature, without the trouble of much investigation; they could crush all opposition to the obnoxious measures of any administration, they could even, as had been in the instance of the interference of the Prussian army, regulate the constitution of a government. All these advantages of a standing army, he was ready to admit; but he trusted, that this country would never have occasion for assistance, so hostile to the spirit of its government; yet if the present augmentation proposed by the minister, was carried into effect, it would give him very serious cause of alarm, as well for the liberty of the subject as the safety of the constitution.

Sir Joseph Mawbey rose, at all times,

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he said, with strong prejudices against a standing force; but, if the necessity of the augmentation was justifiable by the circumstances that gave rise to it, he should give it his hearty assent. The French were a people that ought to be cautiously watched by this country; and he firmly believed, from their restless and ambitious character, they would not permit us to remain a long time in a quiet state; but if this country could get the king of Prussia, or any other great potentate on the back of France, he conceived that it would materially affect the balance of power in Europe, and occasion it to preponderate in our favour. The intended reduction of the household troops was a measure which met with his hearty concurrence: although he did not wish to see the prerogative of his Majesty abridged, yet he had ever considered those corps as possessing more of ornament than real utility; and he was therefore happy to learn that a reduction in the expense of their establishment was intended. He alluded to the situation of the army of France, and made a comparative statement of their present numbers with those which were established at a previous period of peace.

Mr. Martin said, that it was with pain that he at any time gave his vote contrary to the wishes of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, because he was conscious of his good intentions; but he ever had been an enemy to augmentations of the army. Unless he heard some better reason for the augmentation proposed in the West Indies than had already been given, he should feel himself under the necessity of voting for the Amendment when brought forward.

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Mr. Fox expressed his astonishment at not discovering some better and more satisfactory reason assigned for the proposed increase of the establishment for the plantations, than the two words mentioned, that ministers had found the West Indies, upon investigating their situation during the late transactions on the continent, to be rather subjects of anxiety' than of ' comfort.' These words were fortified only by the opinions of the officers and commanders on the West-India islands, as to the force they severally thought requisite for the defence of the islands they commanded. For a committee of the House of Commons to vote away the money of their constituents, upon such grounds as those, would be one of the

most singular instances of blind confidence in a minister that ever had been imagined possible, and could be justified only by an universal confession of that House, that such was their personal regard for the minister, such their implicit, unlimited, and extraordinary confidence, that they were ready to trust him generally with the whole management and execution of the various offices of government, to give up their parliamentary functions, to resign all pretensions to investigation, check, and control, and readily to vote whatever he should be pleased to desire, without hearing a single reason stated for the innovations that he might choose, one after another, to introduce. Instances might occur in which it would prove both wise and necessary to place a full confidence in ministers, and to give them credit for the just application of the confidence so placed in them. For example, the minister had charged 80,000l. secret service money expended during the late affair in Holland. That was an occasion of the sort to which he was referring. He had there given the minister his confidence freely and readily. And why? Because the event of the transaction sufficiently proved that a wise use had been made of the money, and that it had been well laid out. So again in other cases of a single and temporary nature. Even now, if the minister had come and proposed an augmentation of the army abroad for a single year, he might have been induced to have given him his confidence, upon his saying, “ I have a reason for this augmentation, sufficiently cogent to warrant it, but I cannot explain it to the House at present." That would have been a fit occasion for confidence, and the executive government must have had credit for the validity of the reason, though it was not explained. But when a measure was meant to be perma nent, as in the present instance, the House could not, consistently with their duty to their constituents, blindly give the minister credit for the propriety of his suggestion. They were bound to call for the reasons upon which it was grounded, to examine those reasons seriously and accurately, and to reject or approve the proposition, according as it should appear to their judgment to merit rejection or approbation.

With regard to the peace establishment of the army, Mr. Fox said, he had been one of those ministers who proposed it, and when he came down to the House for

cause the effect of such a circumstance enabled that House to save the money of their constituents, and to lessen their peace establishment. It was now rather a time to disarm and reduce the army, than a time for its increase. Of whom were we afraid? Of our new friends? If apprehensions on their account, and the necessity for taking the last shilling out of the pockets of their constituents, arose from continental connexions and our late alliances, greatly as he had professed himself the advocate and admirer of such connexions and alliances, he would abjure all such doctrines as heretical and false, and abandon them for ever.

that purpose, his expectation was, that it would have been thought too large, not too small. That expectation, had been fulfilled, and it had been argued at the time, that the peace establishment of the army, considering the diminished state of the empire, ought to have been still more reduced. In order to show upon what principles he had settled the plantation peace establishment in 1783, Mr. Fox took a view of the different state of our colonies at the conclusion of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1749, and at the conclusion of the Peace of 1762. By some, he said, it had been brought forward as an argument, that with all America in our possession, our peace establishment ought to be larger than without it, and upon that proposition it was that the plantation peace establishment of the year 1763, when the whole of America was in our hands, was greater than that of 1749, when great part of Louisiana, all Canada, and the other provinces of America, were in the hands of the French. At present, we had less of America than at either of those periods; we had lost thirteen entire colonies, and the island of Minorca. His peace establishment for the plantations had therefore taken a medium, and being nearly the same with that of 1749, was not so large as that of 1763.

Upon the comparison, allowing the argument respecting the possession of all America to be well founded, his establishment might be liable to censure for its large extent, and expense; but it surely could not be questioned as too limited and too narrow. Why was it, then, now to be altered? Did the accounts we had of late years received from the United States of America give us any reason for apprehension from that quarter? Surely not. Their situation could not be cause of alarm. To what reason, then, was he to ascribe the present proposed augmentation? Was it solely because ministers saw more cause of anxiety than comfort, when they turned their attention to our distant possessions? Had no other consideration excited their anxiety? For instance, had the state of the navy been regarded by them without anxiety? He had on a former day declared that he joined freely in applauding the late attempts to regain some continental connexions. Why was he an advocate for such connexions? Because, by creating a diversion for France nearer home, we weakened her powers of hostile attack abroad. Be

A worthy baronet behind him (sir Joseph Mawbey) had created a smile when he mentioned the increase of the army as necessary to keep pace with the increasing army of France, since we had agreed to disarm our navy and reduce it. He verily believed that this was the true reason of the present proposed augmentation of the military establishment in the plantations; for what else could account for so extraordinary a condition respecting. our navy in the Counter-declaration of France? If so, France had reason to triumph in the event of the late transactions, and not we, for France had obtained a rational and a great object. At no time had Prance been unwilling that we should increase our army. She was wiser, and knew it was the increase of our navy and not our military that she had to dread.

Mr. Fox alluded to lord Chatham's famous expression that "America had been conquered in Germany," which, though bold and figurative, was not, he said, untrue. In like manner the converse of the proposition was founded, and, last war, America had been lost for want of a continental war in Germany. Mr. Fox reasoned upon the policy of economy, and contended that it was by a judicious saving of our resources alone, that we could enable ourselves to meet a war and its difficulties when a war should arise. He reminded the Committee of the speech of Cicero, before the Roman senate, when he had, in one of his orations, in substance said, that "the example of Julius Cæsar was more forcible than any argument which he could urge." France was, in the present case, to us, what Julius Cæsar was to Rome. France had an army of 160,000 men, a powerful marine, and her frontier towns, such as Lisle, and others, were in complete repair. What,

then, could have induced France to incur the disgrace resulting from her late conduct? Nothing, but her inability to go to war in consequence of the miserably exhausted state of her finances; exhausted by the impolitic extent of her military preparations. Were we, then, so unwise as to follow the steps that had led France to ruin, and to take up a system of expensive preparations that had been abandoned by all Europe? Mr. Fox took notice of what had fallen from his hon. friend (colonel Fitzpatrick) respecting a commander in chief, declaring, that he was more than ever convinced of the necessity of there being a commander in chief of the army, a war minister or ministers who would take upon themselves the responsibility for military measures. In the present case, the Secretary at War who opened the estimate had mentioned the opinion of the officers and commanders in the West Indies, as those who had been consulted as to the quantum of force necessary for each island. Such persons would have been the last authority he should have resorted to, and their opinions those which he should have been the least anxious to obtain; because nothing could be more obvious than that each commander of an island would demand as large a force as he thought equal to his responsibility, and would govern himself in his requisition merely by a regard to his own particular situation; whereas, in judging of a proper peace establishment for the whole possessions of Great Britain, much depended on a general and comprehensive view of all its parts, and their exigencies, relatively compared; a matter to which a commander in chief, or a war minister, could alone be competent.

From the attempt of that day to increase the permanent peace establishment of the army, it was evident that he was the only minister that had ever been chargeable with having refused to take the money out of the pockets of the people when he ought to have done so, or to have established too small a standing army in time of peace. With regard to patronage, also, which had been charged against him as the object of his pursuit when in office, respecting the army at least, he had that day been fully acquitted by the Secretary at War, since the right hon. baronet had explicitly declared, that for the five last years not a single promotion had been made but by purchase, and had stated the want of patronage as a serious incon

venience resulting from the plan of seconding the officers of the reduced regiments. Mr. Fox reminded the Committee, that in the year 1780, a vote had passed, "that the influence of the Crown had increased, was increasing, and ought to be dimi nished," and that some measures had subsequently been taken for its diminution; but, that the abundance of new commissions which had been since passed, and the number of places since created, amply made up for the diminution; and he contended, that the patronage that would result from the proposed augmentation must necessarily increase it abundantly. He asserted, that it was unfair to reckon upon the whole saving that would be occasioned by the employ of the seconded officers in the new companies, since, though little had, as he believed, as yet arisen from their deaths, more would every day accrue as they died off.

With regard to the Hessian Treaty, he declared himself a friend to it; but the passage of it that appeared to countenance the introduction of Hessian troops into Great Britain required explanation. He recapitulated the effect of the jealou sies that had formerly arisen on that head, and mentioned the late lord Chatham's having differed from the minister (Mr Pelham) when he held an office under him, and said, that his great argument in favour of the militia being instituted, rested entirely on the plea that it would prevent the possibility of there ever again arising the smallest necessity for employing Hessian troops within the realm. He acknowledged that he had supported the proposi tion of last year of not calling out the militia so frequently as had been the practice before, and as was the wish of many gentle. men, who were not only his particular political friends, but in every point of view most respectable characters, and declared that he did it from a consideration, that the economy of the new measure was a greater national advantage than any benefit which could result from continuing to call them out as usual. He mentioned also the late lord Chatham's having always declared himself an advocate for a strong navy and a reduced army, and contrasted the late lord's conduct in both particulars with that of the present minister, declaring that although he himself as well as the right hon. gentleman might handsomely and honourably differ, in some of their political opinions, from those of the persons to whom they owed every endearing

degree of vigilance against being surprised into the sanction of a permanent measure, which could not afterwards be recalled or remedied.

Mr. Bastard said, that if the right hon. gentleman had alluded to him, when he talked of the impropriety of gentlemen placing a blind and implicit confidence in the minister, a confidence without bound or limitation, he had utterly misapprehended his meaning. He certainly had a confidence in the minister, in consequence of the late wise exertions; but he had expressly declared, that he nevertheless thought it the duty of every member to watch every separate measure of importance that was brought forward; that he did not approve of augmentations of the army, generally considered; and that he should feel it incumbent on him to vote against the proposed augmentation unless the minister ex. plained the reasons for such an augmentation in a satisfactory manner, or declared that there were reasons which, from their nature, ought not to be publicly explained, that made him desire such an instance of personal confidence.

filial obligation, it was rather extraordinary, that the right hon. gentleman should appear to have countenanced the introduction of foreign troops into Great Britain, in preference to calling out the militia, and to have consented to a stipulation with France to reduce the naval force of the country, and then come forward with a proposition for an augmentation of the army. Mr. Fox said, that the 36,000l. expense incurred by the Hessian Treaty must certainly be added to the increase of the army estimates, whereas he had considered it as enabling us to increase our marine, and protect the WestIndia islands with a naval force. He stated as another objection to the proposed plan, the unhealthy climate of our West-India islands, and declared, that if the augmentation had been applied any where else, he should have better liked it. He mentioned Nova Scotia as a healthy colony, and said, that it would have been a better station for a military force than the West-Indies, and the troops would have been sufficiently near at hand in time of danger. He spoke also of the dispersion and distance of the West-India islands from each other, the uncertainty of sea voyages, and the constant uniformity of trade winds and tides, as other sources of inconvenience, which amounted to a corroboration of the impolicy of having a large land force locked up in the islands.

Mr. Fox next returned to his first reasoning upon what he stated to be of an unparliamentary and unconstitutional tendency, the inclination to put a confidence without bound or limit in the minister, in a case where he contended implicit confidence ought not to be granted. He called, therefore, upon those who were real friends of the minister, to join with him in convincing him of their sincerity, by making their stand there; and though they had concurred with him, and with the public, in giving due praise to the right hon. gentleman for the spirit and happy event of their exertions in the course of the year, convince him that they meant him better, than blindly to follow in supporting all his plans, whether explained satisfactorily and sufficiently, or introduced without a single reason that could tend to impress a conviction of their propriety. The hour of triumph, Mr. Fox added, was that of all others in which it was the most necessary to be cautious, and to guard with more than an ordinary [VOL. XXVI.]

Mr. Pitt said, that the reply of the hon. gentleman who had just spoken in explanation of his own argument, was the most complete answer that could be desired in refutation of what the right hon. gentleman had thought it necessary to employ the greatest share of his reasoning, and the largest portion of his eloquence, to impress on the House. It totally overset the false idea, that on the present occasion, a degree of blind confidence was expected by ministers. This the right hon. gentleman well knew had neither then been desired, nor was it likely that any man should stand up in that House and presume to lay claim to so boundless a concession. The right hon. gentleman had been pleased to say, that the sole reasons assigned in justification of the proposed augmentation was, because ministers, during the late alarming transactions, had been induced to behold the West-India islands rather as the cause of anxiety than of comfort. An evident proof this, that the right hon. gentleman, on the one hand, was ready to charge a declaration of blind and implicit confidence without a reason being assigned to them for their granting it, on those who never made such a declaration, and to charge on others a demand of confidence without their having stated their [40]

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