lar discipline may perhaps be necessary, than can be expected from a mere militia. And therefore at such times particular provisions have been usually made for the raising of armies, and the due regulation and discipline of the soldiery; which are to be looked upon only as temporary excrescences, bred out of the distemper of the state, and not as any part of the permanent and perpetual laws of the kingdom. For martial law, which is built upon no settled principles, but is entirely arbitrary in its decisions, is, as sir Matthew Hale observes, in truth and reality no law, but something indulged, rather than allowed as a law."

His lordship then declared, that the best code of martial law was liable to objection, and that our military laws in many instances called for revision and amendment. He argued on the danger of blindly adopting the proceedings of a jurisdiction circumscribed by military rules, and which differed so essentially from the proceedings of the civil judicature. The comment of the executive branch of government ought not to weigh one moment against his noble friend, either with their lordships or the public. Was the loose censure of a Judge Advocate to be considered, as "a censure worse than death" to a man of honour?

After dwelling for some time on this point, his lordship instanced the case of sir Robert Walpole, to shew in what a different manner that House had conducted itself upon that occasion. After arguing that point with considerable strength, and applying it to the present, his lordship proceeded to state the merits of his noble friend, since he had been in the high office he had lately filled. His own personal connection with him, his lordship said, and the long time he had experienced the happiness of living with him on terms of the closest intimacy and friendship, fully enabled him to be a competent informant of their lordships, of the zeal, the ability, and the assiduity of his noble friend. He reminded the House, that the noble viscount accepted of his situation in a moment of great public danger and difficulty; that at that period there could scarcely be found another man of distinguished talents to undertake it; that his noble friend, whose abilities he would venture to say were equal to those of most men, thought the hour of distress, the hour in which it best became him to exert himself in the service of his

country, he cheerfully received his sovereign's commands, and entered upon the duties of his office with alacrity and with attention. He desired their lordships to recollect, that his lordship, previous to his undertaking his place of Secretary for the American department, had an affluent fortune, lived a life of ease and happiness, surrounded by a circle of most respectable friends, and in full possession of all the comforts of an honourable retirement. At the moment he accepted of his office, there was scarcely a foot of ground in America, from Halifax to Florida, that we could call our own. His noble friend, not dispirited at the melancholy prospect before him, pursued such measures as had recovered a great part of the American continent, and were most likely to have procured a recovery of the whole, had not the inevitable chance of war intervened, and prevented the success of plans which were formed with wisdom, and promised a better and a more fortunate issue than for the reasons he had stated, had attended them. His lordship remained the indefatigable servant of the public, till the moment arrived, when the crown thought his services could be dispensed with. If therefore those ministers, with whom his noble friend had acted, had suffered him to retire without receiving some mark of the royal favour, if they had neglected to advise his Majesty to honour him with a distinguished proof of his having acquitted himself in his arduous and difficult situation in a manner satisfactory to the crown, he should for his part have thought them the most shabby set of ministers that ever governed a country, and have considered them as fit objects for public contempt.

The Duke of Richmond said the question consisted of two parts; first, how far the prerogative possessed an unrestrained power of bestowing peerages? And if it did, secondly, whether in the present instance, the exercise of that power was proper or expedient? As to the first, from Edward 3, to Henry 7, in every new creation, it was expressly stated in the patent to be done with the consent of parliament. After the reign of Henry 7, the crown had acted with a higher hand, and of late it had been held that the right of creating peerages was an indisputable part of the prerogative. A peer, when to be tried for his life, must be tried by his peers collectively; would therefore any man say, that their lordships were not

concerned in the appointment of persons, who, by their being created peers, were liable to become their lordships' judges? As to the impropriety, his grace urged it strongly against the creation of the noble lord, while the sentence of the court martial remained unreversed. He said, he was extremely sorry the noble lord had gone at all into the nature of the court-martial; he had been in hopes the debate would have taken the sentence generally, and not have meddled with the proceedings on the trial. There was one point, his grace said, which had, from the day of his trial to the present hour, continued unexplained, which was extremely material, and on which men's judgments had rested a great deal. This, his grace stated to be, the point of time between prince Ferdinand's having sent an order to the noble lord to advance with the cavalry and its arrival. The question had been put to many persons, and nobody was able to answer it. Had he been examined as a witness, he could have removed the difficulty; he had his watch in his hand the whole time, and he particularly knew, that the time was one hour and an half. The orders had been said to be contradictory, one being for the cavalry to advance, the other for the British cavalry to advance; the fact, however, his grace said, was, the noble viscount obeyed neither the one order or the other. There was a full hour and an half for the noble viscount to bring up the cavalry in, from the distance of a mile and a quarter, but the engagement was over before the cavalry appeared. After stating this, and dwelling on it for some time, his grace said, he had another objection to the ministers having advised his Majesty to create the noble lord a peer, and that was, the time. He thought it exceedingly impolitic to do it just at present; that it would not only have a bad effect on the army in general, but by shewing the Americans that the minister who had been in a great degree instrumental in carrying on a most cruel and severe war against them, was rewarded with a peerage for his conduct. At the same time that he said this, he declared, he did not think the noble lord near so guilty, in respect to the American war, as the minister in the other House. The noble lord, he acknowledged, had always held one uniform language, and had acted up to it. That sort of conduct was respectable, because it was manly and consistent. He also urged the

enquiry into the capture of York Tow the whole criminality of which might b brought home to the noble lord. H charged the House and the noble lord colleagues, with having skulked the que tion when last under consideration, wi being afraid to utter a syllable in his defenc and with pitifully getting rid of the que tion by a motion of adjournment. T officers who had been at Minden, and, w like him, thought the sentence perfect proper, must necessarily vote for the qu tion. If the noble lord who had rose ca in the day to defend the court-martial, not do so, he would condemn his own e dence on the trial, and reprobate it in face of the world.

Lord Southampton replied, that whole conduct as a witness on the cou martial, and since that time, was bei the public; and he should leave his co duct that day, whatever it might be, their decision, without at all consider whether they would put that constructi on it, which his grace had declared the would do.

Viscount Stormont denied that he sat silent, as the noble duke had aver The word skulked,' was by no means parliamentary expression; declined the word, which out of respect to the lordships, the noble duke ought to ha used. As to himself, he had neith skulked nor declined meeting the ques tion. He had met it, and had declared it not more extraordinary in itself, the unworthy of any debate whatever. He had studied the constitution as settled the Revolution, and there he had found established as an inherent and indi putable right of the royal prerogative ta confer the honour of a peerage on an person not legally disqualified. A militar disqualification did not extend to civ employments and civil honours, even a countries where military ideas prevailed in the most extravagant degree. He the stated sir Robert Walpole's impeachment. and commitment to the Tower, and hi subsequent employments in the highest offices, and his being raised to a peerage, to shew that what had even happened in the other House, was no bar to a seat in that House. After a variety of very clear and able argument, and many elegant compliments to the new viscount, be de clared as the question of adjournment moved when the subject was last in dis cussion, had not been perfectly under. stood, he would now in the most unequi

ocal and obvious manner, assure their rdships, that he would give the motion is hearty and direct negative.

The Earl of Shelburne said, as the deed as done, and the noble lord sworn in, he ould have advised dropping the present otion, had it not been for doctrines simir to those now avowed by the noble lord bo spoke last, that he had before heard, d which he meant on this occasion to ntrovert. His lordship, after this exoram, made a long and entertaining speech, which he opposed a great deal of knowlge of the constitution, of the ancient vs, of the principles on which the funmental rights of that House rested, and the different ideas of the extent of the erogative which had prevailed at difent times, to the arguments of lord ormont. His lordship attacked lord ckville for having arraigned the courtrtial, and said, in justice to his two ble deceased friends, lord Granby and d Chatham, who had conducted and mned it, he would defend the courtrtial, and justify the sentence. His dship, after having charged lord Sackle with having had the whole strength the country put into his hands, to carry the American war, and failed most serably, nevertheless gave him credit t having held a more manly stile of lanlage than any other minister, and with ving uniformly acted with the nicest elings, the strictest honour, the most impeachable integrity, and the most stinguished abilities. With regard to e person who had been appointed the oble viscount's successor, (Mr. Welbore llis) all he would say of him was, that è at least could not be charged with disbedience of orders, from the first day of is getting admission into the ministerial halanx to the present moment.

The Lord Chancellor left the woolsack, nd made one of the most powerful peeches in reply, that perhaps ever fell, in any occasion, from the mouth of any nember of either House. His lordship thewed the disorderly state of the whole proceeding that day, the little ground there was for their lordships, without being guilty of the grossest absurdity and injustice, to adopt the motion then urged upon them. He most clearly drew the line between the sentence and the orders, shewing that the latter, by its comment, annexed ideas of a much severer nature than the sentence itself affected to suggest; his lordship declared, that let who

would have advised his late majesty to issue those orders, he scrupled not to say, that minister advised the crown to act most unjustly, and to publish a stigma on the noble lord, infinitely worse than could be collected either from the charge or the sentence. The charge, his lordship shewed, went a great way beyond the sentence. The charge contained accusations of a capital nature-the court acquitted the noble lord of those heavy accusations, and confined the sentence most industriously to the description of a criminality of a much lighter nature, namely, disobedience of orders, His lordship explained the various causes that act of criminality might proceed from, and shewed, in some cases, it might originate from a most laudable disobedience of orders; in others from mere inadvertency, from incompetency of judgment, or from ignorance in the military profession, neither of which merited any thing like the ignominy cast upon the noble lord by the annexed orders. His lordship said, if he had examined the English language with the most studious attention, in order to collect the most handsome epithets to dress up the praise of the noble viscount, he could not have done it so well as by adopting the phrases, used, for that very purpose, by the last noble speaker, who had paid him a warm and eloquent eulogium on his feeling, his abilities, his manliness of language, his integrity, and his whole civil conduct as a minister. His lordship concluded, with earnestly beseeching the House to reject. the present motion, and not to act in a manner which a collection of Bourbon princes would disdain to stoop to, or which even any set of the shabbiest men that ever entered the lower door of the House, would think irreparably disgraceful to them.

The question was at length put. Contents 27; Proxies 1;-Total 28. Not Contents 81; Proxies 12;-Total 93. Majority against the motion 65.

Protest against the Advancement of Lord George Sackville to the Peerage.] The following Protest was entered:

"Dissentient,

"Because we cannot look upon the raising to the peerage a person so circumstanced in any other light than as a measure fatal to the interests as well as the glory of the crown, and to the dignity of this House; insulting to the memory of the late sovereign, and likewise to every

surviving branch of the illustrious House of Brunswick, repugnant to every principle of military discipline, and directly contrary to the maintenance of that honour, which has for ages been the glorious characteristic of the British nation, and which, as far as can depend on us, we find ourselves called upon, not more by duty than inclination, to transmit pure and unsullied to posterity.(Signed) Osborne, Rutland, Pembroke, Craven, Chatham, Derby, Egremont, Devonshire, Abingdon."

Petition from Samuel Hoheb, a Jew, complaining of Hardships and Losses sustained by the Capture of St. Eustatius.] Feb. 4. Mr. Burke said that he held in his hand a Petition from Mr. Hoheb, the Jew, whose misfortunes he had described in a former debate; this was the Jew, whose coat was ripped; and from the lining of which, the small sum of money was taken, which he had endeavoured to secrete, when he and the other people of his nation were obliged to quit St. Eustatius, by order of sir George Rodney and general Vaughan.-The petition was therefore brought up and read. It stated that he was of the Hebrew nation, a native of Amsterdam; and that he had been a resident of St. Eustatius for 25 years; that when that island had submitted to his Majesty's government, he and all the others of his nation had been forced to quit the island, though no crime whatever had been proved against them; nay, though not so much as a charge of a crime had been made, unless it was, that after he had received orders to depart, it had been discovered that he had sewed up a few shillings of his own money, in the lining of his coat; that afterwards he had been permitted to return to St. Eustatius, but it was only to see the whole of his stock in trade sold for one-third of its value, and appropriated to the use of his Britannic Majesty; that he had got out of all his property one small bag of money, which was in his bureau, when he was banished from the island; and afterwards he obtained leave to come over to England, where he could expect redress only from that House: because if he should be referred for his remedy to the courts of law, it would be totally out of his power to avail himself of that remedy; and, stripped of his whole fortune, to contend with sir George Rodney and general Vaughan, who by the very means that had put it out

of his power to fee lawyers, had secured to themselves the means of withholding from him that property which he had been his whole life in acquiring. He therefore prayed for such relief as the House in their wisdom should think proper to grant him.

The Secretary at War wished to know i what was the specific object the hon. menber had in view? If he was desirous to move for a grant of public money for the petitioner, he would recollect to what con sequences such a measure might lead; far if it should once go forth into the work, that all those who might have causes of complaint against officers, should obtain pecuniary compensation from that House, there would be no end of applications.

Mr. Burke said he was desirous only that the petition should go to a committee, in order to determine whether the allega tions it contained were founded in truth, or not: if it should be discovered that they were true, then undoubtedly he would wish to have some compensation for the unfortunate man. The right hon. gentle man's objection to the present mode of application was truly curious. If, said he you were to redress all those who have cause of complaint against our officers, there would be no end to applications this nature: or in other words, so many are the flagrant acts of oppression com mitted by our officers, that we should not find time to attend to all the applications for redress: a fine compliment to our com manders truly! How different was the com duct of the French commanders. The marquis de Bouille by his spirit and acti vity had wrested from us many of our pos sessions; but he treated the conquered with tenderness and humanity: the for tune of war might wrest victory from us without disgracing us; or robbing us of our virtue, which was beyond the reach fortune: but our commanders had robbed us of that which fortune could not have taken from us, they had robbed us of character; they had committed acts which had robbed the nation of that high name which it was accustomed to bear in Europe, for its liberality and justice; in arm the marquis de Bouille had already stripped us of some of our islands; it was to be feared that by his justice, his moderation, and his clemency, he would strip us of the few that remained: it was no disgrace to this country, that St. Eustatius, with a garrison of 700 men, should have been surprised by 300: such things had often

happened in war, and would undoubtedly happen again; but the honour and reputation of a country were not affected by such an event: at St. Eustatius the commander might have been negligent, and ought perhaps to be punished for his negligence; but his negligence did not dishonour the nation; it was when private property was ransacked, when innocent people were stripped of all they were vorth, and banished from the island, that uch acts of barbarity would remain stains pon the national honour, if the nation id not, by some public declaration, exress its abhorrence of them; what a disraceful contrast did the capture and reapture of St. Eustatius hold forth to the orld! Two British commanders plunder very unfortunate inhabitant of the island. The marquis de Bouille restores, as far as e can, to every man his property. The ritish officers strip the Dutch governor, ad plunder even his lady, breaking open ercabinet, and taking from her every thing aluable found in it; and at the same time deavour to justify or palliate the act, by asting her character, saying that she was usurer; the French commander, on the her hand, restored, even to the negligent nglish governor, all the property he aimed as his own; and did not insist on by other voucher than his bare word. ere the character of England, he said, as at stake; and he implored gentlemen have pity on their country, though they ould have none on the poor Jew. If in e sitting of the committee, it should be iscovered that the allegations in the petion were true, ministers might make comensation to Mr. Hoheb, without giving im any of the public money; they might ive him a slice of the loan; for it had een often said, that the profits made on loan, were not from the public money, r they might set him en croupe of some it contractor: these were means of reressing the grievances of which he comlained, without any application to the ublic treasury. The hon. gentleman ontinued for a considerable time in a vein f wit and humour; speaking of the fast, nd the unfortunate Jew, who on his way rom Jerusalem to Jericho, fell into the lands of robbers; he recommended the eximple of the good Samaritan; and thought hat to follow it, would be the best way to bserve the fast; though the right hon. nember seemed to be of opinion, that if the House were to relieve all the unforunate who should fall into the hands of [VOL. XXII.]

robbers in power, the nation would soon be exhausted. He was ashamed that the public treasury should have been contaminated with the plunder of St. Eustatius; or that any part of it should have been confiscated for the King's use: the Jews would not have done so; they would have nothing to do with the thirty pieces of money brought to their Sanhedrim by Judas Iscariot. He concluded by moving that the petition be referred to a committee.

The Secretary at War said, that whenever people had a mind to be charitable they should take care to make free only with their own money: but when they were going to vote away the money of their constituents, they should be careful upon what grounds they did it; for in that case there was neither charity nor generosity; because the money to be granted by gentlemen was not their own. This was the only reason he had for rising on the present occasion, but he had not a wish to oppose the motion for sending the petition to a committee.

Mr. Byng suggested, that as Mr. Hoheb was poor, the House might, if it was found that he should have redress in law, order the Attorney and Solicitor-General to carry on his suit for him gratis.

Lord Mahon thought that the petitioner had been so ill-treated, that the Attorney General should be ordered to prosecute, at the King's expence, the plunderers who had so shamefully robbed a respectable merchant, and put it out of his power of doing himself justice.

The motion then passed.

Standing Order relative to withdrawing Election Petitions.] Feb. 11. Mr. Fox made a complaint to the House of, what he called, a very serious nature. A petition had been presented by one John Saunders, against the return of the present members for the borough of Hindon: that Mr. Saunders, it seemed, had pledged himself to the electors not to withdraw his petition, but let it go to a committee; and the electors who wished to have it tried by a committee had given him (Mr. Fox) to understand that the consequence would have been, that the seat of at least one of the sitting members would undoubtedly have been vacated. However, the electors had learned that this same Mr. Saunders had at length agreed to withdraw his petition, and they had applied to him to oppose any motion for the purpose in the [3 U]