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CHAP. II.

Debates on the Army Estimates.-Petitions against the Property-Tax-Vote against its continuance.-The War Malt-Tax is abandoned by the Minister. -The Budget.

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THE discussion of the army estimates, as has already been hinted, was pursued to a great length. In the House of Commons in particular, the debates on this subject were protracted from night to night, and were not terminated till the 6th of March. We shall We shall give some sketches of the principal speeches delivered on these occasions, because, although they did not lead to any change in the original proposal of the ministry, they are valuable as records of the state of public feeling with respect to the consequences of military force and splendour, at a time when the glory of our arms might have been supposed likely to make us relax somewhat of our ancient prejudices. It will be seen, that a salutary suspicious ness was still kept alive among us, and that the ministry, no less than the opposition, reprobated in the main every idea of departing permanently from the old and constitutional jealousy of extensive military establishments. In an early stage of the discussion, some very striking observations were made, in a speech of much candour and manliness, by Mr Frankland Lewis. This gentleman observed, that," whenever the proposition of a large standing ar

my had been made in that House, it had been resisted on a principle wholly unconnected with any party feeling-it had been resisted by a body of men acting independently of any administration-he meant the country gentlemen of England, who had invariably united in their hostility to a measure of that nature. As for his own motives on this particular occasion, he could solemnly assure the House, that he was wholly uninfluenced by any personal feeling towards any individual whatever. In comparison with such a question as that before them, he cared not who was in or who was out of power; but he called on the country at large to think and to act for themselves to look at the extent of the means they possessed, and at the extent of the danger to be apprehended, and to decide on the establishment that was advisable with reference to both those considerations. Without desiring the House to go far back to precedents, without referring them to the sterner periods of British history, he thought it might do no harm to remind them of one instance of the inflexible manner in which parliament formerly discharged its duty

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on this subject. He alluded to their conduct towards King William-that sovereign who had been the seal and the confirmation of our liberties→→→ from whom, nevertheless, the parliament of his time tore those Dutch guards, who had been his companions in all his victories. But without going so far back for examples of the conduct of the country gentlemen in parliament, he would refer to a period of between thirty and forty years ago, when Mr Pitt, with all his eloquence, with the force of his government, and with a case incomparably stronger than that of the present time, attempted to press the expediency of expend. ing 400.000l. of the public money fortifications. What was the event? It was not Mr Fox or his party by whom the proposition was effectually resisted. It was by the country gen. tlemen of England, headed by Mr Bastard, then member for Devonshire. The numbers on the division respecting it being equal, Mr Cornwall, the Speaker, gave that casting vote which secured the country from the danger with which it had been threatened.* The same spirit of liberty, the same love for their country, and for its constitution, would, he trusted, animate the country gentlemen of the present day. In his opinion, the estimates proposed by his Majesty's government were founded on a perfectly false view of our means, and of our danger. What were our means? the interest of the national debt was forty millions; from this we could not relieve ourselves. It was proposed to vote a peace establishment of nearly twentyone millions. To pay these conjoint sums, the annual peace taxes must exceed sixty millions. If the incometax had any one good quality, it was, that it afforded the opportunity of estimating the national property. De

ducting from the returns all that was derived, as by the professional man, from the mere employment of time, or as by the farmer from mere personal labour, it would appear that the revenue actually proceeding from the land and stock of the country, did not exceed 130 or at least 140 millions. When it thus appeared, that even in time of peace the country was called upon by the state for half its revenue, that there was danger of its soon arriving at the end of its resources, let the House consider what must happen, should we unfortunately be plunged into another war. Last year the right honourable the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as an apology for touching that sacred deposit the sinking fund, had declared that taxation had found its limits. It appeared, then, that the expence of our peace establishment was nearly equal to that which, under any cir cumstances, the country could defray. How was this situation of things compatible with that high tone which it behoved the country to maintain, and which could only be maintained by that economy in peace, which would afford us the means of waging war with success? These considerations pressed the more nearly, when the House looked at the mass of petitions on their table. He verily believed, that the distresses of the people at the present moment were of a magnitude not sufficiently appreciated. And in what consisted the danger which required this immense peace establishment? We were, as far as the assurances of ministers went, confirmed in our alliances, and being thus bound cordially together, there was less danger of this union being dissevered from jealousy, than there was of any alliance ever made in Europe, of which England formed a part. Where, then, was the need of this establishment? As the

See New Parliamentary History, vol. xxv. p. 1096.

they were even more safe now than at that period, or than they ever were while the chain of the French colonies remained unbroken. About 4000 men would, in his opinion, be amply sufficient for them. Another important subject was Canada, which, he believ ed, as far as frontier went, was stronger rather than weaker than it was before; for the possession of Upper Canada materially strengthened Quebec. There was a force of Canadian militia, so excellently disciplined, that full reliance might be placed on it, as to its assistance in case of danger. Respecting Ireland, it was a melancholy subject; his idea was that there should be a specific enquiry into the real state of that country, for we only know that there is a great degree of local disturbance about tithes; but there was no symptom of rebellion against the government. There could therefore be nothing to occasion the continual employment there of 25,000 men, except to assist the police, and their aid was not grounded on any positive or actual necessity. In referring to the unhappy state of Ireland, it was impossible to refrain from lamenting the course which England had heretofore pursued, and was still pursuing towards her. Every application had been resorted to, to suppress the consequences of the evil, but none to remove its cause. He would not indeed, in referring to this painful topic, call on them to repeal at once the whole of their accumulated system, but he trusted that a sufficient inducement appeared on the face of the question, to impress in the proper quarter the necessity of resorting, as soon as it was possible, to the diffusion of a better system in that country. As to England, the military establishment was also extraordinary, and the motive for its existence worse. We were now to depart from the old system of collecting our revenue, and to employ a

army of France was destroyed, there was surely no military danger to be apprehended on her account. If we kept up men at Cambray and Condé, it was perfectly needless to keep them at Colchester and Chelmsford; in short, if our army was to be kept in France, we did not want it here. The same might be said respecting a large naval establishment; it was not required. Neither France nor Spain had any navies at all. As to our troops for foreign stations, they appeared large beyond all possible necessity. There were to be 11,000 men for Gibraltar; but there was no reason why a higher number of men were wanted for the Mediterranean now than was necessary in 1791, when the establishment was between 4000 and 5000 men. In the Ionian islands there were to be 3500. He would call upon the House to consider the nature, terms, and principles of that acquisition, in order to see what grounds there were for any danger arising in those islands. It could not be from Russia, or from Austria; for it was by the concurrence of those two powers that we took possession of them. It was surely not to protect ourselves against the inhabitants; for they conceived that our coming was from a disposi tion to deliver them from the thraldom under which they had previously laboured. He must therefore think that 12 or 1500 men would be a num. ber fully adequate for those possessions. The same might be said of Batavia and Ceylon, and even of In dia itself, where, if we were anxious to find an enemy, we had to seek him on the frontiers of Napaul or Thibet. He therefore thought that all our foreign establishments were too large; and he was sure the House would think that 14 000 men for the West Indies was out of all proportion. In 1791 the establishment for those colo. nies was not more than 2000, and surely

military force against smugglers. The cutters heretofore employed by the customs and excise departments were to be suppressed, and the navy vessels to be employed in their place. He was old-fashioned enough to object to this sort of arrangement on a variety of grounds-he preferred the King's forces to be in an auxiliary state to the customs, and not their principal; be sides, the alteration would lead to the bribery and debauchery of the soldiers a change most fatal to their character and discipline, and yet one necessarily arising out of the new habits into which they would be thrown. But even if a case of danger could be made out, he thought we had lost sight of maintaining the best species of force. The militia furnished the most eligible defence for the country, and, with an auxiliary force of twelve or fourteen thousand regulars, it would be quite sufficient for all the duties which the army would have to perform." In reply to Mr Lewis, Mr Yorke maintained, "that the enormous extent and wealth of the British empire ren. dered it indispensibly necessary that we should have some standing army, if we meant to preserve the blessings that had been handed down to us by our ancestors. Such, he asserted, had been the practice of the country ever since the Revolution, at which time a standing army was first established, and had continued to the present time. He therefore apprehended that there could be no possible objection to the practice. Nobody would be more ready than himself to admit, that a legal and constitutional jealousy ought to be exercised on this subject, as far as related to a standing army being under the control of the crown; but the amount of the jealousy ought not to go beyond the proportion of the amount of the army. Nobody was more anxious than himself that the standing army should be under the ci

vil government, and especially subject to the control of parliament. The ancient jealousy against a standing army, it ought to be recollected, was against such a force being maintained in these realms, and not so much from disapprobation of that which might be kept up in our foreign possessions. This was expressed in the bill of rights, as it was in the mutiny bill founded on the bill of rights. He approved of the practice which had been introduced in modern times of bringing the army kept up in our foreign possessions under the control of parliament, as well as that maintained within these realms. The increase of men which the present peace establishment required, was small, compared with the increased greatness of the country."

Mr Brougham rose on the conclusion of Mr Yorke's speech, and expressed much indignation at "the cool calm tone with which that gentleman had laid down principles, unknown to the purity of our fathers, and repugnant to the spirit of the constitution." He expressed his conviction that the more the calculation was followed up, the less would the proposers of this unexampled establishment gain by the scrutiny; and they would gladly resort to general arguments and the visions of remote danger drawn from the military spirit of Europe. If we might apprehend danger from this spirit at some future time, a plain man would ask, why we should not wait a few years, and save ourselves and our resources till the danger manifested itself. It was evident that the results of the last victory had been such, in the dismemberment of France, that though that country had the wish to revenge itself, and though we could not trust either its monarch or his family, the state of Europe and the aggrandizement of our own military character left us less to fear from our natural enemy (as France has been call

ed), than at any time since the revolution of 1688, or even long before that epoch. And this was the moment when it proposed to establish a perpetual military force which had never been contemplated when all Europe was leagued against us, not even at times when war was actually raging! It was a fact, as to which the Chancellor of the Exchequer might satisfy himself by figures, to which he loved so well to refer, that in the Seven Years War, when we defeated France in all quarters of the globe, our military force was not half that which was now proposed as a peace establishment. But they were told it was a chimera to suppose that an army could be dangerous to the constitution; that an army was the most innocent and harmless of all establishments. With out enquiring into all the ways in which an army might be injurious to the constitution, was it not enough to prove the danger, that it bore with it an immense system of influence, which was not the less injurious to the interests of the people, or less fatal to the constitution, because it was not in the hands of a responsible minister who might be questioned day by day in that House (though questions of late had not been answered), but in the hands of a person intimately connected both by interest and blood, with a power which was neither lords nor commons, nor cabinet, but the crown itself? Was there no danger to be apprehended from the traffic which might possibly take place between the crown and powerful individuals, who in return for commissions might engage their families to serve the monarch politically, and themselves to serve him military? In conclusion, he apologised for having, perhaps, wasted more time than they deserved on the propositions which had that night been advanced, but the unwarrantable principles, and the cool talk

of the right honourable gentleman, as to the bugbear of a standing army which had frightened the opposition side of the House, had provoked him to enter his protest against those principles, and endeavour to recall to the House the feelings of better times."

The general statements of these members were answered by Mr Wellesley Pole, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Lord Castlereagh. According to them, the apprehensions of these gentlemen had been excited by regarding too exclusively the ex facie large amount of the armed force to be maintained, and neglecting to take into due consideration the great increase of our colonial possessions on the one hand, and on the other, those alterations in the situation of affairs at home which we have already seen alluded to by Mr Yorke. The largest item in the estimates was the army of 25 000

men for Ireland. But we are concerned to say, that Mr Peele laid before the House but too sufficient an explanation of the circumstances which had appeared to demand that force. On this occasion, and on the subsequent one of a motion made by Sir John Newport, for an enquiry into the state of the sister kingdom, details were produced, which proved abundantly, that from whatever causes they might have arisen, the disturbances in that country were still of the most extensive and alarming nature, and that without an armed force equal to that proposed, the public security could not be expected to be maintained.

The navy estimates were brought before the House by Sir George Warrender, and the proposed establishment of 30,000 seamen, was agreed to after considerable discussion, partly of a very disagreeable and personal ́nature.

From the commencement of the session, the subject connected with finance, which occupied most of the

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