oppofing the vote of thanks; upon this occafion Lord North went with the oppofition upon the divi

fion.

27th.

Pallifer to the government of Greenwich hofpital, and his taking his feat in the houfe as member for Huntingdon, were the means of bringing out, if not the moft interesting debate, at least the longest, and by far the most angry difcuffion, which took place before the recefs. We have little inclination to enter deeply into a matter wherein perfonal refentment, with the defire of fupporting a favourite of government, might well be fuppofed among the principal operative motives on both fides; and which is befides of no other moment now perhaps to the public, than merely the knowledge arifing from it as an hiftorical fact. It is, however, neceffary to take fuch a view of the fubject in this part, as will illuftrate and explain the fubfequent debates and tranfactions of which it was productive.

In a few days after, the thanks of the house of commons were voted to Generals Sir Henry Clinton, Earl Cornwallis, and Admiral Arbuthnot, for the eminent and very important fervices performed by them, particularly by the reduction of CharlesTown, and by the late moft glorious victory obtained at Camden. Several of the estimates, particularly thofe of the army, had, as ufual in the course of this war, at different times produced much debate, complaint, and altercation, in the committee of fupply. Several motions were made by the oppofition for papers and returns, intended to afford an exact knowledge of the state of the forces employed on foreign fervice at certain given periods, which they fuppofed or faid, did not approach near the prefent time, as to render the communication capable of any ill confequence; but from which they intended to fhew how far fhort the real number of effective troops was at those periods, from that which was ftated on paper, and paid for by the nation. Some of these were rejected, and others agreed to. The old argument was again frequently recurred to, of the mischief or danger of affording information to the enemy; and it was attempted to be thrown into ridicule by afking, if it was fuppofed that Gen. Washington wanted any information at that time, as to the ftate and condition of Sir Henry Clinton's army twelve months before?

The appointment of Sir Hugh

We have already feen the notice given by Mr. Fox of his intended motion, relative to the appointment of Sir Hugh Pallifer to his government; and it was fuppofed that avowal of a direct attack, was a motive with the other fide in accelerating that gentleman's introduction to the house of commons, in order that he might there perfonally fupport his own caufe, and in a hope that his prefence might check that torrent of invective and cenfure, which the minifters knew they fhould otherwife fuftain upon his account. His intended appearance in the house on the day that the naval estimates were to be laid before the committee was known, and a perfonal quarrel between him and Mr. Fox was expected to be the confequence.

Mr.

Mr. Fox was accordingly the principal aifailant, and the minifter himself flood forth as the able champion for the new governor. The difcuffion was renewed on the following day, upon bringing up the report from the committee; and the attack was fupported at different times, by Mr. Thomas Townshend, Admiral Keppel, Sir Robert Smith, Mr. Sawbridge, the Earl of Surrey, and Mr. John Townshend. The brunt of the defence lay with the minifter, and Sir Hugh Pallifer himfelf. Neither the admiralty lords, nor thofe court members who usually spoke upon other occafions, taking any part on the prefent. But the noble lord at the head of affairs was in himfelf an host.

The field was opened Dec. 4th. by Mr. Thomas Townf

hend, who, with much cenfure upon the admiralty, particularly with respect to the officers, whom they did, and did not employ, obferved, that in granting away fuch vaft fums of their conftituents money, it was highly neceffary they fhould enquire into the caufes of fuch pernicious and ruinous conduct; and to know why, in this feafon of great public exigency and danger, the nation was deprived of the fervices and profeffional abilities of fuch men, as the admirals, Keppel, Lord Howe, Sir Robert Harland, Pigot, Campbell, and Barrington? He faid, that wherever this evil originated, the caufe must be removed, in order to restore spirit and unanimity to the navy, and to give vigour and effect to its operations. The fate of the nation, he faid, depended on the remedy of this evil; and nothing lefs than that, along with

a due diftribution of rewards and punishments, could poffibly recover our antient naval renown, and revive that noble fpirit which had rendered us invincible at fea. -Sir Robert Smith, in treating the doctrine of rewards and punishments, obferved, that it was not the hulks of hips, nor their guns, that conftituted the ftrength of the navy of England; it was the high fente of honour, and the intrepid fpirit of the officers and men; and when thefe were damped the navy was ruined.

This idea was adopted by Mr. Fox, and applied with the utmoft feverity to the late promotion; reprefenting as the highest infult which could be offered to the navy, and the greateft ftigma that could be affixed to the fervice, that a perfon convicted of having preferred a falfe and malicious accufation against his fuperior officer, and who was barely acquitted b, a court martial, upon charges exhibited against himfelf, on that very occafion which he had made the ground of his accufation, fhould be promoted to a poft of diftinction, of honour, and of profit, which had heretofore been ́ held by men of the first naval merit, and which was in fact intended as an honourable retreat and reward to thofe who had effentially ferved their country. He did not, he faid, blame the perfon who accepted that place; it was the first lord of the admiralty who was alone to blame, and whofe conduct in it ought to be the fubject of their enquiry. When it had been formerly faid in that houfe, at the time that the accufation was first preferred against Admiral Keppel, that the accufer

was only the inftrument, and that the admiralty were the principals; that it was they who fuggefted, who prompted, and who fpurred on the accufation; the charge was then ftrongly denied on the part of that board. But what will the navy, what will the nation now think, when they fee the accufer rewarded by that very board with a place of high honour, of great emolument?

He afked, what had been the accufer's own fenfe of his conduct at the time; Had he not abdicated his feat in parliament? Had he not refigned his feat at the admiralty board? Had he not, (to borrow a phrafe already ufed in the debate) made a difcreet retreat from public notice? Were not thefe teftimonials, and even tacit acknowledgements of his guilt? The difcretion of that retreat produced its effect, in pre venting fome of the meafures which that houfe were on the point of pursuing, and which would now have added to the ftanding records of its fenfe of the tranfaction. The caufe had been afked in the prefent debate, why the great officers, then named, were not now in the active fervice of their country; and a noble lord on the other fide, had attributed this unfortunate circumftance to private motives. But

the real motives, he faid, were well known to his honourable friend who propofed the queftion, and were indeed within the knowledge of thofe who were the leaft informed in public affairs. The reafon was, thefe great characters could not ferve with confi. dence or fafety, under an adminiftration guilty of convicted falfe.

hood, and guilty not merely of notorious but of recorded treachery! This was the reafon, the true, the only reafon. Every friend to his country must therefore with, that this bar to the fervices of thofe diftinguifhed officers might be removed; and that was his own motive for the enquiry which he propofed after the holidays; an enquiry, he faid, which was effential to the navy, and to the public.

Lord North declared, that he did not care how foon the threatened enquiry was brought on; he was ready to meet it fully and frankly, to join issue with the honourable gentleman, and to go into an investigation of the merits without reserve. As to that fentence of a court martial which pronounced, that the perfon who preferred a charge against Mr. Keppel, was a falfe and malicious accufer, he fhould only for the prefent obferve, what he had heretofore,, and fhould again fay more at large, that the court martial was convened for the purpose of trying Mr. Keppel, and not Sir Hugh Pallifer; they had a regular charge fubmitted to their confideration and decifion against the one, and they had no charge whatever before them against the other; in pronouncing therefore fentence upon the motives of the accufer, they had exceeded the line of their jurifdiction, and had condemned a man unheard, without any form of trial, and without being permitted to enter upon his defence.

As to the late promotion of Sir Hugh Pallifer, which was held out as the principal ground of the propofed enquiry, the charge, he

faid, was not to be directed folely against the first lord of the admiralty, for he avowed his own full hare in the tranfaction, faid that others of the king's fervants were likewife concerned, and that he was ready to defend and fupport the measure in that houfe, when ever it fhould be agitated. The honourable gentleman had dwelt much upon the fentence of the court martial which tried Sir Hugh Pallifer, and inferred, that it amounted only to a bare acquittal. He faw the matter in a very different point of view. What were the words of the former part of it? -"That the court having taken "the whole of the evidence into "confideration, both on the part "of the profecution, as well as "in favour of the prifoner, were "of opinion, fo far from the con"duct of Sir Hugh Pallifer being reprehenfible on the 27th "and 28th of July, that in many "parts thereof, it appeared exemplary and highly merito"rious."

If he understood the meaning of the word meritorious, according to its true acceptation, it fignified in this inftance, that an officer whofe conduct had been declared, after a most strict fcrutiny, to have been highly meritorious, was an officer who deferved reward; and that exemplary conduct meant fuch conduct as was a proper example for other officers to follow, and a fit object for imitation. Under this, which appeared to him to be the true and natural reading of the fentence, Sir Hugh Pallifer was undoubtedly an object of reward, and after his conduct had been declared highly meritorious and exemplary, adminiftration would

have been criminally culpable, if they had neglected to give him a fuitable reward.

He called upon gentlemen particularly to recollect the peculiar circumstances that rendered Sir Hugh Pallifer's acquittal more than commonly honourable to him? Let them call to mind the arts that were used to set the public in a flame against him previous to his trial; and the pains that were taken to run him down, to render him the object of universal indignation; and that thefe endeavours were at length fo fuccefsful, that he became an object of commiferation and pity even with fome benevolent gentlemen of the oppofition, who humanely did not with that he should be brought to a trial, under fuch a load of public odium and prejudice. And let it alfo be recollected that it was under these circumftances, that, confcious of his innocence, he boldly demanded, and perfevered in his applications for a trial, which was brought on entirely at his own request. And must not every difpaffionate man, every impartial reader of the fentence, confider such an acquittal, in fuch circumstances, as the moft honourable poffible teftimonial to the character of an officer? And could the king's minifters do lefs, confiftently with their duty, than to pay a proper attention to fuch fufferings, and to follow up the danger of being purified by fuch an ordeal, with reward, and with honour?

He feemed to make very light of many fine founding words, which, he faid, had been used against administration; but which unfortunately wanted truth for their fupport. And as to the enumerated

merated list of officers, whofe fervices were faid to be withholden, through their want of confidence in the good faith or honefty of administration, furely, if the fact were real, minifters could be confidered as no better than bedlamites, if they employed men who held fuch opinions.

Sir Hugh Pallifer read a long, and feemingly laboured, manufcript defence of his conduct. It held out the bittereft complaints, and teemed with invective, against the conduct of Admiral Keppel, of the court martial by which he had been acquitted, of that powerful party by which he had been himself overborne, and of Mr. Fox in particular. He charged all his misfortunes and oppreffions to the power, and to the malevolent perfecution of that party, which feemed ftill to be in as full vigour as ever. He catechized Mr. Fox with a great number of interrogatories, relative to the practice of the courts in cafes of high treafon, and others, of parliament, in certain cafes, and of courts martial by fea and land. He claimed merit from his moderation, in remaining for fo long a time a filent fufferer, rather than to increafe the popular difcontents, and the diffentions of the navy, by attempting to oppofe a party, which he acknowledged was too ftrong for him to contend with. He declared, that he confidered his acquittal as the most honourable circumftance of his life; and he flattered himself; that if the houfe thould think an enquiry into the two courts martial neceffary, he fhould not, when that enquiry was over, if it were fairly gone into, Vo L. XXIV.

be deemed a falfe and malicious accufer.

Several parts of the new governor's detail, and particularly the charges which he made against the court martial that tried Mr. Keppel, were examined and commented upon by that Admiral, Mr. Fox, and others; but by none with greater ability, or fo much feverity, as by Mr. John Townshend. The minifters arguments and pofitions were likewife replied to and examined; and the new conftruction which he put upon part of the fentence of one court martial, the adroitnefs with which he paffed over the unfavourable part of the fame, and the little attention he paid to the fentence of another, were all refpectively brought into observation.

The matter being brought up on the following day, Sir Robert Smith moved, that a copy of the minutes of the trial and fentence of the court martial held for the trial of Vice Admiral Sir Hugh Pallifer, fhould be laid before the houfe. The Earl of Surrey feconded the motion, and among other reafons for it obferved, that as the vice admiral had on the preceding day thought proper to read to the houfe a long narrative, the greatest part of which was calculated to arraign the justice of the court martial which had acquitted Admiral Keppel, and which had cenfured his accufer, he faw clearly, that no man of honour in the fervice, would be fafe in doing his duty as member of a court martial in future, if an enquiry was not immediately made into the business. The prefent motion would open the [*]

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