ftitutional principle. The minds of British officers (continued the General) have hitherto been directed by one great and noble fyftem uniting with general martial ardor, the love of their country, and a nice fenfibility of private honour. This principle carried them through the hard viciffitude of military life; the confcioufnefs of having never swerved from this principle, brought comfort to the evening of their days, under broken conftitutions, and broken fortunes. When Minifters check, or divert, or ceafe to encourage this principle, they know not what they do. It is the true tie by which a nation can hold its military fervants; to counteract it, is a want of policy, as well as of fentiment; but what fhall we fay of measures that go farther than the mere destruction of this principle; that go to fubftitute in its place the meanest, the moft vulgar, and the most fordid of human passions—money-money, the criterion of military pretenLions! Money, the price of the King's grace and protection! We have seen the War Office degraded to a Broker's shop. Were this traffic to continue, the defks of the office would be better filled from Exchange Alley, than by the worthy gentlemen who now fit there. In this traffic, what chance will ftand the younger fons of the best families in the kingdom, which are the true fupply for officering an army? What will be their profpect in competition with the fons of Broker, a Contractor, or a fortunate keeper of a lottery office? What lefs chance ftill will there be for another clafs of valuable candidates for commiffions-the fons of fuch officers as I just now alluded to; men who have spent their best years and their paternal fortunes in the fervice; veterans, who have been used to reafon upon honeft confidence that their zeal would be repaid by the protection of Government to their offspring; with honeft pride that their boys had blood and education to deferve it. Commiffions to men of this defcription are debts of juftice from the State; but what would be the answer upon this new fyftem? Where is your money? Commiffions! they are funk in the new ways and means-in the Stock Exchange of Whitehall.One would plead, his father loft a limb at fuch a battle; another, his father had an eye beat out at fuch a fiege. Why, Sir, the clerks would laugh in their faces; legs and arms bear no price, they would be told;—we cannot bate you a guinea for a whole charnel houfe of old family bones; we have had an hundred independent companies; they have coft the nation from two to two hundred and fifty thousand pounds; who knows how many more may be wanted! We must have a fet-off for the Houfe of Commons; where is your money? There was one other topic the General thought of great importance: he fhould, however, only touch it, because, if he was right, it would be taken up by gentlemen much more able to treat it. He meant, that the measure of felling the vacant commiffions, was perfectly unconftitutional, in the light of railing money independently of Parliament. We were bleffed with a King, in whofe hands the conftitution was fafe; nor did he mean, though he oppofed the prefent Minifters, to infinuate they had defigns against it; but it was in good times, when there was no cause for suspicion, that the House ought to be cautious of innovation; and he faw no reafon, why a wicked Minifter hereafter might not, upon this precedent, advise a fale of military rank, by brevet, to any extent. After refting fome time upon this fubject, the General concluded with faying, that in what he had laid before the House, he had been actuated by a feeling which he should be afhamed not to poffefs; but he hoped he had spoken without disrespect or incivility to any man. He did not know whether he was to addrefs that profeflion to the prefent or the abfent. It was the misfortune of the army, and of the nation, to have no vifible military adviser of the Crown. The honourable Secretary, it was true, ftood forth a volunteer the last year, to answer for the conduct of the military department: it was a gallant undertaking, and gallantly the honourable Secretary had gone through it in the prefent inftance. He would, nevertheless, advife the honourable Secretary, (and it was no unfriendly counsel) upon the next augmentation, to call in other affiftance. If there was to be no Commander in Chief, there was yet a Board of War-a moft refpectable Board of General Officers, not one of whom, excepting the unworthy individual then speaking, was not qualified to give found and fufficient opinion in the greatest points of the military eftablishment. That Board was frequently fummoned; it was frequently employed to confider of hats and halberts, and other very neceffary but small objects of the fervice; but it could not pafs without observation, that when a confideration of the magnitude of a levy of fifteen thousand men was in queftion, a Board of War-Office clerks feemed to have been thought the more proper council. He inftanced a noble Duke at the head of the Ordnance, who, with all his knowledge and weight in his department, had not difdained to call in fuch council. He recommended to the honourable Secretary to follow the example, and pronounced, that for want of it, the first measure of the independent companies had been founded in wanton prodigality, the last in difgraceful parfimony. The The Secretary at War declared that he was far from affent- Secretary ing to the fuppofed juftice of the idea, that to confult the at War. Board of General Officers on every occafion, could not be improper; and he apprehended that to put the command of the army into commiffion, which fuch perpetual confultations muft abfolutely effect, would prove as unconflitutional as any point which the honourable General had alledged against the mode of levying the independent companies. The War Office had never ufed the language imputed to it by the honourable General. Officers, on applying there, had never been told, "Bring us the money." But the uniform language was, "The Public wants men, and wants them "immediately. If you can give us fuch affurances as we can ❝rely on, that you have the means of raising the number "for which you are willing to engage, within a limited "time, you will do an effential fervice to your country; "but we requeft, that you will undertake nothing which (6 you are not certain of being able to execute." Such had been the language of the War Office. No question was afked, with a view to giving rank to one officer in preference to another; and if the honourable General knew of any inftance of fuch partiality, he requested him to state it. With regard to the terms of the letters of fervice having been difpenfed with in particular inftances, by paffing men above the age prefcribed, he had heard of no example of this kind, nor did it fall within his department to obferve it. This he knew, that the officer under whofe inspection the men were to pafs, (Colonel Fox) was an officer, of whom, without naming him, he might be allowed to fay, that one in whom confidence might be more properly repofed, could not have been appointed. Under that officer's infpection, he did not believe that any fuch irregularity had taken place, much less that it had been allowed partially, or as a matter of favour to any individual. The fale of the commiffions, which had been so much infifted on, were not taken out of the common courfe, which he conceived to be a full and complete anfwer to all which had been faid against it. The whole, then, amounted to this, that the recruiting of the old regiments went on fo flowly, as made it evident that the neceffary number of men could not be obtained within the time required, and Government had recurred to raiding independent companies as the leaft expenfive, and the moit effectual remedy. This, he faid, they had done with no view to increasing patronage; for, the companies, as faft as they were raifed, were to be attached to old regiments, and to be employed as the recruiting companies of the regiments on actual fervice. He General He was ready to bear teflimony to the gallantry and the public fpirit of the noble Lord (Rawdon) whom the honourable General had mentioned as offering to raife a regiment; but the Committee would recollect, that the noble Lord ftipulated for the appointment of all the officers; and he could not fee what difference it made to the Public, whether the Colonel of a regiment, or the Crown, nominated the officers. General Burgoyne difavowed having glanced, in the most Burgoyne remote degree, at any failure in the conduct of Colonel Fox in paffing recruits. He fpoke of Colonel Fox in the higheft terms of praife, and explained, that in the inftance to which he had alluded of enlifting invalids, the men had not come under the infpection of Colonel Fox. Lord The right honourable Secretary, the General faid, muft recollect, that the officers of the regiment which Lord Rawdon offered to raife. were all, except one, to be taken from the half pay, without being raised to any higher rank than they held before; fo that the half-pay lift would have been relieved in the firft inftance, and no addition made to it when the regiment was reduced. It was fingular, that the Board of General Officers fhould be confulted on trifling alterations of arms and cloathing, and yet be confidered as unfit to advise on the best mode of recruiting the ariny. Certain, however, he was, that if they were to be confulted, the raifing of independent companies, on the principle of the laft, would prove a measure upon which, leaft of all others, they could bestow their encomiums. Lord Fielding remarked that, in his opinion, the two most Fielding. advifeable modes of recruiting the army, on an emergency, were, first, by appointing an ad litional Field Officer to each regiment. It was well known that the Colonel was, in general, fcarcely more than the proprietor of a regiment, and had very little to do with the command of it; and, on actual fervice, one or both of its Field Officers was often at a distance from it. The appointment of a third Field Officer would, therefore, prove a general advantage; and by this alone, with the feveral promotions to which it would make an opening, a very confiderable number of recruits might be expeditiously obtained. The fecond mode was that adop ed by William Duke of Cumberland, a great, though not always a victorious General, of adding a fecond battalion to old regiments. Having had, he obferved, the honour of raifing a company in the late war, which, as well as the regiment to which it Belonged, was complete, he could, from his own experience, affirm, affirm, that men were expeditiously obtained by raising new regiments. Colonel Tarleton remarked, that it was evident, from the Colonel able arguments which had been urged on that fide of the Tarleton, Houfe, and the little anfwer which had been given from the other, that the mode adopted was an improper mode of raifing men for His Majefty's army. The measure stated by his right honourable friend, at the end of the war, as a fit peace eftablishment, was what would have beft fuited the finances and general fituation of the country. It had been contended at that time, by the honourable gentlemen now on the other fide, that it was proper to reduce the army to a skeleton in point of ftrength, without reducing their numbers. This fyftem had been in confequence adopted; but it had of late been departed from, and a mode purfued in its ftead, which was pregnant with mischief to the fervice, and dangerous to the conftitution of the country. There was no Commander in Chief, who might be refponfible to the country; whence no encouragement was given to the old regiments to recruit their former vigour; but, according to the novel fyftem adopted at the War Office, independent companics were to be raised, and this was holden out as the best and most expeditious way of obtaining recruits for the army. If, inftead of young officers, the Colonels of the old regiments had been called upon, would they not have taken the most effectual means for enfuring fuccefs to the public fervice? Would they have been forgetful of all the reputation and glory they had formerly acquired in the army? Another effential point to be obferved was, that the different marching regiments had been named from the different counties of England, and would not thofe counties have been forward in furnishing recruits to their own regiments, than to the crimps of brokers in commiffions? By holding out patronage to young men at the commencement of the fervice, the War Office had occafioned great profufion and unneceffary expence. The other fide of the Houfe had afferted one thing, and that fide had afferted another. The other fide of the Houfe now declared that the independent companies were defigned to have been incorporated into the old regiments. But, from reafon and calculation, the Colonel flattered himfelf that he could have proved, that if this country had been involved in a war, thofe corps would have remained as independent companies, and would have greatly extended the patronage of His Majefty's Minifters. He reprobated the meafure as one of the frightful features of that conduct which had ended in an obnoxious convention. He asked, if twenty guineas a man were to be given at the commencement of a war, where |