pos that of putting him into the Foreign Office, | hagen had been attempted to be justified and letting him rummage at pleasure. from certain circumstances. Gentlemen With regard to the dispatches of lord on one side of the house contended, that Howick, it was highly probable that the the account which ministers had given of noble lord had copies of them in his own that matter was not satisfactory. Upon possession; but if not, he should be happy that occasion, the right hon. secretary to furnish him with copies from the Fo-read part of a letter from lord Grey to Mr. reign Office. In observing upon the state Garlicke, and in that extract he left off at of Denmark at a particular period, he had the end of a paragraph which suited his taken the opportunity to state that the own purpose, and the very next would sibility of a junction between France and have explained the whole context, and Denmark had been contemplated by his given an entirely different colour to the noble predecessor, and that orders had matter. This was grievous to my lord been, in consequence, communicated, how Grey, who was a public man, who had to act, in the case of such an event. It held an high official situation, and in appeared that the house was convinced of whose character the public had a great the propriety of the measures adopted by interest. He conceived this to be a pergovernment, from what had been already fectly fair and sufficient ground for calling produced; and it was for those members for the production of public documents; who thought otherwise to bring the same and he was sorry to say, that referring to question again before the house, if they the estimation in which he had hitherto thought fit. held the right hon. secretary for candour, in that part of his character he had been greatly deceived. Earl Temple was astonished at the speech of the right hon. secretary the other night in many parts of it, and still more so, at the manner in which he attempted to defend himself to-night, by denying the information which the motion before the. house was calculated to convey. He had referred to extracts from the dispatches of lord Howick in his own defence the other night, and in support of his own argument. He must be excused when he called these extracts, garbled extracts of documents to which he had access from his official situation. In the course of the debate, the right hon. secretary gave a part which suited the purpose of his own argument, and concealed the rest. He should have expected, that a man of the talents and station of the right hon. secretary would not have stooped to the artifice of garbling scraps of paper, to give a false colouring to a transaction of such importance as that of which he was treating the other night; for most indisputable it was, that the whole matter would have appeared in a very different light from that in which the speech of the right hon. secretary placed it. My lord Grey felt himself aggrieved by this proceeding, and declared that if the dispatch sent by him to Mr. Garlicke had been all read, instead of the partial extract which the right hon. secretary gave to the house, the whole transaction would have a different colour from that which the reading of that partial extract gave it. What was the point in debate? There had been an inquiry respecting Denmark, and the Expedition to Copen Mr. Herbert took a general view of the expedition to Copenhagen, which he considered as setting an example, which would in future have the effect of involving neutral powers in war, whatever might be their interest or inclination. The Secretary at War defended the measure, and conceived it plain to the common sense of every man, that from the power of France and the weakness of Denmark, the latter power would not have been permitted to remain neutral. Mr. Tierney alluded to the speech of the right honourable the secretary of state on a former night, the eloquence of which he admired, but he could not help saying, it was a speech most of the force of which was derived from the extracts which he took from certain documents to which he referred. And here he must take leave to lament that a secretary of state should avail himself of the command he had of the documents of office, and which none but a secretary of state could have taken; and here he must also declare, that the extracts which the right hon. gent. read, were garbled extracts. Grey was well known to be hostile to the Expedition to Copenhagen, and by the extract which the right hon. gent. gave of the dispatch of lord Grey (then lord Howick) to Mr. Garlicke, it would appear as if lord Howick had recommended that expedition. He really did not see what his hon. friend (Mr. Whitbread) could do less than bring forward the present mo Lord them for their conduct on the Copenhagen Expedition? He ventured to say they dared not. But ministers said, Why do not you move a vote of censure against us ? Such a challenge, said the hon. gent. comes with a bad face from men who have the evidence of their conviction in their pockets, but will not produce it. If the right hon. gent. will give me the evidence upon which he founded his proceedings against Copenhagen, I pledge myself to bring forward the motion of censure; but he knows in his heart he has no such evidence to produce. He wished to put the house upon its guard against being cajoled into a belief that ministers had a tittle of proof for their justification. There was no such thing in existence, and he dared them to the production of any thing that could warrant the bombarding a neutral town,and murdering innocent men, women, and children. But if the full documents were to be withheld upon this subject, what an idea would go down to posterity, when such a motion should appear on the journals to have been opposed by his majesty's ministers! Mr. Lockhart observed, that the vote of the former night must have proceeded upon one of two grounds. It must either have proceeded from a conviction of the tion; he ought to do it for the sake of the house of commons, he ought to do it for the sake of the public, who had a right to be fairly informed upon this matter; he ought, lastly, to do it for the sake of the character of lord Howick; for every public man was entitled to a fair consideration by the public. The right hon. secretary consented to lay before the house the correspondence of Mr. Rist, because that appeared to answer the party motives of the right hon. gent. He made a partial extract from the dispatch of lord Howick for the same reason, but he repressed the rest of lord Howick's dispatch, because it would put an end to those party motives by placing the subject in another light, and explaining the whole matter to the public. The general objection to the production of papers, was the inconvenience to the public service by producing them; but here it was not contended that any such would be the case if the whole dispatch of my lord Howick was produced. Here the house was called upon to recognize a right in the secretary of state to read what part he pleased of any document in his office, just as it might suit himself, and that out of pure confidence in the secretary of state. No man admired more than he did the talents of the right hon. gent. but he did not choose to put that sort of confi-satisfactoriness of the extracts of the padence in any man, as to allow him to make partial extracts out of documents as they night suit his purpose. Indeed, he had refused it to a person more considerable than the right hon. gent. ; he meant the late Mr. Pitt. He did not object to the right hon. gent. taking to himself the temporary triumph of a debate by a little tricking, or perhaps to continue that triumph for the day after the debate, but it was too much that he should claim the continuance of the triumph for a week together; when the whole of it was founded upon a fallacy, it was too much to endeavour to keep the country in a state of delusion. There was this difference between ministers and their opponents: the opponents of ministers had done every thing in their power to make the case clear to the public view-ministers every thing in their power to keep matters in the dark. They now talked of the thanks of the house and of the public, and indeed they were perhaps nearly as well entitled to them as some who had them. He would put them to the test. Would they desire any young man of warm wishes for them, to move the approbation of the house to pers produced, or from a general conviction of the necessity of the measure. The nature of the war was now greatly altered from what it was. We were now fighting for nothing less than self-defence, and our existence as a nation. France had subjugated nearly the whole continent of Europe, and it did not behove this country to remain inactive, till she had collected means to form an attack against us. Ministers, he conceived, had acted wisely in anticipating the steps which France was known to have in contemplation. If we had the fullest proof of the good inclinations of Denmark to this country, but were at the same time convinced that she was unable to resist the confederacy formed against her, ministers, in his opinion, were justified in having acted as they had done. He should therefore oppose the production of the papers moved for. Mr. Horner begged leave to recall to the attention of the house what was the real motion they were then debating. His hon. friend had moved for two papers, one of which had been granted, but as to the other it was to be refused, which was the occasion of the present discussion. The right hon. gentlemen, however, who were thus pleased to refuse the production of this paper, had not attempted to say there was any parliamentary ground for their refusal on that head, or that it would be betraying any secret intelligence, or that it would be dangerous, or produce any public inconvenience, the house had not heard any thing. Now, the parliamentary ground for producing it was, that it was intimately connected with a very important measure, with the whole circumstances of which that house ought and was desirous to be acquainted; and therefore he was surprised beyond expression that it should be attempted to be refused. If the right hon. secretary could shew that its production would cause any public inconvenience, he would do well.to state it; but till he did, he hoped the house would incline towards the motion, and insist on its being given. What was the course the right hon. gent. had pursued? In justifying a great and important measure to the house, he had read part of this document to the house, which part had induced many to suppose that the opinion of the noble lord who wrote the letter was in favour of the measure, by holding forth the same opinion of the Danish government as the present ministers had formed, whereas the reverse would have proved to be the case, had the whole of that document been read, and would be still proved if the whole paper, then the subject of debate, were to be produced. The Chancellor of the Exchequer maintained, that there was no foundation for the supposition that the extracts made by his right hon. friend out of the dispatch of lord Howick to Mr. Garlicke at Copenhagen, made the unfavourable impression against that noble lord which some gentlemen apprehended; for they seemed to think that the object of making these abstracts was merely to impress the house with the idea that lord Howick was now complaining against this expedition, only because he was in opposition, but that if he were in power, he would have done as ministers did. But it was not the intention of his right hon. friend to produce any such impression. There was no such interference warranted by the extracts of the dispatch of the noble lord. It was not denied that the noble lord was against the expedition. But the opinion of lord Howick was, that if Denmark gave up her fleet to secure Holstein from the seizure and gripe of France, that such a submission would not be assented to by his Britannic majesty; that was the sentiment of lord Howick in the Dispatch alluded to, and that was all that his right hon. friend meant to impress upon the house the other night. As to the challenge thrown out by a right hon. gent. he had only to say, that ministers were satisfied with the vote upon the king's speech. They thought their defence sufficient as it stood; nor did he believe they should owe much to the forbearance of the right hon. gent. either in the house, or out of it, if he thought he could attack them with success, notwithstanding his apparent magnanimity, in saying that he should not attack them until they were prepared with their defence. Mr. Windham complained that ministers had windled the house out of an appearance of approbation of the Danish expedition, in the Address to his majesty, although it was then understood, that that Address was a mere matter of form, not conveying any actual opinion. The grand ground for the production of the papers moved for by his hon. friend, was that the house having, irregularly in his opinion, allowed a flagrant injustice to be done to an individual, were bound to repair it as far as lay in their power. Sir John Orde was desirous that ministers should not be fettered. The gentlemen opposite seemed to wish that we should give the sword to our enemy, and content ourselves with the scabbard. Mr. Lyttleton did not think that the resistance to the present motion rested on the same grounds as the resistance to the motion of Wednesday last. Although he voted for ministers on that day, common justice would compel him to vote for the hon. gent. on the present occasion. Mr. Sheridan was glad to hear the challenge thrown out by the other side. As to a vote of censure, he should be happy to vote two censures; the one on the disrespectful manner in which all information relative to the Danish expedition had been withheld from the house; the other on the expedition itself. He contended strenuously for the production of the papers moved for by his hon. friend. Before the meeting of parliament he had made up his mind to support his majesty's ministers on the subject of the expedition to Copenhagen; fully expecting that they would be able to prove, either that a collusion existed between Denmark and France, or that Denmark could not have resisted the compulsion of France. Neither of these points had been established; and with regard to the first particularly, he pledged himself, when the subject was resumed, to make it incontrovertibly manifest, that there never had been any collusion what ever. Mr. Sharpe said, he thought the motion ought to be acceded to on every principle of fairness and justice; and so convinced was he of the partiality and injustice of reading garbled papers, that if no other person accepted the challenge given to that side of the house, he would himself bring forward a motion, for a vote of censure; though from the slight connection he had in the house, and the short time he had been a member of it, he could not boast even so much parliamentary courage as to flatter himself with success, and could wish it to fall into abler hands. Mr. Whitbread congratulated the house on the idea, that whether they lost the motion or not, it would have the good effect of preventing the right hon. gentleman from again making use of garbled letters. The chancellor of the exchequer had clearly shewn, that he had never had a cause in a court of justice in which he found it so difficult to defend his client; for all he could say in his behalf was, that he did not mean to draw that inference which others had done for him. The right hon. gent. had said, 'does the noble lord mean to say, that I have cast any imputation on him, by reading his letter?' He would answer for the noble lord, yes, -the imputation of holding one language while in office, and another when out of it, and in so doing palming au imposition on that house and the public. Ministers and the noble lord were, then, at issue: produce the paper. Was there any public inconvenience arising from it? He would answer boldly, no; it had not even been pretended that there was the most distant risk of it. Ministers were willing to give Mr. Rist's letter, because it might serve their purpose on another occasion, but that which made against them they withheld. The right hon. secretary had said on Wednesday last, that whenever he saw the footsteps of those incapable servants he turned round to avoid them, as a path to be shunned; he wished, however, the right hon. gent, would imitate them in their candour and fairness. He had seemed to think he was dealt hardly by, in its being insinuated that he had represented the Danes as humiliated and treated contemp tuously by France; but he appealed to the recollection of the house, that he tried to give every appearance of ridicule in the story he had told of the Danish officer who was taken prisoner by the French, and treated with so much contumely; and stopped short there to make the house believe that no satisfaction had been demanded. But the fact was otherwise; the Crown Prince had made a demand of satisfaction, and obtained it from prince Murat. If the right hon. gent. had gone on and told the house that fact, it would have taken away all the force of his story; so, when he read the passage he had selected from the noble lord's letter, and at the end of which he was so heartily cheered, if he had but given one single word more-the word but with the same emphasis that he concluded the sentence preceding it, that word but would have effectually knocked down all those cheers, by shewing that the opinion conveyed was directly contrary to that he wished to have believed. If no other man in the house would bring it forward, he would himself move for a vote of censure; for never was censure so abundantly merited. Mr. Montague was proceeding, but the house became so clamorous, that he was obliged to sit down. On a division, there appeared-For the motion 73: Against it 157. Majority 84.-On our return to the gallery, Mr. Sharpe gave notice of his intention. of submitting to the house certain Resolutions relative to the Expedition to Copenhagen, and the Conduct of Ministers therein; but refused to name the day. List of the Minority. Milton, viscount Moorc, Peter Morpeth, Viscount Mosley, sir O. Neville, R. Russell, lord W. Newport, sir John Ord, William Parry, Love Peirse, Henry Petty, lord H. Piggott, sir A. Ponsonby, F. Ossulston, lord Prittie, F. A. Taylor, M. A. Vernon, G. G. V. Ward, J. W. Wardel, col. Western, C. C. [PAPERS RELATING TO DENMARK AND The Order in COUNCIL OF JAN. 7, 1807.] The following are copies of the Papers relative to Denmark and the Order in Council of the 7th Jan. 1807, moved for this day, by Mr. Whitbread. PAPERS PRESENTED BY HIS MAJESTY'S COMMAND TO BOTH HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT, FEB. 15, 1808. No. I.--Note from M. Rist to Lord Viscount Howick, dated London, March 9, 1807. which the importance of the object requires, for this exposition; which will be dictated by that frankness and moderation (worthy of an independent government, and one friendly to G. Britain,) by which the court of Denmark has been constantly actuated in her proceedings and discussions with that of London.-Of all courts, whose duty and interest it is to defend the rights of neutrality, that of the undersigned is called upon to do so on this occasion more particularly, as well by its situation, as by the nature of the Order in Council in question: It is against her interests principally that it is directed; her subjects chiefly will suffer by its consequences. Almost exclusively in possession of the advantageous coasting trade between the different ports which will henceforward become inaccessible to them, they are menaced with the deprivation of a branch of their navigation, which has occupied until the present time hundreds of vessels, thousands of sailors and industrious workmen, and considerable capitals. Henceforth the Mediterranean will, for the most part, be shut against their enterprises: a voyage from Holland to France, from Italy to The undersigned, Charge d'Affaires of Spain, from the Hanse towns to the ports his majesty the king of Denmark, in trans- of the Mediterranean, will render their mitting in due time to his court by the vessels and their cargoes subject to confisNote, by which his excellency viscount cation. Excluded from the greatest part Howick acquainted him, on the 10th of of the ports of the continent of Europe, it Jan. with the Order in Council, (p. 126.), is wished that they should renounce, not issued by his Britannic majesty, prohibit-only the considerable advantages which ing all commerce between the different the neutrality of their flag insures them in ports of the enemy and those subject to carrying on the coasting trade, but also the influence of the French government, the continuance of an essential part of foresaw at that time the deep and painful their direct and legitimate commerce with impression which that Order could not the ports above-mentioned. After having fail to produce upon the court of Den-sold the produce of their country, planks, mark. He has this moment received its orders to express to the ministers of his Britannic majesty the surprise and grief which the court of the undersigned has felt in taking notice of a resolution, which, founded upon a principle in itself inadmissible, attacks one of the chief sources of the commercial prosperity of Denmark, and seems to give a blow, as direct as it is unprovoked, to her most sacred rights, and to the treaties which connect her with G. Britain. He has received the orders of his court, to detail to his Britannic majesty's government the fatal conséquences of this measure, and finally to require its suppression. The undersigned, in quitting himself of these orders of his excellency visc. Howick, takes the liberty of demanding from him all the serious attention fish, or corn, in one of the Northern ports of Holland, France, or Spain, they will be obliged to return in ballast, because they will not be allowed to seek, in the Southern ports of those countries, and of Italy, such inerchandize as the countries of the North have occasion for, and which can alone produce returns sufficiently advantageous to reimburse the expences of their voyages. In order to procure salt, wines, brandy, and oil, it will be necessary for them to sail from Danish ports for the most part in ballast, in order to fetch them from the ports of the Mediterranean; if they do not prefer, which, according to all appearance will be the case, to renounce altogether a traffic, which would henceforward become a ruinous speculation.-And how can the subjects of his Danish majesty |