tion of the revenue. This prevented the minifter from having a command of money without the consent of parliament, and it also enabled the Bank to afford that commercial affiftance which was the primary object of the institution. These falutary maxims had been moft grofsly violated by the present minifter, and his conduct had been greatly diftreffing to the commercial part of the country. On the ift of January, 1793, the Bank was in advance to govern ment 11,643,000l. which accounted for the inability of the directors to affift as ufual the mercantile credit. This This practice had been provided against by the act of William and Mary, which established the company; but when a bill upon a vote of credit a few sessions ago paffed through the house, a clause was furreptitiously introduced which entirely fruftrated the falutary purposes of the act in this respect. A vaft floating debt, Mr. Grey faid, remained to be provided for, notwithstanding the loan already negotiated; and the amount of the taxes already impofed during the war, or exifting previous to it, fell fhort of the annual revenue which would be neceffary for the fupport even of a peace establishment-no lefs than two millions and a half. Mr. Grey conjured the house, in an eloquent peroration, to dread the over-grown influence of a minister whose whole conduct was radically hoftile to the fundamental principles of our conftitution.

And

In reply, Mr. Jenkinson infifted that the present posture of affairs afforded no fufficient ground for enquiry, and that the increased expense of wars was owing to the increafed profperity of the nation. If the war was just and neceffary, which he should always maintain, fince it had been fanctioned by parliament, he did not fee how the expense of the war, which was alfo fanctioned by parliament, should become a proper fubject of their enquiry; and he therefore moved the order of the day; which, with much debate, was carried by a large majority.

That Mr. Grey did not in any degree exaggerate the public embarrassments, and the minifterial mifconduct which had occafioned them, but too foon and too plainly appeared; for, after a fhort interval, Mr. Pitt came forward with a propofition (March 18), for a second loan, to the amount of feven millions and a half, in order, as he faid, to take out of the market a great proportion of the paper conftituting the unfunded debt, which was contracted for on nearly the fame terms as the former. Inftead of blushing at the unparalleled enormity of these fucceffive demands-amounting to 43 millions and a half sterling in fourteen months, for paying the intereft upon which new taxes were impofed, in perpetuity, to the amount of 3,300,000 ---Mr. Pitt hoped that nothing would difcourage the house from persevering in a war whose end was fo laudable. He infifted, as he had fo often before done, upon the ruined state of the finances of France, and concluded by exclaiming : « The ultimate iffue of the contest must be glorious, if we are not wanting to ourselves! We fhall, by the bleffing of Providence, deliver ourselves from the worft of dangers, and at the fame time tranfmit to pofterity a most useful leffon, that a bankrupt, turbulent, and lawless nation cannot measure itself with the fpontaneous and well-regulated conduct of a free and loyal country!" After much warm difcuffion the refolutions moved by Mr. Pitt were agreed to.

It is worthy of remark, that, in the year (1782), a committee, of which Mr. Pitt was a member, was appointed by parliament to examine the public accounts of the kingdom; and, in their report, they obferve," that the enormous amount of the extraordinaries incurred without the confent of the parliament is an abuse of the most alarming nature, enabling ministers to deceive the nation by keeping back the great expenses of the war, and concealing thereby the extent of its engagements." In the short space of three years, which had elapfed fince the commencement, a debt funded

and

and unfunded, scarcely short of a hundred millions, had been already contracted, and all enquiry into the neceffity of this incredible expenditure uniformly denied.

Surely then it

cannot be too harsh to characterize the financial administration of Mr. Pitt as exhibiting a system infamously improvident. If a national bankruptcy should be the ultimate, as it seems the inevitable, refult of this fyftem, let us thank GOD that the LAND remains, and that no extravagance of kings or ministers can annihilate it. If our government could have had such communion with the inhabitants of the fun or moon, or any other agents visible or invifible, as by parting with territory to have obtained the means of supplying their immediate purposes, there would not have been by this time an acre of ground left for an Englishman to have fet his foot upon. But regret and indignation are alike useless and unavailing; and we submit to the oppreffions inflicted by fuch an administration as the prefent, as to a plague, a famine, or an earthquake, or any other vifitation of Providence in the natural or moral world.

Nothing very remarkable occurred in parliament after this till the beginning of May, when Mr. Grey brought forward an elaborate series of refolutions, tending to establish the following conclufions :-That ministers had violated the express stipulations of the Appropriation Act, by applying grants to other fervices than those for which they were voted; that they had prefented falfe accounts to the house to conceal this infraction; that they had violated another law for regulating the office of paymaster-general of the forces. -The refolutions were no less than fifteen in number, the laft of which stated that, in the inftances fpecified, his majesty's ministers had been guilty of presenting falfe accounts, calculated to mislead the judgment of the houseof a flagrant violation of various acts of parliament, and of a gross misapplication of the public money and Mr. Grey declared, at the fame time, his purpose, if these refolutions. were carried, to make them the bafis of an impeachment

for

.

for high crimes and mifdemeanours.-Mr. Grey requested the house to recollect that there was an act paffed every feffion, after the grants for the year were made, appropriating certain fums to certain purposes; which act had, as Mr. Grey proved in numerous and very important inftances, been moft grossly violated. The money appropriated to clothing the army, for example, had never been so applied, and there was then due fix hundred thousand pounds and upwards to the several colonels of regiments, &c. upon this account. It was very poffible that exigencies might arife which would justify, in a certain degree, deviations from the Act of Appropriation, but in fuch cases the necessity ought to be stated to the house, and an indemnity granted. On the contrary, great pains had been taken to impofe upon the house by falfe accounts, as appeared by reference to what is styled, in parliamentary language, the Difpofition Papera document eftablifhed at the Revolution, as a real account, for the information of parliament, how the fupplies were employed. This paper he now arraigned as completely falfe. It stated that the fums voted for the army, &c. had been iffued when that branch of the service was ftill in arrear. The queftion before the houfe was, whether they would fuffer this official statement to become a mere form, and the minister to apply the public money as he thought proper, in defiance of the folemn enactments of the legislature? In direct violation alfo of an act of parliament, the paymafter of the army was allowed to retain in his hands a very large balance of the public money which ought to have been paid into the Bank.

"The

Mr. Pitt's defence was very vague and general. Act of Appropriation had at no time," he faid, " been frictly adhered to; though he allowed that the recent deviations from it had been greater than formerly. It was no reproach to the treasury not to be able to afcertain things in their nature inafcertainable. Confidering the variety of operations to which the views of minifters must be directed

in a war like the prefent, and the neceffary changes which must take place, it would ill accord with the public service to bind them down by the strict letter of the act. The balance in the hands of the paymafter was," he said, " temporary and accidental, and owing to the refusal of the directors of the Bank to receive Exchequer-bills as cash; but they had fince agreed to receive them."

Mr. Fox obferved, that whoever had heard the defence fet up, without adverting to the accufation, would have thought that the latter was directed against the incurring any extraordinaries at all; not that they had been incurred improvidently, or had been with-held improperly from the house; or, when incurred and provided for, that the money voted for them had not been applied to their discharge. Arguing generally, it was no doubt certain that, when neceflity demanded, the Act of Appropriation must be difpenfed with; and this fort of argument would apply to any other law, inevitable neceffity being an answer to every thing. The great matter to be explained was, why were the fums voted by the house for extraordinary purposes not applied to their original deftination ?— That the money originally voted was applied neceffarily to other purposes was no reason for delaying the payment one hour after the fucceeding grant which included and provided for all preceding deficiencies. The minifter had anfwered this by the avowal of a system which tended to bring our finances into the greateft confufion-that new grants for old demands fhould be applied to the difcharge of ftill newer demands: fo that to the uncertainty of the appropriation of grants there would be no end. Without fome alteration in this practice, neither the house of commons nor the public could ever know that money was applied to the purposes to which the law deftined it."-Mr. Fox feverely cenfured the infringement of the act relative to the office of paymaster. "If the Bank refufed Exchequerbills, the money ought to have been iffued fome other way.