or unfortunate, or disliked. Either of these cases were enough to warrant an address to the sovereign for his removal, in which there was perhaps nothing dishonourable, and in which there was frequently something very much to the credit of the minister removed. The parliament had, at all times, an undoubted right to request that any servant of the crown might be discontinued merely upon disliking him ; it was by no means unreasonable. Had a minister a right to his place for life, as to a freehold? or was he only a servant of the public? If he was their servant, why should the public have less power over their servants than private individuals had over those domestics whom they paid for their services? If the public thought proper not to employ their servants any longer, had they not a right to dismiss them, without incurring the charge of injustice? Undoubtedly they possessed this right; and whoever should urge that it would be unjust to exercise it, must necessarily deny the right itself.

He would go farther, however, and contend, that not only it would not be unjust, but that in many cases, as in the present, it would be expedient to exercise this right; for the moment a minister ceases to enjoy the confidence of the public, that moment he ought to be removed; nay, though he should be a meritorious servant, and an able minister; for in every government there must be a confidence reposed in the servants of the crown by the people; or else the business of the state can never be carried on with any degree of success: and though the people should be whimsical and capricious in their dislike of any minister, yet it never could be consonant to sound policy to keep him in office against the opinion and wishes of the people. The public had long since withdrawn their confidence from Lord Sandwich, (if he indeed ever had been honoured with it,) and therefore for this reason alone, if not for one of the thousand others he could urge, he ought to be removed: he trusted, therefore, that he should hear no more of the injustice and hardship of removing a minister, without having first given him a fair trial.

Holding it, therefore, as a general principle of policy, that a motion of removal was the proper step to be taken, and prudentially deeming an inquiry, as he had already declared, to be not the most fit measure to be taken with a minister while in place; such was the situation of affairs, and such the late misconduct and ill success of our naval force, that he felt himself obliged, under all the difficulties, the obvious difficulties, that would attend his endeavours, to be himself the mover of an inquiry into the conduct of the Earl of Sandwich. Thus knowing and avowing what was right, he

was about to do what he had declared to be wrong, at least wrong in some degree. From what the noble lord in the blue ribbon had said before the recess, when gentlemen talked of the first lord of the admiralty, "that they could only accuse him before the inquiry, but would not charge him with the same crimes afterwards," it would be expected, that the noble lord should himself be the first man to bring on the inquiry. It was very true that he ought to do so. But he was not displeased that he had not done it, for if it had been taken up by that noble lord, he should have believed that it would be conducted, as every thing was conducted which he took in hand, with fraud or imbecility; and that it would be calculated either to do nothing, or to do mischief. There was, however, one thing which would be naturally expected from the noble lord, after so much boasting and gallantry; that he should give to the House the means of a full and fair investigation of the conduct of the admiralty. If he denied the necessary intelligence; if he withheld papers, and starved the trial; the House would then say, that he, and not the persons who attacked Lord Sandwich, hazarded expressions which he could not prove, and was bolder in giving the challenge than in fighting the battle.

It had been said of the Opposition, and it was a charge of which they must clear themselves, that they brought on the inquiry, in order to preserve the Earl of Sandwich in his place; for that if the Opposition had not strove to turn him out, he would have been so long before this time. This was a very curious charge. They had been said to be in league with Dr. Franklin, with the Americans, and even with the French and Spaniards. They were charged with having contributed to the independence of America; but all this was nothing in comparison with the charge which was now alledged against them; that they were in league with the arch enemy who had robbed us of so much valuable dominion, the dominion of the ocean. Better would it be for Great Britain, were they to have supported America, France, Spain, and Holland, than to have linked with the present ministry, without whose uniform aid Dr. Franklin might have been wise, General Washington brave, Maurepas, De Sartine, and M. de Castres, vigilant, crafty, and politic, America firm, the house of Bourbon full of resources, of vigour and of energy, and Holland proved a powerful ally to the house of Bourbon in vain! The honourable gentleman spoke particularly to this point. It was said, not by the gentlemen with whom he had the honour to act, but by the very men, who, in case of a division, would vote in favour of the Earl of Sandwich, that there was an obstinacy

somewhere, that would oppose whatever was undertaken or suggested by the gentlemen in opposition: that Lord Sandwich would have been turned out of place, had not Opposition desired it; and that whatever plan was in agitation, if it were a wise one, and approved of by that side of the House, it would be instantly altered; if it was a bad one, and condemned, it would be persevered in, and executed. He could not tell whether there was such a spirit of obstinacy in existence or not; but he knew that those men, who in their hearts desired to see the Earl of Sandwich out of place, and who sincerely thought him incapable of holding it with honour, or even with safety to his country, and yet came down to the House and voted to save him, were too bad for any society, much less for the important trust which they held, of representing a free people. It proved to him the truth of that declaration which the House made on the 6th of April, 1780, that the influence of the crown had increased, was increasing, and ought to be diminished. But he desired it to be understood and believed, that though they brought on the question for an inquiry into the conduct of the first lord of the admiralty, they had no intention of fixing him in his seat; if he should be secured by their endeavours to turn him out, they could only lament that obstinacy which they had it not in their power to subdue. They did their duty in warning their country of the consequences of his administration of our naval affairs; they spoke of his repeated errors and crimes, exposed them to view, and endeavoured to procure his discharge; and they did this in the honest and upright intention of saving the empire from the farther effects of his miserable system. He begged, therefore, that it might not be imputed to them, that they wished to fix him in his seat; nothing was farther from their intention, and he trusted that those gentlemen who had spoken as he had said, and who wished for the good of their country, that the Earl of Sandwich was removed from office, would now be honest enough to hold the same language within doors that they held without, and act with the same vigour that they spoke.

The honourable gentleman now proceeded to the matter of the inquiry. He said, that it naturally was divided into two distinct heads; the one, whether the first lord of the admiralty had the means of procuring a navy equal to the occasions of the state? and secondly, whether he had employed the force which he really had to the necessary services with wisdom and ability? As to the first, he did not mean to introduce it into the inquiry; for though it was very true. that there were many occasions, in which he could prove that the first lord of the admiralty had neglected his duty in

this respect, yet, as it would require so much detail of proof, and, bring forward so many office-witnesses, witnesses all under the patronage of the noble lord himself, he did not wish to lead the House to this part of the subject. If the inquiry was to be continued for so great a length of time as would necessarily be required for going into that part of the subject, he saw no probability of gentlemen giving it attention. There was an indifference in that House almost invincible; and therefore the only prospect that he could have of the inquiry being regarded was, that it would not be tedious nor perplexing. If the first consideration was taken up, it must be so: there would be great difficulty in ascertaining the facts, and the House would be obliged frequently to resort to opinion and speculation on which it would not be fair to ground censure or punishment. But though he did not take up this part of the question, he begged that no gentleman would suppose that he thought the first lord of the admiralty less criminal here than under the second head; he was convinced of the contrary. There were many egregious faults, and such as every gentleman, whether intimate with naval matters or not, must fully comprehend.

The navy of this country was confessedly inadequate to our occasions. It was not the question, whether it was equal to the navy which Lord Hawke left when he went out of office, though he could prove that the fleet, at the second year of the war, was not nearly equal to that of the year 1759; but it was with the state of the French and Spanish navy that the comparison ought to be made. It was the duty of the first lord of the admiralty to prepare a fleet able to cope with that of the enemy, whatever it might be; and when he saw equipments going on in the French and Spanish marine, it was his business, and it was his indispensable duty to take the alarm, and exert the powers of this country for our defence. Would any man venture to say that the means had been denied him? Would any man venture to slander the House of Commons with the charge of parsimony? Surely none would. It might safely and truly be imputed to them that they had been lavish and wasteful, in cases where expence was not wanted, or where it was improper: but no man would say of them that they had been fastidious or narrow; that they had denied useful sums, or crippled the necessary service. As the nation had felt all the hardships of extravagance, it might certainly have been expected that they should have reaped also some of the benefits. This, however, had not been the case. The Earl of Sandwich had procured lavish grants; he had the command of the national purse, but he had failed to provide for his country a fleet

equal to the necessities of the state, or equal to the strength of the enemy. He had said, however, that he did not mean to go into this branch of the question. The examinations which it would require, would be intricate; the accounts given by men in office would be unintelligible to many gentlemen, and would be rendered obscure to all, by means of the artifices of the admiralty: He wished to confine the inquiry to that which every gentleman would be competent to discuss, and he promised the House that there would be ample matter for discussion.

The branch of the question then, to which he wished to call their attention was, whether the first lord of the admiralty had directed the force of this country, with wisdom and effect, to the necessary objects of the war? Before he proceeded to this he must clear a little ground. A doubt had been raised about the nature and extent of responsibility; knowing, and believing, that all his majesty's ministers were guilty of the dismemberment of the empire, and of the calamities with which we were surrounded, it was to him a matter of indifference on whom the consequences of the inquiry should light; whether it should be the first lord of the admiralty, or the first lord of the treasury, or on either or all of the secretaries of state. He thought them all guilty, and punishment could not fail to be just, if it fell on either; but he must pay regard to the constitution. Our constitution, then, pointed out the particular minister who was bound to give advice to his sovereign in naval concerns, and who was consequently responsible for naval measures. That minister was the first lord of the admiralty. A subaltern commissioner of that board, and which he once had the honour himself to be, would be bound, if he should receive an order from a secretary of state, to send a number of ships, with a particular commander, on any given expedition, to execute that order strictly and literally, without presuming to examine the propriety or the wisdom of the measure. He could not argue on the point, because he had not the means of judging. He knew not the grounds on which the order was made. He knew not the intelligence, and he ought not to know it, nor the facts, nor the arguments, nor the reasoning on which it had been adopted by the cabinet. It was, therefore, his immediate duty to obey the mandate; but if the order had been sent by the same secretary of state to the first lord of the admiralty, the case was very different. He, as well as the secretary, was a counsellor of the king, and he knew, or ought to know, all the grounds on which the order was made. If, therefore, knowing these grounds, he disapproved of the measure; if he considered it