ing, and those which may be collected from them in conversation and discussion, will be best understood by reference to lord Chatham's evidence; lord Chatham says that his opinion was never given formally as an officer, on the Expedition to the Scheldt, and why? Is it to be supposed that lord Chatham was never consulted upon the Expedition; or will it be imagined that lord Chatham did not approve of the Expedition? No, it was because his Majesty's government had the advantage of lord Chatham's opinion in a better and more satisfactory mode. If it were the object of a government to protect themselves against responsibility, then assuredly they would not move a step without formal written opinions, but if without desiring to avoid the responsibility which belongs to their situations, and from which it is their first duty not to shrink, they wished only to obtain military information, there is no mode less likely to afford it, than that of calling for written opinions, nor any method better calculated to produce it, than those conversations in which military men, divested of responsibility, will freely detail all the grounds on which their sentiments and views are founded. The distinction here taken must be obvious: when a military case is put upon paper it must be stript of all probabilities and contingencies, and stated in as strict a manner as a legal case would be stated to a lawyer. Can it be supposed that the various circumstances upon which the policy, or impolicy of a military operation hinges, can be ascertained with such accuracy previous to a decision on its expediency as to admit of their being accurately detailed and enumerated as premises from which a conclusion is to be drawn; either the case must be stated only upon such facts as are known upon clear and positive information, and the answer to it must consequently exclude all probabilities and contingencies; or what is merely probable and contingent must be assumed as certain, in which case the opinion would be given upon erroneous data, and would probably be falsified by the event. It has therefore been my official practice, so far from endeavouring to shift responsibility upon points of this nature from my own shoulders, to relieve officers as far as possible from any parti cipation in it; the responsibility of the execution belongs to them, but for the propriety of embarking in the undertaking

his Majesty's government ought to remain alone responsible. It is not on this account less the duty of ministers to resort to the advice of professional men, and to avail themselves of their experience and information, but certainly this duty cannot be executed in the best practical manner by calling on persons of that description to answer dry and imperfect cases stated in writing.It is the same in other professions, for instance in that of the law, the title of an estate may be open to objections, and yet those objections may be of such a nature as not materially to detract from the value of the property; if the case on such a title were referred to counsel, his answer on strict legal grounds must necessarily be that the title is not a good one; nevertheless speaking practically he might not hesitate to represent the purchase as eligible, or even to become himself the purchaser of the estate, against his own professional opinion.-In the present case, where suppositions are put to general Calvert, of the works at Antwerp being imperfect, or the garrison inadequate, and he is asked how far his judgment of the probability of success was influenced by those circumstances, his observation immediately is, "those are considerations for the government to judge of, with which as a military man I can have nothing to do, my military opinion can only be founded upon the supposition that the place is in a proper state of defence, adequately garrisoned, and that the governor and garrison will do their duty. Having stated to the House, the reasons why I should not have felt it necessary on any general principles of ministerial practice to call for written opinions from the military officers who were consulted, I must now state the special grounds, upon which I was induced to do so in the present instance. The attention of the government had been directed for a considerable time to the growing naval power of the enemy in the Scheld; in considering the lines of operation by which it might be assailed, two only suggested themselves for decision, viz. either a movement across Flanders to Antwerp, after landing at Ostend, or a conjoint Expedition by the Scheldt with a view of landing a considerable force higher up the river as near to Antwerp as possible. In the many conversations which took place on this subject previous to a decision, it seemed indisputable that consi

hazard which the armament might incur, the Commander in Chief proceeds to observe, "In whatever way Antwerp is to be approached or taken, the service is one of very great risk, and in which the safe return of the army so employed may be very precarious from the opposition made and the length of time consumed in the operation, which enables the enemy to assemble in a short time a great force from every part of the Netherlands and Holland, and even from Westphalia by the course of the Rhine as well as from the frontiers of France."-Here the risk in the contemplation of the Commander in Chief is obviously depending altogether upon the means which the enemy might possess of assembling a force upon Antwerp during the progress of the service. What these means were, did not constitute a question to be decided by professional judgment, but could only be collected from the information received concerning the number and description of troops which the enemy then had in the countries adjacent to the Scheldt; it was for government and not for the Commander in Chief to decide on the nature and authenticity of that information. I shall be prepared to contend hereafter that the enemy's force was not such during any period of the operation down to its close, and even subsequent to the time within which the accomplishment of all our objects might have been reasonably expected, as could have essentially endangered the safety of the army employed. I trust therefore it will appear that the only remark in the report of the Commander in Chief which can be considered as adverse to the undertaking refers entirely to a contingency, which never actually existed during the late service, and that it cannot therefore be taken as an authority against the judgment formed by the King's government upon this subject. The next opinion which has been relied upon as decisive against the undertaking, is, that of colonel Gordon. In any comment I have to offer upon that opinion, I wish to speak of it with the respect I entertain for that officer; I consider the same observation to be applicable to his opinion which I applied to that of the Commander in Chief, viz. that he would hardly have wasted his military ingenuity in contriving modes by which the government might be enabled to carry forward operations, which bad defiance to all known maxims of military

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prudence. After disposing of the project of operating by Ostead, Colonel Gordon proceeds to state "the second mode for consideration is the maritime operation for acting with our land force from our ships of war on the banks of the river Scheldt. It is imagined that th disembarkation of the troops mht ne sprotected as high as Sandvliet, which is witam 20 miles of Antwerp, if his coud e tele and a landing in some force effected at Sandvliet, it might be possible to mar h direct upon Antwerp, at the same time that a corps endeavoured to take posses sion of the forts and batteries upon the river, and that the boats of the fleet well manned, armed, and towing launches with troops proceeded with the direct to the city. That this would be a most desperate enterprize could not be doubted, and that in the attempt whether successful or otherwise a very large proportion of our naval and miliary means would be put to imminent hazard, but it appears to be an enterprize of less risk, and one which could be brought to an earlier issue and attended with less expence than that which has been considered in the first part of this paper." Now I beg leave to contend hat colonel Gordon's suggestion of the enterprize being desperate is referable to his own plan of operations as suggested in this paper, and not to that which it was in the contemplation either of his Majesty's ministers or of those who were charged with the conduct of the operation, to carry into effect. perfectly concur with colonel Gordon that the project of embarking a force in launches, and endeavouring to pass them with the tide up to Antwerp with a view of taking that city by storm on the side of the river, before the works were either carried or on the point of being carried by an army on the land side, would have been not only a desperate, but an almost impracticable undertaking, more especially in the state of the enemy's defences between the forts of Lillo and Liefkenshoeik, but it would be doing great injustice to colonel Gordon's military opinion, to suppose, that he meant to assert, independent of all consideration of relative force, that the landing a considerable corps at Sandvliet with a view to an advance by land on Antwerp must necessarily be a desperate enterprize; that such would not have been the case has been established by the evidence of every offcer examined before the Committee; sir

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men on the other side of the House to the experience of their own administration, as likely to have most weight in their judgment. I beg it may be understood that in referring to their military operations, I do not wish to do it invidiously; whatever difference of opinion may have prevailed on those subjects at the time, and whatever may have been the merits or demerits of those measures, I am perfectly prepared to admit, that errors into which they may have fallen, can form no justification for my conduct, or that of my late colleagues, and I certainly do not wish to advert to their failures as giving me any claim to forbearance on their part on the present occasion. I feel the less disposed unnecessarily to urge any personal argument with respect to the right hon. gent. opposite (Mr. Windham,) as I know no individual in the contests of political life, who is himself a more generous opponent. He is entitled to the more consideration from the line of conduct which he has pursued on recent occasions, when although acting in opposition to the government, he did not hesitate to do justice to those transactions, which were connected with the fame and glory of the country in war, and which being praised and honoured as they deserved were calculated to excite and augment the military energies of the empire. But I should wish to ask the right hon. gent. whether the government of which he formed a part, when they determined upon the Expedition to the Dardanelles, had previously received the written opinion of the illustrious person then at the head of the army, or of other military authorities, in favour of the practicability of such an operation? Am I to understand that full information had been in that case previously collected of the precise amount and condition of the force from which opposition might be expected? of the exact state of the enemy's works? of the position of the arsenal of Constantinople? of the difficulty of passing and repassing the Dardanelles ? And that upon the case so stated, ministers had received the | sanction of professional judgment for sending a naval force unsupported by an army, to undertake the service in question. Will the right hon. gentlemen have the goodness to inform the House, under the sanction of what military opinion they acted, when they employed a corps of British troops, not exceeding

10,000 men, in the river Plate, for the purpose of effecting not the deliverance, but the conquest of that great portion of the continent of South America? And when with similar views they sent a corps of not half that strength to circumnavigate the globe, to reduce Chili, and to open a military communication across the Andes with the force which was to carry on its operations on the side of Buenos Ayres. Was all this undertaken upon precise information previously obtained, and were military men previously consulted upon the practicability of such an attempt? If so, I should be glad to see the written opinions upon which these operations were undertaken. I am not aware that such opinions as I have described, exist, and certainly never found any such in the records of the department which I lately filled. It is not my intention to contend, that the absence of such sanction establishes the impolicy of the operations alluded to, I only refer to that circumstance as an illustration of the practice of government upon the subject, and lay in my claim to have my conduct judged of by its own merits, and not to be condemned because I have not considered myself as fettered by a system which I am persuaded never can be strictly pursued without the most essential prejudice to the interests of the public service. I must also contend against the principle which has been maintained in argument, that government cannot be justified in undertaking any operation, the practicability of which has not been previously established on a full and minute examination at home of, all the possible circumstances on which success may turn. I apprehend that this never has been, and never can be a wise principle of conduct for any great country to act upon, least of all for Great Britain, whose prospects of advantage in war so peculiarly rest upon the energy and enterprize of her operations. I am sure that such was not the rule of action by which the late lord Chatham was guided in any of the expeditions undertaken by him during the conduct of that war, which raised the military glory of this country to so high a pitch. In order to shew that lord Chatham considered the practicabi lity of an operation to be a point, which might often most properly remain to be decided on the spot, by the judgment and observation of the officer, to whom the command was entrusted, I shall read to