cern and last importance. Amongst these of the dock yards, are incompetent to the are many individuals who have risen to their present eminence through a gradation of office, commencing in the lowest scale of rank, even as low as apprentice to a shipwright. In consequence they are most fully acquainted with every minute circumstance of the dock-yards and their administration, and were thereby the most proper persons to examine into the abuses practised in them, and to prescribe the remedies. The four resident commissioners at the four principal dock-yards are old experienced officers in the navy, and have hitherto been recommended to this distinguished situation from the port list, on account of their knowledge, talents, and services. Now, if instead of creating new officers unacquainted in the smallest degree with the minutiae and intricacies, as well as the more important branches of the naval department, and burthening the public with a new charge, at a time when the most rigorous œconomy is, on account of our necessary pressures, become so indispensably -requisite, one commissioner was to be detached from the Admiralty Board, another, or even two from the Navy Board, and they were to be associated at each dock-yard with the resident commissioners, and aided by former enquiries, they would seriously set to work to ascertain the existing abuses, and adopt remedies to them, the whole business would be readily completed, and without a single addition of expense to the country. If they in the course of their investigation found any difficulty in exa mining witnesses out of the dock-yards, it would be easy enough then to devise some compulsory measure, without having immediate recourse to the present project, so unconstitutional in a legal, and dangerous in a moral point of view. As to the persons employed in the dock-yards, they will be ready enough to take any oath tendered to them, as their refusal would subject them to dismissal, and their perjury to an indictment. The abuses practised in the dock yards have been a subject of just complaint for many years past; they are carried on to an extent almost incredible, and to a calculated amount of 500,000 annually. But will the present proposed bill remedy them? Will the appointment of men, in consequence of parliamentary interest, or the ipse dixit of the First Lord of the, Admiralty, be a likely means of eradicating the evils complained of? If twenty-one commissioners perfectly acquainted with every abuse, and well vers ed and exercised in the whole management eradicating of the existing frauds, how can a set of men appointed de novo from the predominant interest of the hour be eo instanti sufficiently experienced in affairs of such great and intricate complexity, and combining infinite details to new model, improve and put them on such a basis as shall, for the future, shut out the avenue to pecu→ lation, fraud and abuse. Whoever is acquainted with the dock-yards, or their administration, must know that the present measure is a most despicable job, calculated to serve only ministerial and interested purposes, to extend the already overgrown patronage of the First Commissioner of the Admiralty, to feed his numerous and insatiate expectants, and to create an establishment with powers and objects extraordinary and undefined, and nugatory, as to any good effects that can result from it. A 100 great readiness to depart from established usages seems to be the prevalent desire of the present day. The most wholesome laws, combining the most salutary checks to dishonesty, peculation and abuses, which exist in full force at the present moment, and which require only common attention and industry to be understood and put in practice, are hastily abandoned for new plans, and to serve and extend new interests, and to create new offices, various and complicated, which instead of clearing the way to discovery, punishment and remedy, make it only more crooked and intricate. The dock-yards have severely felt this innovating mania. New order has hastily succeeded new order. To an order to-day, to-morrow a countermand; to day Mr. Bentham is particularly marked out for exclusion; to morrow paraded through every storehouse; to day the labour is done by men and horses; to-morrow the yard is converted into a storehouse of machinery. The reservoir in Portsmouth dockyard is worked by horses to-day, to-morrow by a steam engine, the day after by men. The introduction of new plans has introduced new interests, and the dock-yards have presented scenes of faction and intrigue, which have been carried to an unparalleled height, insomuch, that the resident commissioner has frequently found himself a mere cypher, wherein formerly his word was law, and has been subjected to the disgraceful measure of restoring those men to their for mer situations which they had been discharged from, for mal-practices and miscouduct, according to the domineering interest and successful faction of the day. Nay, the Admiralty Board frequently interfere in no routine of public business now in this time minating to the very lowest situations, in | farthing of expense, and without neglect opposition to the personal recommendation ing in the smallest degree the accustomed of the resident commissioner, who is frequently constrained to enter persons, whom he has great cause to distrust, in the point of honesty, sobriety, and proper principles. Moreover, may not the Ordnance, the Victualling, and other departments (in which undoubtedly many abuses prevail) after the present example, so eminent in idleness and disinclination to business, may not they come forward and propose similar measures in their boards? If the First Commissioner of the Admiralty shall successfully procure such a great extension of his interest and patronage, will it not be a precedent for a Master-General of the Ordnance or the ruling party of the day, to follow the present example, at once so gratifying to ministerial influence and desirable to needy followers. When the very few hours of attendance, by the commissioners at the public boards to ordinary business, is considered, we may, and we have a right to insist on a longer attend ance to correct, and a more intelligent industry to remedy any abuses which have arisen or crept into any department of the state, perhaps originating, at least in part, from that very sluggish and slender attendance and application. The Commissioners of the Navy, till this war, managed the Transport Service also, for which, on their own representation, they obtained an increase of salary to the amount of £200 per annum. This branch of service has been transferred to a separate board, but the increase of salary has not been transferred with it; on the contrary, the combined salary of £800 per annum has been still further increased to £1000 in lieu of some fees which they lost, in consequence of the removal of this very branch of business. From all which premises the following deductions may be made.That the Commissioners of the Admiralty and Navy are fully compe- This was written some days ago as will tent to enquire into, ascertain, and remedy appear by the date, and long before the bill all the existing evils and abuses in the dock-was passed; but finding you have taken up yards, over which they have a full, complete the subject in Saturday's Register, has inand entire jurisdiction. That the laws at pre- duced me to make some additional observasent in force, are fully adequate to the punish- tions --It requires no very extraordinary ment and correction of every fraud, pecula powers to discover abuses in the dock yards, tion, and mal practice in the naval depart- they are pretty plain and visible. ments.-That those laws only require atten- the public has been most grossly imposed un tion to discover, industry to prosecute, and the in the article of hemp cannot be doubted, exertion of the powers they confer, to enable as the ample fortunes of more than one ib. the Admiralty and Navy Boards of them-dividual testify. But while a pompous disselves to reform all existing abuses, and to play of acute investigation is shown in the punish their perpetrators.-That this can overcharge of the article of casks used in and ought to be speedily done, without the rope houses, to the amount of a few charging the public with one additional hundred pounds, and to which every clerk December 17, 1802. That reform abuses in its own department would in the rope-yard must have been privy, frauds to an amount almost incredible are suffered to go unpunished, and the guilty plunderer lives in a state of splendour, which at once proclaims his dishonour, and the shameful negligence of those men in office, by which be escapes with impunity. MR. ADDINGTON'S MODEST ASSURANCE. Much has been said about the purity and SIR, The MODESTY of your conscientious, disinterestedness of the present Admiralty. well-meaning man, is strikingly exemplified Does the following circumstance evince it? in Mr. Addington's speeches on the address: The porter of the dock-yard at Portsmouth It were to be wished for the nation that was allowed £30 per annum, a house to the ministers were men of abilities: it were live in, and also a chaise or coach-house for desirable for their supporters that they had his carriage and stable for his horses. At even the reputation of talents: let them first sight its must appear singular, that a be discreet if they cannot be wise: at least porter, whose business there is literally to it does not become them to make a display attend at the gates, and most minutely to of their deficiencies or to seize on every inspect every ingress and regrees, should opportunity for demonstrating their incahave a coach-house and stable to keep his pacity.-This reflection suggests itself upon carriage and horses, and that too upon £30 reading the reports of Mr. Addington's a year; but he had the profits of the yard speeches on the address as they appear in tap, where beer is sold to the workmen. the public papers.-One would imagine These profits have been estimated to amount that any sensible minister, however desirous to from £600 to £700 per annum. This place to uphold the peace of Amiens, would at had generally been given to some messen- least use cautious and moderate language ger or very inferior person in the Admiralty under the circumstances in which the naservice. In consequence, however, of some tion is at present placed, so evidently critigreat interest made for this situation on the cal, so confessedly embarrassing. But such last vacancy, the First Lord of the Admi- is the frame of Mr. Addington's mind and ralty inquired into these circumstances, and intellect that he views it with delight and very wisely conceiving that two creatures triumph, and when reminded of the calaare better than one, he appointed two por mities it has produced, he cannot refrain ters to divide the profits, who will have from exultation." If, says he, I am a detwo houses, two chaise houses, and two linquent, I confess I am a hardened onę : stables, where there was one only before." for I do declare that I never reflect on "This is one proof amongst many others of " the share I had in restoring peace to my their great attention to economy and laud-" country, but with the most heartfelt saable zeal in eradicating abuses. So much for the porter. As he is the lowest in the scale we will go up to the highest, viz. the resident commissioner. It had been for many years as part of his duty to pay ships, for which he was allowed 40s. per day when employed, which formed a part of his income; but the Admiralty have taken away this branch of his employ, and employed a second port admiral on constant pay at a very great increase of expense to pay the ships, and, in consideration of the commissioner's losing these emoluments, his salary has been Dincreased very considerably. The present comptroller of the navy was offered a pension equal to his emoluments if he would resign his situation in favour of a present Lord of the Admiralty, so likewise was a resident commissioner if he would do the same in favour of another lord of the same board. This is that Admiralty which is above all ideas of favouritism, and which in its outrageously virtuous endeavours to "tisfaction."-Yet in the midst of this triumphant boast he immediately reverses the scene, and declares that all Europe is in a situation which no man laments so much as himself-and then forgetting every idea of peace, he boasts of our state of preparation for war, and takes the utmost credit to his administration for having kept up a navy and army double, both in force and expense, to which was maintained after the peace of 1783.-Some persons may doubt as to the common honesty of this harangue, but I think no man can doubt as to the common sense of it.-How this triumph mixed with lamentation, this peace accompanied with a preparation for war, this continued system of war expense and doub'ed establishment can give the most heartfelt satisfaction, vulgar men may find difficult to reconcile, and we must leave to Mr. Addington himself to explain.-Let us then hear him again: thus the great man prooeeds." Nay I do not scraple to add, “that even if encroachments or insults of several periods during the war, and for "fered to the country should again lead to | keeping up an establishment:double in "hostilities that still that calamity will not amount both for land and sea, to what destroy that satisfaction, for I should was maintained after the disastrous peace "know I had done my duty, and that I of 1783.-Another source of consolaç "had no cause to reproach myself with tion and satisfaction to him is, that having "subsequent events."-Such is Mr. Adding- made the peace of Amiens we can never ton's explanation and defence of the perfect again singly contend against France, and heartfelt satisfaction which he feels at the that we must wait to assit a confederacy of peace and whatever I may think of it in continental powers with arms and subst other respects, I must confess it to be truly dies.-Who, then, upon hearing this line of astonishing! Happy, happy man!-If a new policy adopted by the minister would not war follow upon the heels of his peace, if conceive that in his arrangement of peace, ruin and destruction flow from it-it is he had not only secured our old allies, but nothing to him, he has done his duty-he made an augmentation to their number? is not responsible for future events: no On the contrary, he has the heartfelt satis calamity, no misery can ever shake his firm-faction to reflect that of those powers who set happiness, or impair for a moment that are able, none are willing, of those who are perpetual and heartfelt satisfaction which willing,none are left able,to confederate with he must ever feel from having directed the and to assist us. Yet to these alone are we to signature of the treaty of Amiens!-The trust; for he says, Great Britain cannot ventabove passage I have quoted is certainly the ture to go to war by herself. To give the climax and acmé of Mr. Addington's elo- last stroke and entire finishing to all this quence; no other orator ever ventured a display of political and diplomatic talent, flight in any degree so daring, nor can he and to exalt his triumph in the peace to the himself boast any other passage equally utmost, he boldly, and I will add here at transcendent.-Yet I cannot help adverting least truly, asserts that the peace was in no to some few other parts of his oration, degree a peace of necessity, and that we which, though not extraordinary for him, are now able to continue a war for seven would highly surprize from any other years without exhausting our resources. →→→→ speaker, Mr. Addington pleads in favour Such is the argument of the prime minister of his peace" that not being able to a- of the British Empire, the great mover and bridge the power of France on the Con- director of all our affairs, on whose fore"tinent, it was wise to economise our sight, abilities, sagacity, and firmness, " means and husband our resources, in order the nation is to depend at this awful pethat if again we should be unhappily riod.-He states that we were not under called upon, we might be either able to the least necessity to make peace That co-operate with effect with the continental we have full resources for a continuance of powers, or furnish the means by which war for seven years. In other places he "they might be called into vigorous ac-states our numerous and unexampled trition."Who would not think from this umphs and our naval superiority in every part passage that we were now in a state of of the globe:-Yet in this proud situation profound peace and complete security? he makes a degrading peace with France; That we and our enemy were entirely dis- and, because he could not abridge her conarmed? That Europe was in a state of in-tinental empire, he transfers to her our dependence and tranquillity, and that we marine dominions and concedes the greatwere reducing our establishments to the est naval and colonial stations on the globe situation they were in before the war, and Martinique, St.. Lucie, St. Domingo, introducing the most vigorous systems of Cochin, the Cape, and the Mediterraneat. retrenchment into every part of our ser-During the negotiation, he suffers the vice. Yet our real state is the diametrical Italian Republic to be added to France, and reverse. And whilst Mr. Addington is adinits her obtaining Elba, Louisiana, and framing this curious argument, the funds Parma by fraud; and after the peace he acare sinking under a loan of £25,000,000 quiesces in the annexation of Piedmont, made to secure the first year of his blessed the revolution of Germany, and the invasion peace. The people are called upon to submit of Switzerlaud, and thus sanctions and conto fresh burthens for the second year, and firms the most complicated and insulting he himself takes credit for not having dis-ma.s of treachery, fruud, oppression, insult, banded a single soldier he could avoid; for aggression, and encroachment, that ever was having at present a greater force than at displayed upon the globe. This miserable 47] treachery, the aggressions of France, ré- DETECTOR. NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 1. The Substance of the Speech of the Rt. Hon. Henry Addington, in the Committee of Ways and Means, on Friday, Dec. 10, 1802. Hatchard.-We think it proper to apprize our readers that the pamphlet, bearing the above title, which has been advertised with so much ostentation, is nothing more than the very accurate report of the minister's For what purbudget-speech, which will be found in page 778 of our second volume. pose this speech, which occupies two pages and a quarter of our Register, should be swelled into a twelvepenny pamphlet of In the speech of a mithirty-eight octavo pages, we are at a loss to conjecture. state to which he has reduced Europe and ourselves is so glaring, that with all his insensibility he is forced to lament it most deeply; it is on the other hand so dangerous, that he cannot discharge a soldier, that he is proud to double all our establishments, to call for additional burthens on the people, while he has rendered us so weak, that we cannot go to war without allies, and his But whilst we suffer ourselves to be dipeace has destroyed all our alliances.-Thus rected by such abilities as those of Mr. Adin this wretched and deserted state, when dington, and by such principles as those of we have no friends on the continent, and Mr. Fox; while guided by the heart of the one and the head of the other, the man cannot fight singly, when France is encroaching daily, and we dare not interfere who gloried in the success of France, the man in her career-what are his thoughts?-He who is blind to the degradation of England; as there can be no hope, there can be no looks back with complacency to the cause of all he has done his duty-he cannot consolation: ulterior and increasing distress reproach himself with subsequent events is all we can expect-a perpetual forebodhe glories in being a hardened delinquent ing of fresh humiliation-a fearful looking --and shall even reflect on the share he on of coming destruction. had in restoring peace to his country with the most heartfelt satisfaction.-To a character capable of conceiving and advancing such a tissue of inconsistency, absurdity, and weakness, are the fate and fortune of the empire committed in the most tremendous What crisis the world ever exprienced. in the name of God are we to expect from a man who cannot utter common sense with ordinary reasoning and consistency for the space of a few minutes? and who crowds into a short harangue more real folly and contradiction than ever disgraced the exercise of a school-boy.-I will acknowledge, however, there is one man in this kingdom, a new friend and supporter of Mr. Addington's administration, who could have held such sentiments without the same in-nister of state, ushered into the world consistency and absurdity-I speak of Mr. with such pomp and solemnity, one is naFox.-Herejoiced like Mr. Addington, that turally prepared to find a mass of political, the peace of Amiens was glorious; but that commercial, and financial information.it was glorious, not to England but to But no!-Parturiunt montes, nascitur ridiculus France. Mr. Fox is a man of superior mus. abilities and sagacity, he knew the nature of the peace, he clearly saw its tendency to depress his country and to aggrandise our enemy, and he rejoiced in it. Would to God Mr. Addington were, for a moment, gifted with similar abilities to those of Mr. Fox, while he retained his love for his country he would then see the true tendency of his measures as clearly as Mr. Fox; and, seeking the glory of England, not the glory of France, he would lament, in sackcloth and ashes, the fatal moment, when he ordered the preliminaries to be signed; he would retire from a situation to which he is confessedly inadequate; he would be cautious in adopting the measures of those who palliate the fraud, the PUBLIC PAPERS. Be it known to all whom it may concern, That his Prussian Majesty being firmly resolved to observe and scrupulously to fulfil the stipulations agreed upon in favour of the Batavian Republic in the Convention signed at Paris the 23d May, between his Prussian Majesty and the French Repub. respecting the cession of the territorial proto proceed to the preliminary and complete exeperty hereafter pointed out; and, being desirous cution of the first treaty which is the basis of it, the two powers have agreed previously to regulate by an arrangement the mode and the conditions of that cession; and in that view they have authorized, viz. his Majesty of Prussia, Mr. C. H. C. Count Haugwitz, his Minister of State, &c. &c. ; and the Batavian Repub. Citizen C. G. Hultman, her Envoy Extraordinary, at the Court of Berlin, 4 9 |