THE EARL OF CARDIGAN.

MAY 13, 1841.

On Mr. Muntz's Motion for an Address to her Majesty, praying her to institute an Inquiry into the Conduct of the Earl of Cardigan, during his Command of the Eleventh Hussars.

HE hoped to be able, in a few minutes, to state to the House sufficient grounds for dissenting from the motion of the hon. member. His first objection was a very obvious one. It was a constitutional objection. He believed that the hon. gentleman himself would admit, that while there was no prerogative of the Crown which that House was not entitled to offer its advice upon, yet it was necessary that, in offering advice on such points, it should be guided by a very sound discretion. Indeed, none but the most imperious reasons, in the most extreme cases, could warrant such interference with the royal prerogative; and he believed that, above all other prerogatives, in all well-organised States, the control of the army, and the awarding of rewards and punishments to military men, were considered most exclusively to belong to the supreme executive authority; and that such matters ought not to be submitted to large popular assemblies of men, who were too apt to be influenced by party and factious impulse. He did not deny, however, that there might be extreme cases in which such interference would be prudent and proper; but he did not think that the present was a case of that kind. He thought that her Majesty's Government ought not to counsel her Majesty to follow the advice of the hon. member in the present case, whether that advice were concurred in by Parliament or not.

With respect to the particular occurrence to which the hon. member had referred, he had not hesitated, on a former occasion, to express the opinion he entertained of the conduct of

the noble earl on that occasion; but he must say, that whatever might be the faults of the noble earl, he considered him as one of the most unfortunate men of the present time. Into the merits and demerits of the noble earl's conduct, however, he would not go at present; but, viewing that conduct in whatever light it might deserve, he still said, that the present motion was highly objectionable, because, in all matters of this kind, they should be guided by general rules; they should beware how they hasten to take advantage of the unpopularity of an individual, to introduce a precedent which, if once established, would lead to the most fatal effects to the whole of our military system, and work a great injustice to all officers in her Majesty's service. What was the case of officers in the army? They bought their commissions at a high price, the interest of which would be very nearly equal to the pay they received; they devoted the best years of their lives to the service, and were liable to be sent to all, and even to the most unhealthy parts of the globe, where their health, and sometimes their lives, fell a sacrifice. Now, was it to be expected that men of spirit and honour would consent to enter this service, if they had not, at least, some degree of security of the permanence of their situations? Certainly, one of those securities was, that no officer should be deprived of his commission except by sentence of a court-martial. There might certainly be exceptions; as, for instance, where an officer had done something which was cognisable by a court-martial, but there were strong reasons why a proceeding of that sort should not be adopted. But to charge an officer by an ex post facto proceeding, without a court-martial, and of a nature not cognisable by virtue of the Mutiny Act, would lead to a great injustice, and a most fatal uncertainty in our whole military system.

If some part of the statements which had been made were true if the fact of the Earl of Cardigan having given the lie to one of the officers at the head of his regiment had been represented to the proper military authorities, notice would have been immediately taken of it. He could only say that he never heard the smallest whisper of such a practice. With

regard to the unhappy event of the flogging on the Sunday, he believed that no person acquainted with the military law of this country would be of opinion that that was an act which, however flagrant it might be considered as a breach of decorum, a court-martial would condemn as a breach of military law. That opinion rested on the authority of Lord Hill, the Adjutant-General, and the Duke of Wellington, who said that, however great the indecorum might be of an act not included in the Articles of War, or the Mutiny Act, or the regulations of the army, it must be looked on as a casus omissus, which could only subject an officer to a reprimand by general order, and thus be raised to an offence which, in future, would make the party guilty of it liable to court-martial. As to the proposition of the hon. gentleman, for erecting that House into a penal court of inquiry, he must protest against it as a species of tribunal dangerous and revolutionary. It would make that House, which had not the power to administer an oath to witnesses, or punish them if they prevaricated, a court for passing a sentence which might ruin a poor man in the shape of a pecuniary fine, or in attaching a stigma to his name almost worse than death itself. With regard to the part which he felt it his duty to take on this question, he defied any gentleman to imagine any motive which he could have beyond a regard to the performance of the duties of his office, and a regard for the interests of the service, in speaking as he had done in behalf of a man with whom he had never had the slightest personal communication, whom he did not know by sight, and with regard to whom everything that he did knowapart from the unfortunate circumstances with which his name had been mixed up-led him to think he was a decided opponent of the Government of which he was a member, and of the party to which he was attached.

CONFIDENCE IN THE MINISTRY.

MAY 27, 1841.

On Sir Robert Peel's Resolution that Her Majesty's Ministers do not possess the Confidence of the House of Commons, and that their continuance in Office is at variance with the spirit of the Constitution.*

He felt called upon, in the first instance, to congratulate the right hon. gentleman (Sir. R. Peel) on the support which he had just received to his motion by the hon. gentleman who had just sat down (Mr. Walter), who stated that he should vote for it, not on allegations previously stated on the opposite side, but on grounds completely contradictory to any which had been urged by the right hon. baronet. The hon. member said, that the principles on which he was prepared to vote for the motion, and to withhold his confidence from the Government, rested, in the first instance, on the Government's support of the question of privilege last year, and in defence of which the right hon. baronet distinguished himself more than any other member of the House; and, secondly, on their introducing and continuing the New Poor-law Bill, of which measure the right hon. baronet, much to his honour, was a most strong and zealous supporter. He did not rise for the purpose of dwelling on these discrepancies, but for the purpose of following and answering some particular parts of the right hon. baronet's speech, to which hitherto no allusion had been made by hon. gentlemen on his side of the House. He would endeavour to compress what he had to say into as narrow limits as possible. He must, then, at once express some little surprise at the form of the present motion. If the right hon. baronet had chosen to assert the principle that the present Government had not the confidence of the House of Commons, there might be some argument for his motion; but

The Whig Ministry had been defeated on the Sugar Duties Question by a majority of 36.

then he did not adduce an argument for the great constitutional question which was lying behind the first assertion in his resolution. As far as he had observed the conduct of the right hon. baronet, it appeared to him that he was generally against the assertion of any general principle which applied not only to any particular question, but to any other case that might arise. But in this resolution-this judicial resolution-he departed from his usual course, for he thought fit to lay down a general principle as to what was in conformity with the spirit of the Constitution.

He believed that it was no light matter for that House to pledge itself on its journals that one or the other course was in conformity with the spirit of the Constitution. It was a serious matter for that House to come to any such resolution; for if any particular men acted upon the spirit of it the greatest inconvenience might ensue. He said this with confidence; for if in any pressing emergency, or under circumstances of difficulty, the spirit of the constitution was violated and departed from by any public men, and if the House felt justified in sanctioning the proceeding, then they must determine that the opinion of that House, as contained in the resolution, was null and void. If, therefore, the House agreed to a resolution proposed by the right hon. baronet, that the present Administration did not possess nor deserve the confidence of the House of Commons, and that therefore it should be instantly removed, he could understand and appreciate the course of proceeding; but then the House would not fall into the error which the right hon. boronet had done, in laying down what he believed to be nothing more nor less than a political dogma.

The truth was, that the right hon. baronet had mixed up the major part of his proposition with the minor. The major part of the proposition was, that her Majesty's Ministers do not sufficiently possess the confidence of the House of Commons to enable them to carry through the House measures which they deem of essential importance to the public welfare, and the minor portion of the proposition was, that their continuance in office, under such circumstances, was at variance with the spirit of the Constitution. On the latter