6th September, the marching money was unquestionably the subject of conversation; and Mr Morrison, so far from asking for the money, did, as unquestionably, express his entire approbation of its remaining undistributed, until it was ascertained that the full charge was, or was not allowed. Had Mr Morrison expressed the slightest wish to have had the money, he should have had it. I shall not take up the time of the court, by making further comments upon Mr Morrison's account of our conversation; because, in replying to the second and third charges, I trust I shall demonstrate to the court, that his evidence has been such, as to render it impossible that it can be received. On the 30th September, I received a letter from Captain Thain, stating that it would be convenient to him, and Mr Morrison, to receive their marching allowance. I believe Mr Morrison mentioned the subject also in a letter which I received from him on the same day. These were the first applications I ever received from any of the parties, and as it was, of course, perfectly optional with them how long they would wait for the expected communication from the war office, and they having decided that question for themselves, I, of course, immediately requested Captain Thain to draw upon Mr Elder, at three days sight, for his own and Mr. Morrison's money. He did draw accordingly, and had the money in his pocket on the 6th October, and he paid Mr Morrison his proportion on the 7th. Still further to demonstrate to the court the purity of my conduct relative to this marching allowance, I shall call Lieutenant Nicholson, another of the officers who was upon the same service, and who will prove that the first time I saw him after drawing for the money I told him that I had done so; that about the time I received the application from Captain Thain I offered him the money, and he refused to take it, and that after settling with Captain Thain I remitted him, the money, without any application whatever by him to me. Surely, then, there could be no withholding until there was an application, and it is scarcely necessary to observe to the court (but that the observation applied to all the charges) that by the rules of the service it is the duty of officers on detachment to come in, or, at least, to send a confidential person, to head quarters for their monies. The service knows nothing of accommodation, and an officer, taking upon himself to transmit money to his detached parties by post, would, in the event of any accident happening to the letter, have to bear the loss out of his own pocket.

The second and third charges are as follow:

Second charge," For improperly withholding and neglecting to issue pay due in the months of August and September, 1809, to part of the recruiting party stationed at Hexham, in Northumberland, under the command of Lieutenant Morrison, then

under the command of Captain Dale, on the recruiting service, until the latter end of September, or thereabouts, notwithstanding he had drawn for and received the same, and knew such party was without pay during the before mentioned period, contrary to his duty as an officer, and to the prejudice of the service, and of good order, and of military discipline."

Third charge, "For improperly withholding, in the months of August and September, and neglecting to remit or pay Lieutenant Morrison, who was then under his command on the recruiting service, in Northumberland, the bounties for men enlisted by Lieutenant Morrison during that period, for the payment of which he had then money in his hands, contrary to his duty as an officer, and to the prejudice of good order and military discipline."

With respect to these charges, if any thing had existed to justify their being brought forward at all, I submit that they ought in fairness to have formed only one charge, namely, for withholding from Lieutenant Morrison, money which he had advanced out of his own pocket for pay and bounties. The two charges have evidently been framed for the purpose of charging, as two distinct public offences, that which was the subject of one mixed private account between Lieutenant Morrison and myself, as his letter and account of the 24th September, 1809, will sufficiently shew; and this, too, is attempted to be done long after the settlement of that account, in the absence of all complaint, and without a pretence of the slightest injury having happened to the service. Without stopping to enquire into the justice or necessity of this measure, I shall proceed to answer the charges as they stand. These charges, then, (and the same observation applies to the first charge) are wholly unsupported, except by the testimony of Lieutenant Morrison, whose evidence, if I must speak out, and it is only in my own defence, attacked and calumniated as I am that I would do so, is so full of improbabilities and inconsistencies that I humbly presume the court will already have seen the necessity of laying it altogether out of their consideration. It is even totally inconsistent with such of my letters as the Prosecutor has thought proper to lay before you for the purpose of supporting it. And, gentlemen, I trust it will clearly appear from the detail which I am about to have the honor to lay before you, that instead of my having improperly withheld from Lieutenant Mor rison the balance of his account, he did, very soon after the balance of that account became in his favour, lay a settled plan to entrap me, and did not only unnecessarily increase his balance, but instead of coming or sending to me for payment, he did. after a certain period studiously keep out of my way, and did even absent himself from his party, and take measures to prevent that party being paid, (which measures were only frustrated by the zeal and good conduct of his serjeant) and all this for the

purpose of subjecting me to punishment for a serious military crime. The plan, gentlemen, which evidently appears to have been laid for the purpose I have stated, seems to have been arranged with considerable management, and regard to system; and, had not Mr Morrison, in his evidence, attempted to prove a great deal too much, it might have been difficult for me to demonstrate, as I trust I shall now readily do, that not even the slightest negligence is imputable to me; any suspicion of improper motives, which might have been awakened by the address of the Prosecutor, has, I trust, by the Prosecutor's own evidence, been long since destroyed.

To furnish the court with a sort of clue to guide them in the development of the plan I have alluded to, it is only neces sary to state that Mr Morrison, very soon after he had expended the £40 with which he was originally entrusted, began to complain of my conduct to the persons about him, stating that I would pay no attention to his letters or messages, but which letters or messages (except those to which I paid attention) were never sent, while he at the same time was conducting himself towards me, both in his personal deportment when we met, and by his letters, with the utmost apparent friendship and cordiality.

Whether Mr Morrison acted from the impulse of his own mind, or at the instigation of others, I know not; but, this I know, that I never did intentionally injure or offend him.

I shall now attempt to give the court a faithful detail of the transactions between Mr Morrison and myself, commenting as I proceed upon that gentleman's evidence, so as to put the court into possession, in the clearest way I can, of the real circumstances of this most extraordinary case. At, or soon after, the time that Mr Morrison was ordered to his station at Hexham, I requested him to send me a statement of his expenditure once a month. In pursuance of this request, he sent me in the month of July the highly irregular and un-officerlike account, containing his charges of money paid on account to Serjeant Walton. Now I would with great submission appeal to the court, whether it were possible for me to carry on the service with such accounts. It will be recollected that I had five parties under my command, and that I was only allowed to draw £40 in advance for the whole. To induce Lieutenant Morrison to keep his accounts with greater regularity, I ordered my serjeant to send him the form of a pay list, and I also wrote him my letter of the 25th July, which is upon the minutes of the court. Mr Morrison seems to have taken considerable offence at this letter, though upon what grounds I know not. I certainly had not the slightest intention to impeach his integrity, and I trust that the court will think with me that his want of regularity gave ample cause for the restrictions which I then imposed upon him. The Prose cutor has attempted to put a most extraordinary construction up

on a passage in that letter, which states that government allows of no advances. It has been attempted to be inferred, that I was making a statement which was not true, to excuse myself from sending Lieutenant Morrison money; but, to say nothing of the sort of advance which the allowance of £40 would admit of my making to five parties, does the court not clearly perceive that being then upon terms of intimacy with Mr Morrison, it was delicacy alone which induced me to account for the restrictions under which I found it necessary to place him, by stating my want of means, in preference to wounding his feelings by further explanation? Besides, it must be recollected, that at this time the balance of the account between Mr Morrison and myself was fi1 18s. in my favor, consequently any letter could not possibly be intended as an excuse for not sending him money. A great deal has been said, gentlemen, about the regulations mentioned in this letter respecting the recruits. I must observe, in answer to these observations, that, though I did not place the officers commanding the other parties precisely under the same restrictions as Mr Morrison's irregularity induced me, for the moment, to impose upon him; yet, I did direct that in all cases, where it was practicable, the recruits should receive the greater part of their bounty at head quarters. I was induced to make this regulation in consequence of it having been represented to me by my serjeant (and his representation was confirmed by my own observation) that when the recruits got their full moiety of the bounty at the place of enlistment, they generally came to head quarters without money, and in want of every necessary. The regulation I adopted was attended with the best effects; the recruits were enabled to purchase necessaries with the money, which would otherwise have been spent in dissipation, and I never heard, either from an officer or a recruit, a single complaint upon the subject. From the period that the erroneous account, to which I have alluded, was rectified (which was soon after the 25th July) I received no account from Mr Morrison until he sent his account up to the 24th of August. This account I must observe was not accompanied by any application for money; indeed, I cannot find that it was even accompanied by a letter. It was sent, I presume, in consequence of the general instructions which Mr Morrison had received, to forward me his account on the 24th of each month. I must beg, however, to be understood as only speaking from recollection with regard to some parts of my correspondence with Mr Morrison, for not suspecting that after the final settlement of his account, without the slightest complaint, I could by possibility have any further trouble upon that subject, I did not take so much care of his letters as he (I am glad to find) has taken of mine. At the time that this account was sent, I had invited both Captain Thain and Mr Morrison to spend a few days at my house, at Alnwick, and

I, of course, expected to have then an opportunity of settling my account with Mr Morrison in person. Mr Morrison, however, as appears by my letter of the 31st August, did not favor me with his company, but he wrote to me on the 29th August, and though I have not had the good fortune to preserve his letter, I think it very probable, though I certainly do not remember the circumstance, that he did then request me to send him a remittance. Being anxious to have a personal interview with Mr Morrison, to get the account closed, that I might be relieved from the trouble of keeping an account current, I answered his letter, (as the Prosecutor, by producing my letter, has enabled me to prove) the post after I received it, and I shall now beg leave to insert here a copy of my answer.

"Dear Morrison,"

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"Alnwick, 31st August, 1809."

"Many thanks for your letter which I received last night. I congratulate you on your success in the recruiting, and I sincerely hope it will continue. I fear your two men would hardly be in time to accompany your recruits to the regiment; it is, however, of little consequence, for we are getting on so very well at present, that I expect I shall be enabled to send off another batch in a few days. I suppose you know that the number of recruits that marched this time was thirteen. By a letter I have had from Cockburn at Newcastle, he informs me he has enlisted five more, which, with the two, will make seven; these [ purpose sending off as soon as possible, that they may reach head quarters before 24th September, and thereby be entitled to clothing. If Cockburn has got all his five attested, the whole number that has been enlisted since we came into the county, including one deserted, will be forty-one. After receiving your letter respecting the Local Militia man, I wrote to the Secretary at War, to know if I was authorized to enlist non-commissioned officers and drummers of the Local. I have received his answer, which says, 66 I may enlist such as are not on the permanent staff of the corps, and receiving constant pay." I shall be at Newcastle on Wednesday or Thursday, when I shall be happy to see you at the Queen's Head. I shall bring you a copy of the Secretary at War's letter, as also a list of the permanent non-commissioned officers and drummers of the Local. I shall also settle your account. I wrote to Lord Lovaine lately, requesting he would appoint you to my company, which request he has with much pleasure complied with. Be assured, my dear fellow, I anticipate much pleasure in your society. As I suppose there will be no absolute necessity for your personal attendance at Stamfordham fair, I hope I shall see you either Wednesday or Thursday at Newcastle. My party goes on Monday to Morpeth Races.