"ning's elegant poetry of the Antijacobin is selling off at the price of waste-paper." Waste paper! What, Odas, Ballads, Needy Kuife-Grinder,' Miss Pottingen, and all! All waste paper! To what base uses we may return, Horatio!" Yet, some persons doubt, whether, as far as you were immediately concerned, the last use of even the most unfortunate sheet of these volumes will not be full as honourable as the first; and, indeed, this doubt would become a certainty. were we, as a criterion of your work, to take that part, which records your triumph over Mr. Perry, while he was suffering under the exercise of that power, from which you felt yourself protected; which exhibits you, mounted upon your dunghill and surrounded by a fence to the tree-tops, clapping your wings and crowing out victory over an ad "bearance," merely because an atrocious libel in a ministerial print has, at last, been noticed.――But, the injudiciousness of selecting your name for this purpose will appear still more evident upon looking back at your conduct relative to Mr. Perry, when he was, as we have just seen, punished for a libel on the House of Lords. This event occurred at the very time that you were sending forth to the public, in your print, the above-mentioned libels upon Lord Moira and others. Mr. Perry, supposing him to have seen, and even to have been the writer of, the libel that appeared in his paper, was only following your example, and following it, too, as I think I have shown, at a very humble distance. One would have thought, that to enjoy the advantages which you enjoyed, to combat behind a masked battery, while your adversary was exposed to all the dan-versary, to the fall of whom neither your tagers of literary and legal warfare; one would have thought, that this was enough to infuse into the meanest of minds some little portion of magnanimity. Not so, however, with you, who, instead of carefully abstaining from all remarks upon the subject of Mr. Perry's offence, while he was under the animadversion of the law, the moment of his being sent to prison you chose as the most proper for publishing upon his conduct strictures evidently intended to prevent the dura-ly the case with upstarts, regarded the public tion of his imprisonment from being shortened, and, if possible, to deprive him of the compassion of all those whose compassion was worth having. Mr. Perry's politics, relative to the French revolution, were, in my opinion, bad; while yours, as far as you could, with propriety, be said to have any politics, were good. But, this circumstance cannot change the character of your conduct as connected with the subject before us. was, indeed, very generally thought, that the cause suffered not a little from the manner It in which your department of the Anti-Jacobin was conducted; an opinion which, in all probability, prevented the continuation or the revival of that work, and the correctness of which opinion appears now to have received a pretty satisfactory verification in the well-known fact, that an edition of the Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin is now, by way of puff, advertised for sale" at the price of waste paper." I speak here of what cannot be denied. A puff, in the words I have quoted, has recently appeared for several days successively in the Morning Post and other newspapers. In order to invite people to a great book auction, they mentioned certain great bargains, and, amongst others, that Mr. Canning's" (for they even put your name, Sir,) "Mr. Can lents nor your courage had in anywise contributed.And, Sir, was it, then, judicious in the upstart writer in the Oracle, to select your name, under which to complain of the conduct of Mr. Grey with regard to the author or publisher of the recent libel upon the House of Commons?. Ought not that upstart writer to have recollected your conduct with regard to Mr. Perry? Or, are we to suppose, that he, as is not unfrequent as having no right to exercise their senses in any way that might prove disadvantageous to him? The libel, recently published in the Oracle, was, beyond all comparison more malignant, as well as more dangerous in its tendency, than the libel for which Mr. Perry was fined, and imprisoned in Newgate; and, therefore, I ask, what, recollecting, as he must, your conduct with respect to Mr. Perry; what degree of assurance, what effrontery, what insolence, must this upstart possess to enable him to publish, under your name, a complaint against the severity of those who had noticed the libel in the Óracle, and a threat of retaliation upon all the other prints in the country?--But, though the selection of your name was, I think it will be allowed, very injudicious, I question whether it will not be found, that the selection of the name of Sir Henry Mildmay, under which to make a sort of protest against an alleged attempt to abridge the liberty of the press, as to proceeding in parliament, was still more injudicious. It was Sir Henry Mildmay, he tells us, who presented to the House of Commons the petition, inserted in page 676 of the foregoing sheet. He (the writer in the Oracle) says, that Mr. Stuart, the petitioner," came to the deter "mination of soliciting some independent r * member of parliament to present his pe"tition, some gentleman whom all sides of "the House looked up to with respect and esteem, and such a member he happily "found in the person of Sir Henry Mild66 may.' Having thus characterized this gentleman, he, in another part of his paper of the 3d instant, publishes a speech which he imputes to Mr. Windham, and another speech which he imputes to Sir Henry Mildmay. Mr. Windham is represented, and I dare say very truly, as being unable to restrain his indignation at the insolence of the petition; while, on the other hand, Sir Henry Mildmay is represented as having declared, that he "could not perceive what there was in the petition so improper as "to raise such indignation in the mind of the Right Hon. Gentleman; he thought "the petitioner had stated nothing but what he had fairly a right to state."- -Upon reading these passages, one would be tempted to believe, that Mr. Stuart's pilgrimage, in search of an "independent" man, was something like that of the philosopher with his lantern. But, surely, independent men are not so very rare to be met with amongst the members of the House of Commons! Surely, Sir Henry Mildmay, however independent, however respected and esteemed by all sides of the House," has no pretensions to a monopoly of independence, respect, and esteem. Nothing is more foolish or more unjust than to suppose, that all those who are in office, or who may be reasonably presumed to look towards office, are dependent, and, on the contrary, that all those, who have never been and are never likely to be in office, are independent. "Independent" is, Sir, always an epithet of dubious, and, frequently of no very amiable meaning. It is, indeed, sometimes applied to men of high minds, of original thought, of action not waiting for the dictation of others, not influenced by considerations of self-gratification of any sort; and such men are always independent, whether in office or out, whether high or low in life. But, at other times, the word " independent" is used for a very different purpose; for you shall hear it applied, with all the pompousness imaginable, to men who have no one of the characteristics of real independence; men who have too much money to need a salary, and too little sense to fill an office; who are too proud to be content to move in the circle for which nature, in a niggardly mood, has formed them, and yet, too mean › refrain from becoming the tool, the mere cat's-paw, of a minister, or, more frequently, of a minister's underling, with a view of ob 1 taining titles, which they want the talents and the spirit to obtain by letters or by arms, We must, however, suppose, that it was in its better sense, that it was applied to Sir Henry Mildmay; but, upon that supposi tion, I cannot allow, that, amongst the members of the House of Commons, it could be so very great a difficulty to find an independent man; while, as I think I and now about to show, it would, in one respect at least, have been very difficult indeed for this writer to have been more, unfortunate in the selection of the name of a gentleman, under which to publish sentiments favourable, not only to the perfect liberty, but to the licen tiousness of the press, as to the proceedings of parliament.Sir Henry Mildmay, Sir, during the session of parliament which commenced in the autumn of 1800, made a speech in the House of Commons upon the subject of tythes, as connected with that of the encouragement of agriculture; and, in that speech, he broached an odd sort of project for compelling the clergy to submit to a composition in lieu of their tythes; the adoption of which project he seemed to regard as essentially necessary to remove the great discouragement to agriculture, which, according to his notion, existed in the right possessed by the clergy of choosing between a composition and the taking up of their tythes in kind. In about ten or twelve days after this speech was published in the newspapers, a gentleman who happened to read it in the daily paper at that time published by me, wrote to me, for publication, a letter commenting thereon. I knew the writer to be a clergyman of great respectability and of no small literary fame; I perfectly agreed with him in opinion as to the main principles upon which he proceeded; I ap proved almost entirely of the matter, and had very little objection to any part of the manner of his letter; and, accordingly, I published it, agreeably to the writer's request. This brought a complaint from Sir Henry Mildmay in person. He asked me, if I was aware, that, in publishing a comment upon a speech of a member of parlia ment, I had committed a very grave ofïence, and had rendered myself liable to be severely punished. He made use of some kind expressions towards me, personally; said he should be sorry to be instrumental in my ruin; and was willing, on account of my being a stranger to the laws and customs of this country, (he and I were, I believe, born about eight miles from one another!) to overlook my fault, provided I would, in the pext number of my paper, disavow or retract what I had published as a comment on his speech, and make a suitable apology. If told him I was flattered by the good opinion he appeared to entertain of me, and that, when to that was added the indulgence he had been pleased to express his readiness to show on account of my ignorance of the laws and regulations to the severity of which I might have subjected myself, it was impossible that I should not be disposed to do every thing in my power to afford him satisfaction; but, that having published his speech, and being convinced, that, upon every thing once printed and published, any one had a right to comment, I could not, consistently with my notions of the liberty of the press and of the justice of my correspondent's request, refuse to insert the letter; and, that, having, for these reasons, deliberately inserted it, which reasons I had yet heard nothing to invalidate, I could not think of making an apology for the insertion. I informed him, besides, that, as to all the main points I perfectly agreed in opinion with the writer of the letter, and that, therefore, to disavow or retract the sentiments of the letter would be an act of meanness which I was sure he would not like to see me commit. I, moreover, assured him (and I did it with perfect sincerity), that no personal disrespect to him was meant by me; I observed, that, if my correspondent had mixed a little asperity with his reasoning, I trusted he would have the liberality to excuse it, when he considered that it had flowed, without much time for reflection perhaps, from the mind of a man irritated with what he could scarcely help regarding as an attack upon the order to which he belonged.- -All this had no effect. He still insisted, that the sentiments should be disavowed or retracted, and that an apology should be made. I then told him, that I had no objection to apologize for inserting the report of his speech; because I knew that to be an act of disobedience; but, that, as to the letter, I well knew that it was perfectly innocent in itself; that, as a comment upon a thing printed and published in a newspaper, I was sure it could be no breach of the privileges of parliament; and that, so far was I from being disposed to apologize for the insertion, that it became me frankly to tell him that I was just going to insert a second letter from the same writer upon the same subject, being very willing to acknowledge my fault in having published speeches of members of parliament, but being, at the same time, firmly resolved not to relinquish the right of publishing comments on any thing that had once been printed and published. Finding him, however, still determined to proceed to extremities; still rising rather than falling in com the terms of his menaces; I reminded him, that there would be found, too, something peculiar in this case; and, that, in fact, he himself, since he would force me to speak out, was the only person, to whom any blame could be reasonably imputed, he having expressly authorised the publication, and, having, indeed, been the publisher, of the speech, upon which the comment had been made. "You will find it very difficult to prove that, I believe," said he, No," said I, "I have a witness whose veracity I am certain you will not dispute," Aye!" said he "who is he?" "Here it is," said I, producing the speech in that identical manuscript, which he had sent to my printing office, with a direction to have it inserted! We soon afterwards separated; he preferred no complaint against me to the House; the occurrence very soon dropped from my memory; and I dare say, Sir, I never should have thought of it again, had not the upstart writer in the Oracle absolutely driven it back into my mind, by holding up Sir Henry Mildinay as a person indulgent in the extreme to those who ment, not only upon the speeches but upon the decisions in parliament; and, indeed, as the approver of pert and insolent language in a man, who comes to obtain his release from a seven day's imprisonment, imposed in consequence of his having published against the House and against its solemn decisions in the most solemn of its capacities, a libel which has, I believe, never before been equalled, in point of malignity, by any libel on any branch of the legislature. The imputation must be false. In the letter above-mentioned, there was nothing libellous; nothing personal; nothing rude; nothing very harsh or severe : it was written by a gentleman and a scholar, and it was, in every respect, worthy of its author. It contained, indeed, a refutation of the statements of the speech, and I thought it proved the speaker to be profoundly ignorant of the subject, which he had been induced to bring forward to the House; but this was its only sin, and, surely, it was not one to be put in comparison with that of the libel of the Oracle. There is, as every one must perceive, a wide difference between even a libel upon a single member and a libel upon the House; but, besides, this, the letter I have been speaking of was merely an argumentative comment; its object was not censure how, wide, therefore, was the difference between that letter, to which Sir Henry Mildmay was so tenderly alive for his own sake, and the paragraph in the Oracle, of which Mr. Grey complain 719] POLITICAL REGISTER.-Lord Melville's Places.-Dundas, Pitt, and Benfield. [720 ed, in behalf of the House, and for having made which complaint, the upstart writer in that paper has accused him of having aimed a destructive blow at the liberty of the press, while, in the same breath, he extols Sir Henry Mildmay as the zealous champion of that liberty! In my next, Sir, I propose to enter upon the topics hinted at in the former part of my first letter.I am, Sir, your, &c. &c. May 16th; 1805. WM. COBBETT. LORD MELVILLE'S PLACES. SIR,--Your hints relating to Lord Melville's places will, I trust, prove useful to the public; but, in mentioning the precedent of the grant of the Privy Seal to his lordship's immediate predecessor you might have observed, that the predecessor was the brother of the Earl of Bute.--Probably you thought it superfluous; but the statement of the fact might have brought to the recollection of persons, who were in Parliament, or attended to the politics, in the earlier years of His present Majesty's reign, certain circumstances, shewing what were the ideas, at that period, of the question now in hand. Which John, Earl of Bute was allpowerful in this country, his brother, Mr. Stewart Mackenzie, was the minister for Scotland; that is the channel through which all preferment in that country went. In the year 1763, it was intended to make him Keeper of the Great Seal, that after the appointment had actually passed the King's hand, it was discovered that it would render Mr. Mackenzie ineligible to Parliament. The Duke of Athol, who then held the Privy Seal, was induced to resign it, and take the Great Seal, and Mr. Mackenzie was appointed Keeper of the Privy Seal, to which office the same objection, for reasons I need not state, was held not to apply. But, Mr. Mackenzie was not then appointed for life, as nobody supposed the office could be so given. Accordingly, on the change of the ministry in 1765, he was dismissed.-On the coalition between the Lords Chatham and Bute in 1766, Mr. Mackenzie was re-instated, and to prevent, as far as possible, his losing the office, in case of a future change, it was granted to him for his life.--Much doubt was entertained, at the time, whethen it could be effectual, but the chance was worth taking.I believe, no doubt was entertained, that, in case of the Royal demise, the grant must fall; but His Majesty's life was better than Mr. Mackenzie's. -As to the office of Keeper of the Signet, of which Lord Melville had a grant for his tife, which is now held by his son, upon the same terms, I believe; the custody of the Seal, called the Signet, belonged, as your have stated, ex officio to the Secretary of State.In 1756, when the office of Sew cretary for Scotland was abolished, or laid aside, the custody of this Seal (under which various grants, and all the King's judicial writs must pass) was given to Andrew Fletcher, Esq. with the title of Keeper; and, on his death, to the late Sir Gilbert Elliot. Whether either of these gentlemen, had the office granted to him for life, I cannot say positively; but I believe not; for the grant to Lord Melville, in that way, occasioned some surprise, at the time, and was attributed to the Earl of Shelburne's desire to attach Mr. Dundas to his interest by the handsome mode of making him independant.That the Keeper is, in fact, the Secretary is strictly correct, and is demonstrated by Mr. Dundas the present Keeper, holding his seat in Parliament; for if it were a new office he would be ineligible.Here is another anecdote shewing that formerly it was understood that the custody of the seals could not be granted for life. Archibald, Duke of Argyle, was long the Minister for Scotland, holding the two offices of Keeper of the Great Seal and Lord Justice General, and First Criminal Judge in Scotland, the last being now almost a sinecnre. It was intended to make an addition to the duke's sinecure by increasing the salary of the Keeper of the Great Seal, just as Lord Melville lately obtained the addition to that of the Privy Seal. But the duke, whose sagacity was proverbial, observed, that, as he might be turned out of the office of Keeper, it was better to make an addition to that of Justice General, which he could legally hold for life, as one of the Judges; the matter was managed accordingly. His grace never dreamed that the office of the Keeper of the King's Seal would be granted either for the life of the Sovereign or for that of his grantee.—Constantly when the Justice General was absent, the Clerk of the Justiciary Court supplied his place. Hence the Second Criminal Judge in Scotland (in truth the first efficient one) bears the very awkward title of Lord Justice Clerk. I am, Sir, your humble servant, May 13th, 1805.. A. B. MESSES. DUNDAS, PITT, AND BENFIELD. SIR,I do not know what the precise amount of the debt due from the East India Company, to the creditors of the Nabob of Arcot may be; but, I fancy it exceeds three millions sterling, and is a part of the present India debt. You have often alluded to the Nabob's debts, and the sanction which Lord Melville gave to the claims of his creditors. The It is certainly the most questionable part of his conduct, as the minister of India. I will endeavour shortly to state the case. It was an old standing order of the Company, that none of their servants should lend money to the Zemindars or native Princes, But, notwithstanding this order, many persons tempted by the high interest, of thirty, forty, and even fifty per cent., did make loans to the native Princes and Zemindars, in every part of India. I suppose, there may be at this moment, two millions sterling due to the principal and legal interest of money, lent at various times, by British subjects, to natives under the Bengal government. But, as these loans were in disobedience of positive orders, go man in Bengal was hardy enough to apply to the government abroad or at home, for assistance in recovering their debts, until the debts of the Nabob of Arcot had been legalized, and then, I believe, some applications were made though unsuccessful. I do not hazard too much, when I say, that the Bengal debts, were at least as fairly contracted, as those of the Nabob of Arcot.-In 1784, Mr. Dundas, contrary to the strong remonstrances of the Court of Directors, gave a legal sanction to all those debts. transaction is fully stated by Mr. Burke, in a speech from which you have made some quotations, but, I think, he has not been correct in all his conclusions. A small part of the debt was contracted with the knowledge of the Madras government, and at a time, when the loan to the Nabob was of essential advantage to the Company. But the great mass of the debt was contracted in defiance of their positive orders, and therefore, as the Directors argued, they ought not to interfere in it. But Mr. Dundas was of a different opinion. His argument was this. If the Nabob will continue to assert, as he does, that this whole debt, was for money bona fide lent to him in the course of the last thirty years, and for the interest of which he has not paid, there is no possibility of discovering whether the bonds were given for money lent or not. He directed, therefore, that the whole of the debt, to which the Nabob might not object, should be paid by instalments. You will observe, that at this time, 1784, the Nabob was deeply indebted to the East India Company, and by the arrangements, the Nabob was to pay a certain sum annually, for the gradual liquidation of his public and private debt. The Directors were compelled by law to transmit this order to Madras, though against their own opinion, and after they had remonstrated against it in the strongest terms. The bonds of the Nabob from this time became a marketable commodity, after having been for many years little better than waste paper.-In 1790, Lord Cornwallis was compelled to apply the whole revenues of the Carnatic to the sipport of the war with Tippoo Sultaun; and the payment both of interest and principal on the Nabob's debts to individuals was sus→ pended, amounting during the suspension of interest, nearly to a million sterling.-After the peace with Tippoo, the creditors applied for the interest which was due to them during the period that the revenues of the Carnatic were under sequestration. This claim the Directors rejected, understanding that the payment of interest was to discontinue during war. Mr. Dundas was of a different opinion, and though he admitted that the payment of interest must discontinue, yet the claim was only suspended for a time. In vain did the Directors argue that this was not the true construction of an agreement forced upon them. Mr. Dundas a second time compelled them to transmit orders to India, of which they did not approve.--In 1801, Lord Wellesley assumed the sovereignty of the Carnatic, and made the Nabob a pensioner. From that moment, the creditors became creditors of the Company, and there is no distinction between the debt due to them, and to individuals, who have bona fide lent their money to the East India Company. You will find the original history of this transaction, very fully detailed in the Parliamentary Debates of February, 1805, when Mr. Fox brought forward a motion on the subject. If I am not mistaken, Mr. Paul Benfield had at that time bonds of the Nabob, to the amount of half a million sterling; which, I believe, was about one sixth of the whole debt, and no man in his senses would have given Mr. Benfield fifty thousand pounds for his bonds, prior to Mr. Dundas's arrangement.- -It may be said, that as the Company are now the Sovereigns of the Carnatic, it would be highly unjust in them not to pay the debts of the late Sovereign, even if the arrangements of 1784, had not taken place. But this would be false reasoning. The objection of the Directors was, that five-sixths of the debt, had been contracted against their most positive orders, which applied not only to their servants, but every individual residing under their sanction in India; consequently, the man who engages in an illegal peculation has no claim for redress. I have said, that of the debt now existing in India, three millions sterling is due to the creditors of the Nabob of Ar cot. But, I rather think, if I add what the Company has already paid, I may say, |