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Scribe their six-pennies to take away his life. Let the pretended canse be observed too The Russian nobility derive their revenues from commerce; when that is cramped, they become ferocious; that will now be cranip ed; of course they will become ferocious; an the Emperor will be the object of their ferocity. This is, too, a pretty amiable picture of nobility, especially of commercial nobility, of banking-house and loan-jobbing lords. -When the Emperor of Russia receives this Morning Post, and gets some one to read it to him, what will he think of us? What will the "ferocious" nobility think of us? Never was there any thing so base and infamous as this London press. This particular paper calls itself, as I believe it is, the paper of those who stile themselves the

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ashi mmable world." Let any man find me, if he can, any thing so bloody-minded , and cowardly as this in the annals of even Frenca democracy. These are the sentiments of the fashionable world, are they? This writer is the associate of Joua Bowles in defending" regular go

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vernment, social order, and our holy religion." Is this a specimen of their religio is sentiments? They give the poor Emperor but a month to live. Mercy upon those who offend a commercial nobility!

SIR HENRY MILDMAY.A correspon deat, wirom I know to be a friend of Sir Henry Mildmay, has communicated to me some remarks upon the publications which I have made with respect to the transaction of Moulsham Hall, and also an authentic docu.nent of some importance in the question, which document has not yet been published. ---Though this correspondent has made, against me, no direct charges, it is not to be disguised from me, that he thinks I have acted, if not unfairly, at least with an overdegree of zeal as an accuser of his friend. But, persons, thus circumstanced, should recollect, that, if I were to consult the feelings of the public men, of whom I speak, and of whom I must speak or hold my tongue altogether; if I were to stop, in each case, till I have an opportunity of hearing the private explanations of the parties, or of their friends,; if I were to do this, I should certainly be able to render the public but very little service, and should, indeed, be a creature as perfectly useless as a well-meaning member of parliament, who wears the bridie of a wife whose acquaintance consists of the families of placemen, pensioners, and public robbers.---One exception, taken by my correspondent, is, that, while the wasting of millions pass unnoticed by me, this little thing of Moulshan Hall is taken up

with aviany, and dwelt upon at great length and with uncommon force. Now, I know of no millions that are wasted without my taking notice of them. I have noticed the waste of money upon the Voluntee s, in the Army, in the Navy, in the Barrack Department, in the Loan Department, in the Civil List, in the Collection of Taxes, upon the Speaker's House, upon St. Margaret's Church, upon the East India Company, upon the merchants of Granada, upon Sierra Leone, and, indeed, though the enumeration would be without end, there is no waste of the public money, which has come to my knowledge, of which I have not, in some way or other, made public mention. But, it is not the amount of the sum so much as the nature of the case, and the situation of the parties concerned, that renders a transaction worthy of particular and repeated notice. Sir Henry Mildmay is not a man like the rotters and the Davisons. He is a man of high station. He is a member for a county, and he has just made his son a member for a citr. He has, at public political dinners, stood forward as the champion of one of the factions. He has taken upon him, in the like public manner, to extol the administration and the principles of Pite, and has asserted, that whosoever shall tread in the footsteps of that man, shall have his support. In short, he has come forth, with all the weight which his family, his character, and his property can give him, to recommend, to vouch for, and to uphold one of the fictions which are dividing the power and the riches of the pation between them. Such a man has no plea on the score of private feelings. He challenges inquiry and discussion in respect of every thing that he says or does, or that he has said or done. If for instance, I were to whince and whine and complain when the editors of the London daily press write against me, should I not be laughed at? The very idea is ludicrous. Not only must every man, who thus puts himself forward expect to have his character and actions inquired into, but they ought to be inquired into and publicly discussed; because it is right that the public should be able to judge of all the probable as well as apparent motives of every one who takes upon him to be their guide.

-And, as to the amount of the sum, though, in the whole, it was but 1,600 yet the circumstances were curious and interesting. The transaction served to show how the public money was wasted in a branch of expenditure which had heretofore escaped notice. Besides which my correspondent must excuse me, if I have my feelings too, and if, after having been called a “jacobin

and leveller," I seize hold of transactions best calculated to prove to the world that my accusations against the wasters of the public money are not groundless. Some men have been awed into silence by being reproached and vilified. That is not my way. Let the hirelings call me jacobin and leveller as Toudly as they please; and the louder their accusations the more strenuous are my endeavours to prove, that, whether jacobin and leveller or not jacobiu and leveller, my principles are sound, or, at any rate, that my charges are true. To defend one'self is not to be revengeful. We complain, that the public money is wasted; they accuse us of jacobinism; we become more indefatigable in our exertions to prove the reasonableness of our complaint; they then call us revengeful. What they want us to do, is, to plead "not guilty iny lord", to waste our time in proving our own innocence. But, that is not the way for me. The way to prove that I am innocent of making groundless complaints is to produce proof upon proof that my complaints are well-founded; and, my correspondent must not be surprised, if, in the producing of these proofs, I pay very little respect to persous.——So much as to the reasons for my taking up the transaction of Moulsham Hall; and now for the transaction itself, which I will again, in substance, describe as it stands represented in the authentic documents, published in the fourth report of the Commissioners of Military Inquiry.-In October, 1803, Sir James Craigg, commanding in Essex, fixed on, as a spot for military works, some lands belonging to Sir Henry Mudmay in right of his wife, close by the mansion called Moulsham Hall, at which mansion Sir Henry was, by the will of the ancestor, obliged to reside three months in every year. To occupy these lands for this purpose the government was empowered by an act of parliament, which provided, that in such cases a jury should be called to award damages to the party whose land should be occupied. No steps were, previous to the occupation, taken to call the jury. The Jands were occupied by Sir Henry Mildmay's consent, and the works were forth with constracted. The first step that Sir Henry took, was, to request of the ministers (the Addingtons) to bring in and pass a bill to excuse him from a residence to which he was obliged by the will of his ancestor, that is to say to muiny the condition, or, at least one of the conditions, upon which he held for the life of Lis wife an estate which he estimates at eleven thousand pounds a year. An act of parliament, the grand panacea for

all difficulties, was obtained, and, to be sure, one cannot help being enchanted at the easy politeness with which Messrs Pole Carew and Vansittart talk of getting this act for Sir Henry dispatched, seeming not even to cast a thought upon what the parliament might think of such an interference with the tenure of private property. I do not say, that it might not be proper, in an extreme case to nullify a will by an act of parliament; but, Mr. Pole Carew talks of the thing as one would talk of a leave to ride over a field; and just as if Mr. Addingtou was the sole proprietor of that field. Sir Henry himself, in his memorial talks much about in the same strain. " I considered," says he, "that I had a claim upon the go

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vernment to relieve mc, by law, from a "residence which their own measures, for "the public safety, had rendered untena"ble". He therefore made an application to this effect" to Mr. Addington's govern "ment". Just, you see, as if there had been no parliament to consult! Just as if Mr. Addington's government made the laws, and could make what laws they pleased! This gives us a pretty correct notion of the light, in which Sir Henry Mildmay must have viewed that parliament, of which he himself was a member. And then comes Mr. R. Pole Carew, who says to Sir Hen ry:

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"I have made it my business to see Mr. "Addington this day upon the subject, and "am directed by him to acquaint you, that, "if you will have the goodness to direct your agent to communicate with Mr. Vansittart, he shall be extremely ready to do, on his part, what may be proper to give "effect to your wishes." And not a word about the parliament any more than if it had been composed of a set of footmen and grooms, who received yearly pay for their attendance and their votes.- -Since I have digressed so far, I may as well say, in this place, what occurs to me as to the propriety of this step, on the part of Sir Henry Mildmay. The ground was occupied in October. In November, having experienced great inconvenience from the numbers of military brought near the place, in expec"tation of invasion, and having known "foot-pad robberies to be committed in the

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very field next adjoining his garden, the "residence became intolerable", and, therefore, he applied to be released from it. This might be very natural; but, did not others experience inconvenience as well as he? And, when the people were called upon to make such extraordinary sacrifices, was he to make none at all? When necessity was pleaded for tax

ing the poor equally with the rich, as they were at that moment taxed by the ballot for the army of reserve, was he to submit to no sacrifice at all? I shall be asked, perhaps, what good he could have done in Essex. The good of example, at a moment when "invasion was expected." Queen Elizabeth, when threatened with invasion by the Spaniards, finding that some persons were preparing to flee from this very coast of Essex, “swore by God, that if she knew "those persons or might know of any that "should do so hereafter, she would make "them know and feel what it was to "be cowards in so urgent a cause." * I do not mean to impute cowardice to Sir Henry Mildmay. I have not the least reasen to suspect him of that weakness; but, I am satisfied, that he ought to have reflected, that, if his inconveniences were greater than those of most other men, so also was the property which he had to preserve; and, that, if such men as he fled from inconveniences, others could not be expected to remain in the face of danger It is in times of trouble that the great and the rich ought to stand forward and animate others by their example. If all the rich men, all the proprietors of the soil, were, in a time of "

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rack master-general, was directed to close the bargain for the house, he remonstrated against it as a waste of the public money, in answer to which he was told by Mr. Brownrigg, that it was thought necessary to take it, in order "to remunerate Sir Henry Mildmay for the loss of his residence" Sir Henry Mildmay is asked, by the Military Commissioners, for what the jury awarded him so large a sum as 0001. a year for 31 acres of land? His answer is, that they gave him 2001. for the land, and 4001. a year to provide him with another place of residence.

-Now, said 1, it is, then, evident that he knowingly received payment twice for the same thing: once in the award of the jury, and once in the lease of the House with the Barrack-office; and, accordingly, I characterized the transaction as a job. Nothing was published in reply; and, here it was that Sir Henry Mildmay was badly advised; for, having stood forth as the champion of a party, not without some little promising as to what he would do in inquiry into abuses, it was not for him to despise public opinion, nor any thing that was likely to have an effect upon that opinion. When parliament met, however, he moved for a memorial, which he had presented, on the same day, to the Commissioners of Military Inquiry, and which memorial was inserted in the Register at page 52 of the present volume. In his speech he said, that the transaction could be ng job, because it took place under Mr. Addington's administration, for whom he never gave a vote in his life. But, I proved, from the documents, that the proposition for the renting of the house and the assembling of the jury both took place under the Administration of Fitt, for whom he always voted. And there was something very suspicious in his waiting for nine months, and then making the proposition and calling the jury, imme diately after Pitt came into office. But, my correspondent has now communicated to me a copy of a letter from Mr. Brownrigg to Sir Henry Mildmay, dated on the 12th of April, 1804, which states, that, even in the preceding November, the Duke of York had applied to Lord Hobart for authority to rent the House, and that the authority had been obtained. So that, the bargain for the house was begun under the Administration of Mr. Addington, the conclusion of it, under Pitt, was a matter of course, and, therefore, the transaction evidently was not what is called a job, which phrase is employed to designate a transaction, u herein votes in parliament are obtained, ei*See Cobbett's Parliamentary History of ther directly or indirectly in exchange for England, vol. 1. p. 892.

pected invasion," to quit the parts of the coast where works and troops are found," were to go off and leave their lands to be defended by others, who would say, that the lands, if successfully defended, ought not to appertain to those others? I hope, that the rich, in case of danger would not fice from the coast; and, I also hope, that, upon reflection, Sir Henry Mildmay will think it right, as soon as the act and lease have expired, to return to Moulsham Hall, there to reside agreeably to the sacred condition upon which he received so large an estate. To return to my narrative: Sir Henry Mildmay, having obtained, by law, and at the public expense (for the poor public had to pay fees to its own clerks for the passing of the bill), during the session of 1803-4, the award of damages by a jury, and the letting of the house to the Barrack office, remained, as far as appears from the documents and evidence in the fourth report, unmentioned until May, 1804. In that month he bargained with the government to take the House as an officer's barrack, at 4001. a year. In August the jury assembled to award damages for the land. They awarded 13001. for the first year for 31 acres of ground, and 600l. a year for every year af terwards. When General Hewett, the Bar

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of residence, with which understanding in his mind he must have made the bargain to let the house to that same public at another a£400 a year; or, if the lease came first, he must have understood, that he was receiving an award of £400 a year from the, public to provide him with another place of residence, when he had already let that residence to that public at £400 a year. I should be glad to see a way out of this, but I cannot, unless it can be shewn, that the house and the place of residence are not one and the same thing But, it is asked: "might

the public money. I am really glad that this has been proved; for the worst light in which I viewed the transaction was that of a job, a vile barter of votes for money; base act of treachery towards a confiding people. It is now pointed out to me. too, that in Brownrigg's letter, contained in the report documents, he makes mention of the authority given by Lord Hobart to rent the house as a Barrack. This incidental mention escaped me, or I should have noticed it; for it shewed that the bargain for the house was begun, at least, under the Addington set But, as yet we see nothing to remove the charge of knowingly receiving payment twice for the same thing. Now, however, we have to consider the two letters (in p. 145 of this Volume) from two of the jurymen to Sr Henry Mildmay, one of whom says, that the house was not at all included in the estimate, and the other says, that the award went only to the occupation of the 31 acres of ground, and the general injury which the estate must suffer from such occupation, the jury being aware that Sir Henry was at that time in treaty with the government for the re ting of the house, which they considered him at perfect liberty to do what he pleased with.

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Sir Henry Mildmay not have let the house "to any individual?" Yes, to any body but the public, though, if an untenable" house had found a tenant, I should have thought it somewhat strange. The difference between the public and an individual, in this case is, that the public had already paid four hundred a year, besides the fees in passing the bill of non-residence, for rendering the house untenalte, and for the poor sweated public to become the te nant of it afterwards at another four hundred a year was what, surely, no man, in any country but this would have believed. My correspondent says, "that, if the go"vernment had not rented Moulsham Hall,

as an officer's barrack, they must have "rented some other place and at a higher "rate." General Hewitt says otherwise; but, supposing it to be so, it should have been considered, that, as the house was discovered to be tenable for one description of persons in the world, and as the public was to be the paymaster, the rent was already

Now, Sir Henry Mildamy declares, upon outh, that he understood the jury to have awarded him 400 out of the six to provide him with another place of residence; so that there is a manifest disagreement between the declaration of the jurymen and his declaration. In answer to this my correspondent says: "The jury (he should have said two "of the joy to whom Sir Henry Mildmayallowed for in the award, because the un"wrote) hay ng now distinctly stated the "motives which influenced, and the con

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siderations included in their award, it is very immaterial what Sir Henry Mildmay "understood on the subject. He has stated "nothing, on this point, to the cominis"sioners, on his own knowledge, but only "what he had understood in loose conversa"tion." Now, Sir, supposing it had been the whole of the twelve men instead of two of them, who had thus written, pardon me, if I think, that, by their letters, the case is not at all mended; and that what you seem to regard as very immaterial," is most of all material; for, though Sir Henry Mildmay, when he gave his evidence, now appears (for I will not question the truth of the two letters) to have been mistaken as to the fact, you, surely, will not wish me to believe. that he could be mistaken as to what he understood of that fact; and he says, that he understood, that 400 from the public was awarded to provide him with another place

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tenableness of the house must have been taken into consideration by the jury, or else they never could have made such an award. The circumstance stated by my correspondent, that Sir Henry Mildmay does, in fact, only hold the estate in trust for his son is of some weight, as it fairly accounts for his sending two lawyers to plead before the jury, a man having no right to give away that which belongs, either now or eventually, to another.—My correspondent asserts, and, I believe, with truth, thaf the park has been greatly disfigured by the works, which pass very near to the house, and which have quite cut off the main entrance to it But, all damages of this sort are imaginary, when an estate cannot be sold, as this estate cannot; and, it is to be lamented, that the imagination should, in this case, have fixed them so high.- He says, that "Mr. Vansittart "bears testimony to the liberality of Sir Henry Mildmay's conduct, and that it

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"is preposterous to suppose, that a mau "of Sir Henry's fortune would, for the sake "of £400 a year for only four years, have "done what he regarded as a mean ac"tion." I like the latter argument best; for as to the evidence of Mr. Vansittart, or any other secretary of the Treasury, or any other placeman, that is not what I should wish to abide by in any transaction to which the public was a party. But, it is, indeed, incredible, that a man of Sir Henry Mildmay's fortune and character (for he has not that of a money-lover) should, with his senses about him, have done a mean act for the sake of £1,600; and, it is, I think, but fait to regard his boldness in speaking about jobs, during the late election dinner, as a presumptive proof that he felt no consciousness of having done such an act. To say that others have obtained higher payment from the public, to cite the instance of a parson Bingham of Gosport, who, under the late administration, received £1,700 and a hundred a year for life besides, for a use destroyed by military works; to cite this, or a thousand such instances, makes nothing in defence of such a man as Sir Henry Mildmay, who would, I dare say, not be very willing to be thought to be upon a level with the parties receiving such awards. Upon the whole, I think, that it must appear, that payment has been twice received from the public for the use of Moulsham Hall; but, that the new facts now brought forth do entirely remove the hateful imputation of a job; and that, from his evident unacquaintance with the detail of the transaction, it is probable, and likely, that Sir Henry Mildmay had, as is the too common practice with men of large fortunes, left the business in the hands of an agent, who thought it is duty to get from the public as much as he could, by any means, obtain, leaving his employer, in case of need, to justify the thing in the best manner that he might be able. This, by inference, at least, my correspondent asserts to have been the case. From all that he has written and said to me, upon the subject, I believe it; and I do sincerely regret, that the circumstances, now brought to light, were not sooner made public; because, though they do not justify the act itself, they totally change the nature of the probable motive; and though, in the libel-trials they will hear nothing of any motive other than that which is manifested in the act, or rather, in their interpreta tion of the act, God forbid that men should judge their neighbours by that rule! But, if we say, that, in the cause

of this affair, Sir Henry Mildmay has been wanting to himself, what shall we say of those, who, walking in the footsteps of "that great man," (Pitt) left him in the lurch at the moment of his utmost need. Mr. Perceval told the House, that his honourable friend, the honourable Baronet, had requested not to be upon the Finance Committee! Did he, indeed, make that request? Was it really he, who thus sought to evade a discussion upon the subject of Moulsham Hall? Had I had a “ friend” in Sir Henry Mildmay's situation, I should have said to him, if you wish to be "thought conscious of innocence of evil

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intention, withdraw not your name from "that committee, especially after what yout "have said at Portsmonth."--Is it not a sorrowful thing to see such a man sacrificing every thing, even to reputation, to a party; and a party, too, composed of.. but I will rather stop thin cheat my description! One would think Sir Henry Mildmay has now had enough of faction. But, Ik I know not how it is. Such men appear to be infatuated. It would seem, that they took a delight in being underlings; in being, in fact, nothing more than mere mouths, to be opened and shut at the pleasure of those, in whose train they have chosen to enroll themselves.

BRISTOL MEETING.

At a numerous and respectable Meeting of Freemen, Freeholders and Inhabitants of the City of Bristol, held July 10, 1807, for the express purpose of enquiring into the present State of the Elective Franchise. Henry Hunt, Esq. in the Chair.--It was unanimously resolved,

1st. That the elective Franchise is an ob ject of the highest importance, as it is the basis of our laws and liberties. That in the free and unbiassed exercise of this great and yet undisputed privilege, depends our best interests, and dearest rights, as freeborn Englishmen -2nd. That if any club or party of men whatsoever, arrogate to themselves the power of returning a representative for this city, whether designated by the title of the White Lion Club, the Talbot Club, or the Loyal and Constitutional Club, if they threaten, persecute and oppress a voter for the free exercise of his judgment in the dis posal of his suffrage, they are enemies to their country by acting in direct opposition to the sound principles of the British consti tution.-3d. That we view with painful anx iety the contracted and enthral'd state of the elective rights of this city, and we are fully convinced of the existence of such unconsti

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