the fullest atonement in his power. The charges against him had been made at the time for the purpose of invalidating his evidence; but his veracity had been established by the verdict of three juries. As to his being placed on the grand jury lately, ministers and their legal advisers had no more to do in it than the learned gentleman himself. The sheriff's officer had summoned that grand jury, like all others, not to return those bills of indictment in particular, but to attend the court of King's Bench on the regular business. When summoned, he had endeavoured to excuse himself on the ground of his having received the commission of consul; but as he had not departed immediately, the excuse was not admitted. As to Castles, he would say, notwith standing what had taken place, that ministers would not have done their duty to the country, if, with the statement of that man, and the other facts of the case, they had not brought the prisoners, lately acquitted, to trial. He deprecated the idea that a verdict of acquittal in their case proved that no conspiracy existed in the country. He then defended the appointment of Mr. Manners on the same grounds as lord Castlereagh. Unless it were shown that the libel of which he had been convicted was of such a nature as to impeach his moral character, and his conduct as a gentleman, no blame could attach to government for employing him. Much had been said about spies and informers being only used in despotic countries. This was a very convenient doctrine for those who were not averse to conspiracies themselves; but let it be once established that spies and informers are not to be believed, and the complete impunity of the guilty will be

established also. He wished their testimony to be received, but with the utmost caution, and only when corroborated by other evidence.

Lord Castlereagh, in explanation, read the resolutions of Lincoln's Inn, in June 1812, to admit Mr. Manners, as, after proper inquiry, they found nothing to implicate his moral character, or his conduct as a gentleman.

Mr. Bennett should repel with proper scorn the imputation cast by the noble lord opposite on this side of the house-that they were abettors of evil and calumniators of all good. He was not a malignant accuser, but he should maintain his right of discussing the conduct of his government. He then blamed the late partition of Europe, and the transfer of Genoa and Upper Saxony, as acts which future historians would mark as blots in our annals. He was disposed to agree with the noble lord's declaration that he had not a cruel heart; he would not say that he had positively encouraged the atrocities committed in Ireland; but he could show persons high in church and state who had countenanced them. He contended that the house had never been silent on the subject. He remembered with what feeling and natural eloquence the late member for Cork had frequently treated it. The noble lord had no right of accusing him and his friends, and God knew that he would not long accuse them, of not bringing the wrongs of Ireland before parliament. If that government would be thought clear of them, why had it associated itself to those enormities, by making sir Judkin Fitzgerald a baronet, a man who ought to have perished on the scaffold to which he had dragged so many-a man who had committed the most atrocious crimes, and

who,

who, for a defence, after having flogged a loyal individual in the most horrible manner, impudently said, "that he had flogged hundreds, and would do so again." He then quoted the case of a schoolmaster flogged till his bowels came out, because a French note had been found with him, and Mr. Fitzgerald did not understand French. After that atrocious punishment had been inflicted, the note had been translated, and found to contain the following words:-" Sir, I am extremely sorry not to be able to wait on you at the hour appointed, being obliged to attend sir Lawrence Parsons." He then mentioned other individuals who in their conduct were led only by the love of money and of base lucre, and on whom titles ought not to have been prostituted. He stated that several affidavits had been put into his hands, since he had been in the house, dated 31st October 1810, several of which he should read. They were those of tradesmen in Dublin, who swore that whippings, floggings, and other cruelties, had taken place in the lower Castle Yard, in May 1798, and at the barracks, under such circumstances that they must have been known to lord Castlereagh and the other members of government, as the privy council met daily; another swore that he had seen a parcel of people hunted naked through the streets by armed men, and covered with pitch caps and feathers; and a third, that major Sands had caused him to be taken up, tied up naked by his hands and legs, and whipped till he had received one hundred lashes, when his back was rubbed with salt and gunpowder, which rendered the pain of the wounds intolerable, and then the flogging renewed with still greater ferocity. Mr. Reynolds swore an

oath to be true to the United Irishmen, and then betrayed them. It was very true, that a liar might speak truth: but, because he was believed in one instance, did it follow that his character was good? As to Castles, it might be very true, that the right honourable gentleman knew nothing of him; but it was not true that the noble lord, secretary of state for the home department, knew nothing of him. That noble lord did know about him, for he had a correspondence about him; and yet, after all, let him loose upon the public in the way which had been happily exposed. He (Mr. B.) must caution his majesty's government during the recess, not to continue their old gaine of employing persons to stimulate people to acts of treason and violence. He begged pardon for having so long troubled the house, for he did not intend to have done so, but for what unexpectedly came out in the course of the debate.

Lord Castlereagh said, that although the honourable member who spoke last said he had not meant to trouble the house, yet it appeared that he had come down to the house fully prepared with the materials for his speech. He would ask the honourable member (Mr. Bennett) whether he had not received from Finnerty those affidavits which he had read to the house? [No reply was made to this question.] In the cases of Finnerty and of Jones, the facts were so notorious that it was hardly necessary for him to trespass on the house by offering any refutationof a charge supported by such evidence. The scenes in which he was charged with having been concerned were of a kind so abhorrent to his nature-were such as he was so incapable of taking any part in, that it could not be 0 4 wonderfu

wonderful if charges of such a nature did not sink very deeply into his mind. In the case of Finnerty, it was not true that he had been the .means of removing that person from the expedition to Walcheren, although this was imputed to him. In revenge, however, for that removal, Mr. Finnerty thought fit to libel him, and impute to him the legal murder of a person named Orr, who had been tried and convicted before lord Yelverton in Ireland. After Mr. Finnerty had been convicted of this libel, he sent to him (lord C.) through an honourable officer now in India, offering to make a humble submission or apology; but he (lord C.) of course declined having any intercourse with Mr. Finnerty. Soon after this he understood that Finnerty went to Ireland, and employed the whole summer in collecting extra-judicial affidavits from his old associates against him (lord C.). Finnerty was a person who had been some time ago convicted, not indeed as a traitor, but as traitorous, and for seditious libels, for which offence he had, pursuant to the sentence of the law, stood in the pillory. He therefore declined any apology or intercourse with this person. The fruits of his labours in Ireland were upwards of a hundred affidavits, obtained in the way just mentioned; and with these he came armed as his justifica tion, when brought up for judge ment. When, however, he had read two of these affidavits, he was stopped by the court. Of those two which had been read, one accused him (lord C.) of having, by his own absolute power, sent a man to Botany Bay. When he understood that such a charge was made against him, he certainly felt it to be very extraordinary, because he was perfectly conscious how utterly devoid

of foundation the charge was. Let it only be considered what was the situation of a public man who is to be called upon to disprove all the slanderous falsehood which any perjured wretches may devise And he must really express his sur prise that the honourable member who spoke last should hold intercourse with such persons. Indeed, he might never have heard of the accusation in the affidavit, were it not that shortly after it was read in court he received a letter from lord Bantry, and one from captain Sutherland, both of whom stated that they had been members of that court martial of fifteen officers, who had tried and sentenced the person in question to be transported to Botany Bay. The other affidavit read in court by Mr. Finnerty charged him with having been present at the infliction of tortures upon certain unhappy wretches, for the purpose of extorting evidence from them. He would go to the furthest extent in expressing his ab horrence of the arbitrary infliction of torture with the view of extorting evidence. As to this charge, he had only to say, that he had never in his life even seen any person flogged, except in one instance, in his own regiment, at which he had been by his duty compelled to be present. But these two affidavits were only a specimen dragged out of a bundle of more than a hundred such, which Mr. Finnerty had collected among his old asso. ciates, from whose treasons he might, perhaps, claim some merit in having delivered the country.

Mr. H. Addington rose for the purpose of doing justice to the cha racter of Mr. Oliver; and in a perspicuous and able statement informed the house, that within the last fortnight an investigation into

the

the character and conduct of that individual had been made at the home department, before two of the most respectable magistrates of Yorkshire; and the result of that investigation was a complete conviction that the insurrection did not in any degree originate in any thing said or done by that individual that he had in April last, for the first time, come to the home department, and that he was furnished with many recommendations from many respectable magistratesthat he asked no reward-that he had got none that nothing was done for him except the paying of his travelling expenses on the last mission in which he was employed, from the 23d of May to the 5th of June, by the express direction of the secret committee. As to Castles, he had only to say that his noble relative knew nothing of that individual till January last.

Mr. Barham questioned whether the house or the country would attach much importance to the singular sort of tribunal before which Mr. Oliver's conduct and character were investigated. For his own part it had no force in his judgement. He could only say that a right honourable gentleman, now no more (Mr. Ponsonby), told him that he solemnly believed that the last insurrection would never have taken place but for Oliver. As to the system of spies and informers, it was not to their employment in particular cases that any objection was made, but to their employment growing into a regular system.

Lord Cochrane said, he did not expect any thing from this house, constituted as it was. What had the house done to relieve the country from taxes? He expressed a conviction that his majesty's ministers would ultimately, in order to re

lieve the country, be compelled to reduce the interest of the national debt. The conduct of administration had been such as to make them deserve the name of an Algerine administration.

Mr. W. Smith, with respect to the transactions in Ireland which had been alluded to, said it was a mistake to say that the attention of parliament had not been called to them at the time. The truth was, that not a session then passed during which the attention of parliament had not been called to these proceedings. He then referred to the published report of the vindication of sir Judkin Fitzgerald, which he characterized as a most infamous production. He did not know whe. ther sir Judkin Fitzgerald was alive; but whether alive or dead, it was impossible to speak of his conduct except in terms of the utmost abhorrence and disgust-they were revolting to humanity. He then dwelt with much vehemence, and in very strong terms, on the conduct of the government in Ireland in 1797 and 1798.

Mr. Canning.-After the revival of those charges against his noble friend and the government of Ire, land, which not only now, but every time they were brought forward, had been distinctly disavow. ed, he could not agree that this question should go to the division which was to consign it to the con tempt of the house and of the country, without troubling them, even at so late an hour, with a few observations. The honourable. gentleman who spoke last had recurred to these charges with unusual acrimony, and upon one individual (sir Judkin Fitzgerald) had been remarkably violent in his invectives. That honourable gentleman said, he did not know whether the in

dividual

dividual whose conduct he traduced was alive or dead; but at any rate the honourable gentleman took care to select as the objects of his attack the absent or the dead. It might be some satisfaction to the honour able gentleman to be informed that in the present case the individual was dead. The honourable gentleman, by experience, knew what it was to attack the living. This subject was introduced upon a motion of such a nature, in which foreign politics were so mixed up with cotton twist, that it was impossible to know that it was to be the occasion of introducing such charges. These charges were of a nature, that if substantiated against his noble friend they would make him unfit, not only for the situation which he now holds, but were even sufficient ground for an impeachment. These charges were not brought forward after a due notice-not in the middle of an active session. He would say nothing as to their being founded on the transactions of twenty years ago: for even these, if they were fairly brought forward, his noble friend ought to be prepared to meet. And by what evidence were they now supported? The house would observe that the honourable gentleman who had been asked the question, did not answer whether he had received those affidavits from a pardoned traitor or a pilloried libeller. He would not say that even from such a polluted source information might not be deserving of notice; and if he might wish that it could be procured from a purer source, that arose perhaps from his not being up to the practices of the times. The afflictions of Ireland had been raked up, and when that was done, it appeared that no atrocity, no crime, no species of private violence or public

treason could be found which did not far outgo the worst outrages of the present time. And yet he could not but feel that there must be a time when a veil should be thrown over the crimes and the punishment

when neither should be brought forward without the solemnity of a judicial trial. But now the accusers were safe under repeated acts of pardon and amnesty. Those convicts who had shrunk from the scaffold to obscurity, who had escaped from the gallows to oblivion, now came forward with their charges against his noble friend, under the shelter of his clemency. Thus it was that his mercy was requited. If the legislature consented to pardon, it was not too much to expect that rebellion should remember they had been forgiven. For it was but justice to mention what the delicacy of the noble lord had avoided stating, that it was to his interference in the interval between the government of lord Camden, that the li beller was spared the rest of his punishment. And now the house saw the return which was made for this intercession. Surely if the honourable gentleman had known this, he had too much gentlemanly feeling to have brought statements from such a quarter. Could it be believed that the motion of which such a notice had been given, was to be made the vehicle of accusation against an individual-that it should be made the means of consigning him not to trial, for that would have been fair-not to arraignment on a distant day, for that would have been candid-but to consign him to the misconstruction of five months

to the obloquy of the whole period between session and session!He would ask whether any member came down to the house with the least suspicion that the subject to be

discussed