fitting that the cabinet ministers should | pensate Col. McMahon for that of which

have their advice to their sovereign subject to the revision of his private secretary. If, indeed, it were acknowledged to be consistent with the constitution of this country, to have both an interior and exterior cabinet, he could understand why there should be a fourth secretary to carry the communications from one to the other. If it were constitutional for the sovereign to have both an open ministry and a private junta to carry on the government, such a secretary might be necessary to conduct the correspondence between these two bodies. If it were once allowed to be regular for a general officer, returning from an important expedition, and retiring from a situation of great responsibility, to give in a private report to the sovereign with a request not to shew it to his open advisers, then, indeed, there must be a private secretary of this kind. If it was regular that the high offices of the household should be hawked about, by the menial servants and attendants of the crown -as it was possible they might be on some occasions-then he could conceive the use of such an office as this; though, even then, he was satisfied there ought to be a regular and formal appointment, that the officer might be responsible. This was a most important view of the subject, and one which deserved the most serious attention of the House.

If the time at which the advisers of the crown had chosen to recommend this illegal step were contemplated, it would be found equally obnoxious. He would not now enlarge on the present distresses of the country, (on which nearly all could | speak with feeling, because nearly all felt,) not because he feared the imputation that he was attempting to excite discontent, but because it was not called for. He despised popular clamour as much as any man, but he entertained great respect for public opinion, and public opinion declared that at this period, least of all, should any addition be made to the vast expenditure of the country. Colonel M'Mahon in the first instance, was named to an office, the abolition of which, a Committee of the House had strongly recommended, and when parliament decided that he should not retain it, the ingenuity of government had been directed to discover a new office, at least objectionable in the next degree. What would the public say of this but that a determination was evinced to create a place in order to com(VOL. XXII.)

he had been deprived in obedience to the sense of parliament? He would not enter into the nature of the services of Col. M'Mahon; it was doubtless proper that they should be rewarded, but were the places in the household of the Regent caught at with such rapacious greediness that nothing could be saved for a faithful servant? Would not the privy purse suffice, or if the salary were inadequate, could not the place of equerry be subjoined? If both together were not sufficient, surely other situations might have been discovered to fill up the measure of reward. He was quite at a loss to imagine, on what solitary ground this appointment was rested, since it was neither authorized by the constitution, nor justified by necessity. The Prince Regent, with all the active vigour of youth, and with none of the infirmities of his father, could require no such assistance as ministers seemed anxious to force upon him. He would rather have deferred these remarks until the paper was laid upon the table, but since his motion was to be resisted, he wished to point out the danger that would be incurred in such an attempt. He concluded by moving, "That there be laid before the House a copy of any Instrument, by which the right hon. John M'Mahon has been appointed Private Secretary to the Prince Regent in the name and on the behalf of his Majesty. Also for a copy of any Minute of the Board of Treasury thereon, directing the payment of the salary attached to the same."

Lord Castlereagh said, that the hon. gentleman had raised this question to a degree of importance which could in no view belong to it. The hon. gentleman was not justified in describing the motion as one which it was the intention of ministers to resist, as his right hon. friend (the Chancellor of the Exchequer), had said, that he had no objection to the production of the document in question; but that the grounds on which those documents were sought for, formed the objection to their production. For, if the object of the motion was to ground an impeachment of the appointment upon them, without any view to the instrument under which it was made, further than the production of it, he should certainly resist it, as he conceived that appointment necessary, under the circumstances which gave rise to it. The mere minute of the Treasury which constituted the appointment could not be necessary (Z)

towards enabling the House to form any | pass through those of colonel M'Mahon ? judgment on the propriety or impropriety And yet no alarm existed on their account. of the appointment, but was moved for It was unfounded then to represent this

only to found upon it a charge of crimination on the office itself, and to persuade the House to take the necessary grounds against the continuance of it. As the hon. gentleman however, had thought fit to bring the question before the House, it behoved ministers to submit the grounds upon which they conceived the appointment stood with relation to the offices which they held under the crown. It was certainly the duty of the sovereign to take advice from the officers of the crown, for which advice they were entirely responsible; and he was perfectly prepared to concede the question, if there was any circumstance attached to the nature of this appointment, which detracted in the slightest degree from the responsibility of the ministers of the crown. If that case were made out by the hon. gentleman, it was enough, and he should withdraw all opposition.-But the fact was, that the functions of this office had nothing in them which required responsibility; and he now declared to the House, that colonel M'Mahon was incapable of receiving his Royal Highness's commands in the constitutional sense of the words, or of carrying them into effect and that the individuals now exercising the functions of the ministers of the crown were alone responible. With respect to the nature of the appointment, he conceived that a Treasury minute was as effectual as a patent or any other; and as to the oath of office as a privy counsellor being so extensive in its nature, as represented by the hon. gentleman, he was not prepared to argue that point, but he conceived it was a new species of objection, and if pushed to the full extent, this obligation would bind a privy counsellor to obtrude his advice, not only upon occasions which fell within the line of his duty, but on any casual knowledge of circumstances, however foreign from it. - ❘ He next came to consider the nature of the appointment, which was precisely the same as that of any other private secretary, in any other office of the state, differing only in the rank of the personage under whom the office was held. Was there any more formal appointments of other private secretaries, and yet their functions were as important and as confidential? Was there any form of oath prescribed to any of those private secretaries, through whose hands the same papers passed, that would

appointment as that of a fourth secretary of state; for it was merely furnishing his Royal Highness with the means of performing those duties, which he was unable to administer himself; and he begged the House to understand, that he considered this office only as an instrument for carrying on the business of the country; which brought him to the second part of his argument, whether this appointment was necessary to enable the person exercising the sovereign authority, to perform the functions of his high office; for he now supposed the appointment to be divested of all responsibility, for without that there would be nothing to justify it in the view of parliament. He was not much convinced of the solidity of that part of the hon. gentleman's argument which referred to the reigns of king William, and of kings George the 1st and 2nd, nor did he think that the House would see much analogy between those periods and the present. For his own part he was perfectly prepared to admit, in the face of the House, that he could not, by possibility, transact all the business attached to the office he held (and he was not disposed to neglect it), without some assistance. He was bound to attend that House from day day, and he would find it impossible to carry on the functions of his situation, if he were bound to have personal access to the sovereign every time that his orders were necessary to give effect to acts of state. But when the hon. gentleman talked of the reigns of William, and George the 1st and 2nd, the circumstances of the country were wholly different from the present. The army, at those periods, was a pigmy army, compared to that now existing; and the navy (though of a most respectable character) was of a different description altogether from the navy of the present day. The whole country was not armed as it now was, acting under commissions signed by the sovereign, and the whole sphere of business was more contracted. He could perfectly understand then that a sovereign in perfect possession of his health and faculties could discharge all the duties which were imposed on him by his office; and, besides, he believed the hon. gentleman would do him the justice to say, that ministers in those days were not in the habit of such constant attendance of parliament, night after night, as at present. But he only asked, whether | paper, which was nothing more than a

grant of 2,000l. a year as a salary, he felt it his duty to oppose the motion.

the precedents were not wholly dissimilar, on a reference to the different departments of the army and navy, and even to the home department, with the business of which the hon. mover must be well acquainted? And under such circumstances, he put it to the hon. gentleman and to the House, whether it was possible for the sovereign of this country to go on, burthened and overwhelmed as he must be by the public documents that were heaped upon him, and scarcely able to disengage his person from the accumulating pile with which he was surrounded? Even though his Royal Highness were to lower himself to the office of a private secretary, to the neglect of more important functions, it would be utterly impossible for him to do without such an officer. The necessity of the appointment, seemed to him to be fully proved, and the question was thus disengaged on two points from the objections raised against it. With regard to the creation of the office of private secretary, it was said, that it had never taken place until his Majesty's eyes were affected; but really the House would go on a very unsound principle, if they assumed that every person who should exercise the sovereign authority in this country was likely to be possessed of the extraordinary habits of his Majesty-which were all formed on the model of business-all his hours were devoted to this object, and the whole of his life occupied in it. He always rose uncommonly early, and had acquired such habits of business as could hardly be expected from every sovereign who should come to the throne of this country; but notwithstanding this extraordinary faculty for business, he did not believe that even his Majesty could have been able, without some assistance of this sort, to go through so much as the sovereign had now to perform. On the whole view then (particularly on that which related to the responsibility of the office, which he distinctly denied) there was no ground for the objections taken to it, and he hoped that the House would see that the constitution had not been trenched on; that the appointment had been rendered necessary by the increase of business; and if they concurred in these two points, the third | nel Taylor was, in the first instance, im

would follow, that there existed no necessity for calling for the minutes, with a view to cast any censure on the appointment. For these reasons, and not from any objection to the production of the

Mr. Elliot said, that whatever opinion he entertained of the new appointment which was under the discussion of the House, he felt that with respect to the illustrions personage who had been advised to make it, it was natural for him to feel a wish to reward a tried and faithful servant : - for a faithful servant was a faithful friend, and fidelity in attachment was in all classes of life a distinguished virtue, nor was there any quality which tended more to exalt and elevate the character of a prince, than an adherence to those who had displayed towards him a tried and steady attachment. (Loud cries of Hear from the Opposition benches.)-But there was a marked distinction between the appointment of colonel Taylor and that of colonel M'Mahon, for in the former instance his Majesty had never called for the assistance of a private secretary until he was obliged to it, by his infirmities, whereas the illustrious personage in question was happily free from any thing of the kind. Colonel Taylor had been literally the hands and eyes of his Majesty; and to his everlasting honour be it said, that he discharged the duties of his office with such integrity, prudence, and reserve, as to shield himself against the shadow of reproach. If the ministers were incompetent to execute the duties assigned them, he was willing to afford them assistance, and, if necessary, he would consent that a fourth secretary of state should be established, even in a seat in parliament. But such a case of necessity had not yet been made out. If merely the arrangement of papers in boxes was to be the duty of the private secretary, it would not require that he should be a privy counsellor, or that his salary should be 2,000l, a year; because princes were always surrounded by those who could perform mere clerical avocations. The place, however, was of much greater consequence: colonel McMahon was a privy counsellor, whose bounden duty it was to advise the crown, and for such advice he was responsible, and might be called to an account. He admitted that the nomination of colo

proper, but the House was governed by a feeling of delicacy for the infirmity of a sovereign, which arose from his unceasing attention to his public duties. (Hear, from the Treasury benches.)-That cheer,

however, proceeding from the quarter, which it did, should be a lesson to the House; because it showed how that which was originally justified only by necessity, and sheltered by delicacy, was likely to grow into a habit at once dangerous and unconstitutional.-His noble friend (lord Castlereagh), seemed to state, that the private secretary was not a sworn adviser of the crown: but he maintained that he was, and he became so legally and constitutionally, and in the eyes of the law reponsible for the contents of every paper laid before the Prince Regent, and he should know that it was so he was liable, for what he knew, to an impeachment.He knew it might be stated, that there were situations under the different officers of state which were not gazetted, but these were under responsible persons. The secretary for Ireland was answerable to the lord lieutenant, and the lord lieutenant was accountable to the country. But here was a new secretary-a new official channel of command of the executive government of the country. The meaning of the word " secretary," was a person who managed and wrote for another, and, under this definition, the private secretary of the Prince was the organ of the royal pleasure. The office was then either a public official one or not if it were the former, let the person who held it be ap. pointed a secretary of state; if the latter, let him not be a privy counsellor, nor have a salary of 2,000l. a-year. Under the present circumstances, it was an appointment in his view of the subject unconstitutional, unnecessary, and therefore inexpedient.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer observed, that the question could be considered only in two points of view, either as the office brought under their consideration was illegal, or as it was inexpedient. Before, however, he proceeded to offer his opinions to the House upon those two divisions of the question, he should advert to what had fallen from the hon. gentleman who spoke last. He had advanced, if not in precise language, at least in well understood insinuation, a doctrine altogether extraordinary, and, he would say, unconstitutional. If he understood his meaning at all, he believed him to assert, that it was a great and eminent virtue in a monarch to be influenced in the choice of his public officers, by the remembrance of past attachments, that the feelings which that remembrance might be supposed to excite,

could not err when they led to the appointment of men who were their object, to high and public stations. This was what he understood to be implied in the hon. gentleman's eulogy upon the fidelity of friends to former attachments, and he was borne out in his opinion, he apprehended, by the cheers with which the expression of the sentiment was received on the other side of the House. But, was it possible that any person could stand up in that House and say that private attachment ought to be the criterion by which a king should estimate the qualifications of his ministers, and not from considerations of the public interests of the state?-Was that the meaning of the hon. gentleman? Did he mean to say, that the monarch should be the head of a party instead of the impartial guardian of the welfare of his country? Would he insinuate such a doctrine? Ifhe would, then he insinuated a doctrine more unconstitutional, more breathing the spirit of aristocratical confederacy, more extraordinary and unjustifiable than any he ever heard advanced in that House. If he did not mean that; if he had no such views; if his mind had no leaning towards recent events; if he had no allusion, at the moment, to the disappointment of persons who had been distinguished as the friends and companions of the Prince, more than his present advisers had been, then he should be ready to apologize for his misconception of him; but he apprehended it would be difficult for those who cheered the sentiment so warmly, to prove that that was not the meaning of the hon. gentleman, or that it was not their interpretation of it.

But to proceed to the question they then had to consider, a question that had been brought before them, in his opinion, with a great deal of unnecessary pomp and importance. The renowned champions of constitutional principles, the great advocates of constitutional rights, were eager to declare and vehement to maintain-What? -that the King should not have a private secretary! that the head of the executive government should not be relieved from that manual and bodily labour which any other person in the kingdom, having only half as much to do, would certainly be! that was the great object they now had to consider. In furtherance of that object, the instrument by which col. McMahon had been appointed private secretary to the Prince Regent, was moved for merely to ground upon it a censure of the appoint

ment itself, or a declaration of its inutility. He saw, indeed, no occasion for the production of those papers, for they would tell no more than what the House already knew. If they specified the precise duties which col. M-Mahon had to perform; if they pointed out what he was to read and what he was not, what he was to write and what he was not; if they contained that kind of specification, then there might be some grounds for their production; but they contained none of those particulars; they contained simply a notification that colonel McMahon was appointed private secretary to his royal highness the Prince Regent. They who had any ulterior views, they who thought the instrument illegal, would of course vote for the production of the papers; but they who had no such views, nor such opinion as to the legality of the instrument, would take an opposite course. The proper mode of proceeding, in his apprehension, was to debate the point of its illegality or unconstitutionality, and its expediency; for when it had been shewn, as he believed there would be no difficulty in shewing, that the appointment was not illegal, it might still remain questionable as to its necessity.

and thus have made it constitutional. None of them, however, at that time, appeared to have any such scruples upon the subject as had now been urged. The right hon. gentleman who had last spoken, said, that the private secretary of the Regent was the organ of his pleasure to all his subjects. This was fine language; but in what respect could he be called the organ of his pleasure? That mode of argument might apply to the writing of an ordinary note upon any ordinary occasion, in the Prince Regent's name, and which might equally be considered as communi cating his Royal Highness's pleasure. But when we talked of the King's pleasure, it was customary to understand it as signifying his approbation or disapprobation of any state act: now, in that meaning of the phrase, he denied that colonel M-Mahon was competent to communicate the pleasure of the Prince Regent in any way that could authorize any subject in the land to attend to it, or to act upon it with official responsibility. He begged the House distinctly to remember, that it was no state office, but simply an appointment to relieve the bodily and manual labour which by the prodigious influx of public business attached to the functions of the head of the executive government. To the necessity of such an office, in the present state of the country, he should now beg leave to call the attention of the House; and here he hoped he should be able to satisfy those who heard him of the expediency of the appointment. The detail of the innumerable papers from various offices-the numberless acts which it was necessary to submit to the Prince Regent for his approbation or for his signature, some of them very urgent, and consequently to be presented as such, some less so, and hence to be disposed of in another manner-together with the manual labour attendant upon all those duties-formed a continuance of exertion which certainly required to be relieved in some way or other. The very arrange

He was at a loss to conceive how any person could regard the act as illegal and unconstitutional. Was it contended that the crown had no power to create a new office? If it was, he would refer those gentlemen who entertained such an opinion, to the statute book for proofs that such a power was constitutionally vested in the chief magistrate of this country. The statute of queen Anne recognized new offices appointed by the crown, but only disqualified the holders from seats in parliament. But he denied that it was a new office in the strict and literal sense of the word. The situation which colonel Taylor held about his Majesty, was one exactly similar to that held by colonel M'Mahon; it was just as new to the constitution, and if the one was illegal they both were. At the time of that appointment of the mass of communications sub

ment, however, there were no serious objections to it. Every party, in their turn, had made use of the instrumentality of colonel Taylor, without then finding out that it was illegal or unconstitutional. Those who first agreed to his appointment, and the hon. gentlemen who now sat on the other side, might, when they were in power, have brought this appointment before parliament for their sanction,

mitted to the royal attention, was in itself a labour which required the employment of a secretary, while it greatly facilitated the dispatch of public business by the person at the head of the government. It had been said that his Majesty discharged all that labour for five and forty years without any such relief, and that when he did have it, it was from a calamitous necessity which did not exist with