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 as at present. But he only asked, whether | paper, which was nothing more than a the precedents were not wholly dissimilar, grant of 2,000l. a year as a salary, he felt on a reference to the different depart-it his duty to oppose the motion. ments 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-for a faithful servant was a faithful 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 would follow, that there existed no necessity for calling for the minutes, with a view to cast any censure on the appointFor these reasons, and not from any objection to the production of the ment. 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 McMahon, 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 be 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 M'Mahon 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 colonel Taylor was, in the first instance, improper, 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 responsible 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 at tachments, 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 balf 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. M'Mahon 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 M'Mahon 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. The 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 Tay-in another manner-together with the lor held about his Majesty, was one manual labour attendant upon all those exactly similar to that held by colonel duties-formed a continuance of exertion M'Mahon; it was just as new to the con- which certainly required to be relieved in stitution, and if the one was illegal they some way or other. The very arrangeboth were. At the time of that appoint- ment of the mass of communications subment, however, there were no serious ob- mitted to the royal attention, was in itself jections to it. Every party, in their turn, a labour which required the employhad made use of the instrumentality of ment of a secretary, while it greatly colonel Taylor, without then finding out facilitated the dispatch of public business that it was illegal or unconstitutional. by the person at the head of the governThose who first agreed to his appointment. It had been said that his Majesty ment, 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, 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 Ma-ber wished to attach to it; he thought it was brought forward rather for party views-rather for the purposes of misrepresentation than any other. It was to persuade the country that colonel M.Mahon would be the organ of communication between that cabinet behind the throne, of which so much had been said, and the official servants of the crown. He was to be represented as the channel through which would flow that stream of secret influence, of unseen power by which the subordinate agents of governments were supposed to be directed. But, did any body believe all that? Such commonplace declamation might serve very well to turn a paragraph in a newspaper, in order to keep alive an impression unfavourable to government, but was hardly worthy of serious refutation: it was very well, to be sure, that it should be used by those who thought the Prince Regent's pleasure could not be properly communicated, because they were not the objects of it. He was afraid that he had troubled the House too long upon a case which really appeared so extremely plain; but he trusted he had said enough to shew, that the subject of the present question was not of that grave nature which had been represented; and that the appointment of colonel McMahon as private secretary was neither unlawful nor inexpedient, unless the House were prepared to make the Prince Regent one of the greatest slaves in his own dominions. regard to the Prince Regent. His Mr. Elliot, in explanation, denied having used the expressions respecting the private attachments of the sovereign with the reference imputed to him by the right hon. gentleman. Mr. Ponsonby thought the right hon. gentleman was perfectly right in making a speech for the hon. member (Mr. Elliot), in order that he might be able to answer it in his own way. The fact was, that the hon. member referred to, had never alluded to any sovereign, in particular, who chose the public servants of the crown merely from feelings of private friendship; and for his own part he hoped that no king of England in the present or in future times could be found capable of choosing his ministers solely on account of private services or private friendship. The Prince Regent, he felt assured, was above any such temptation; and he believed that any person offering such advice, poisoning his ear with such doctrines, would receive a contemptuous dismissal from his royal presence as a reward for his pernicious sentiments. The right hon. gentleman himself was a proof that his Royal Highness was incapable of acting from motives of that description, for he had never heard that the right hon. gentleman aspired to the honour of being the early friend or companion of the Prince. But the House had also been told, that the business of the state had so increased, that it was impossible for any king to discharge it, without the subordinate services of a private secretary. This he confessed was something new. His Majesty discharged that business for five and forty years without such services. "Aye," said the right hon. gentleman, "that is true; but then the King came to the throne at a very early age, and habits of application became gradually formed in him, and besides, the public business was then much less than it is now." Was there indeed little to do at his Majesty's accession? Did he not succeed to the throne in the middle. of the seven year's war, and at a period when the foreign correspondence of the country was not only equal, but five times greater than at the present moment? Yet his Majesty (unquestionably the most diligent sovereign the country ever pos sessed) discharged all the duties connected with his station in person, unassisted, and alone. What however was to be inferred from the argument of the necessity of the appointment? Why, that it was to be per With regard to the legality or illegality of the office under discussion, neither the hon. mover of the question, nor the hon. member who spoke on the same side, had said any thing respecting it: but for himself, he should like to know who could give a positive opinion upon the one or the other, upon its illegality or its unconstitutionality, without more knowledge than the House yet possessed? If the right hon. gentleman would give them sufficient evidence upon all those particulars relating to that appointment which it was material the House should have, then they would be able to form a fit conclusion; but were they to come to a decision upon the propriety of the office, merely upon the assertions of the right hon. gentleman that it was expedient, that it was not new, that it was not illegal, and that it was not uncon-petual, that it was to be a permanent office. stitutional? If, however, they were to come to any decision upon those assertions, his decision would be, that the office, from the right hon. gentleman's description of it, was, most probably, unconstitutional, if not illegal. For what did he say, " that colonel M'Mahon was to communicate the answers of the Prince Regent to the high officers of the government upon all matters submitted by them to his Royal Highness." If it was so, then he was prepared to say, that it would soon be found that the private secretary of the Prince Regent had become the prime minister of England. The case had been paralleled with colonel Taylor's appointment, and the right hon. gentleman had insinuated his surprize at the supineness of parliament in letting it pass unnoticed at the time. He could tell him why it had passed so unnoticed. Besides the severe calamity which rendered that appointment necessary, there were sanguine hopes entertained of his Majesty's recovery, and it was understood that nothing would be more likely to hurt his feelings, in the event of such recovery, than to hear that any public enquiry had taken place as to his right to the assistance of col. Taylor. And was it the rt. hon. gent. who had been so long employed under his Majesty, who complained that steps had not been taken to question that appointment! We Every future sovereign might claim the |
