the matter to the test, he should move an Address for a copy of any declaration of Louis 18, issued at Ghent, which might have reached this country. The Marquis of Buckingham observed, that Louis 18, in the declaration alluded to, had spoken not only in his own name, but in the name of his Allies, The House then divided on the motion of earl Darnley-Contents, 28; NotContents, 59: Majority, 31. ter of course and of necessity, every member of the proscribed cast, of whatever description or degree, and how far soever those amongst them, the most distinguished for rank and property, for talent and discretion, had agreed in sentiment with each other, or may perhaps have differed in opinion, respecting the manner in which these appeals to Parlia ment had, or ought to have been, framed and conducted. ation; and for which day the House was ordered to be summoned. HOUSE OF COMMMONS. The Marquis of Buckingham said, that The Petition having been received and as it appeared that this country had en- read, the noble lord appointed Thursday tered into stipulations to maintain the ar-se'nnight, the 1st of June, for its considerrangements at the Congress, in the Treaty which was to be discussed on Tuesday and as it was impossible to come to that discussion without a knowledge of those arrangements he should give notice, that on Monday, the only day on which he could make that motion, without delaying the discussion of the Treaty, he should move for the production of the arrange ments concluded at the Congress.-The Lords were ordered to be summoned for that day. Friday, May 19. IRISH CUSTOMS DUTIES BILL.] The House having resolved itself into a committee of the whole House, to consider of so much of the Act 39 and 40 Geo. 3, c. 67, for the Union of Great Britain and Ireland, as relates to regulating the payment of duties of customs on foreign goods imported into Great Britain from Ireland, or into Ireland from Great Britain, and of the drawbacks on the exportation of goods, the growth, produce, or manufacture of Great Britain or Ireland, having been imported into either country from the other, Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald moved, "That the chairman be instructed to move the House for leave to bring in a Bill to regulate the payment of the duties of customs on foreign goods imported into Great Britain from Ireland, or into Ireland from Great Britain, and of the drawbacks on the exportation of goods, the growth, produce, or manufacture of Great Britain or Ireland, having been imported into either country from the other." ROMAN CATHOLICS OF IRELAND.] The Earl of Donoughmore said, that the Petition of his Catholic countrymen, which had been again confided to him, he should then solicit their lordships permission to lay upon the table of that House. Upon its subject matter, which had already, and so often, engaged the attention of Parliament, it was equally unnecessary, and inconsistent with the present stage of the proceeding, that he should offer any observation. He thought it, however, not unfitting that he should apprize their lordships, that the signatures to that Petition were numerous and respectable; not that he should wish to attribute to that consideration any very particular degree of weight. It was not to the rank or number of the petitioners, but the griev Sir J. Newport said, that he could not help ances of which they complained, that their thinking this Bill unnecessary, as the artilordships attention would necessarily be cles of Union made ample provision for the directed. And where the disfranchise-purpose alluded to; and he could not hesiment of a large class of the community, without any imputed civil offence, constituted the weighty ground of these renewed complaints, their lordships would not surely pause to count the number of those who might have thought it expedient to raise their voices up, at this particular crisis, against the general grievance. The sense of common exclusion must be considered to unite in pursuit of the same redress, naturally, and as a mat(VOL. XXXI.) tate to pronounce it as extremely impolitic and unjust, if it were intended to interfere with those articles which ought to be held sacred with a view to preserve an harmonious connexion between the two countries. Nothing, indeed, was calculated to create more alarm, especially in Ireland, than to find those articles meddled with from time to time, as if they were mere statutable provisions, liable to be changed at the pleasure of the Legislature. (T). But if any doubts existed upon the interpretation of those articles, he hoped that such doubts would be removed to the Satisfaction of all parties. Mr. Fitzgerald stated, that his proposition was brought forward in consequence of doubts which arose upon this subject out of the construction of the Act of Union, the sanctity of which he could assure the right hon. baronet he was as anxious to maintain as any man. Mr. Horner deprecated strongly any attempt to interfere with the articles of the Union, unless very grave doubts indeed existed as to their construction. For the letter of those articles should, on all occasions, be treated as the governing principle of the Legislature. answer that ministers had not the slightest reason to consider the proclamation referred to an authentic document, nor had they any grounds to suppose that up to the present moment the Duke of Wellington had issued any proclamation at all. Mr. Horner said, he had a motion to make, which he had wished to submit to the House in the presence of the noble lord (Castlereagh), but which he felt it necessary to bring forward now. After what had appeared in some of the foreign journals, the House must feel it was impossible for him not to call their attention to certain papers which had been read by the noble lord on a former night, which had produced a strong impression, not on his mind certainly, but on the House, which papers were now declared to be forgeries and fabrications. It was impossible for any man in that House to doubt, that when the noble lord read the docu Mr. Fitzgerald said, he was acting in Conformity to the opinion of the counsel of certain public Boards, who entertained doubts upon this subject, with which doubts, however, he did not himself con-ments alluded to, he believed them to be cur. Therefore he had no wish to press the Bill, as the doubts alluded to would probably be removed by a discussion in that House. But he trusted that no objection would be made to have the Bill brought in. The Resolution was agreed to: the House resumed, the report was received, and leave was given to bring in the Bill. PAPERS RELATING TO MARSHAL MURAT.] Mr. Whitbread, as he had understood from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that public business was expected, at this period of the session, to commence at a quarter past four, concluded from not seeing the noble lord (Castlereagh) in his place at that time (between five and six), that it was not likely they would see him there before Monday. He must, however, put a question respecting a paper purporting to be a proclamation issued by the Duke of Wellington, which he expected would be proved to be a forgery. A statement to this effect he had supposed would be made before the discussion on the expected Message took place. It was necessary that it should be disavowed; for though it was certainly destitute of all appearance of authenticity, it had caused a considerable sensation in the public mind. Feeling this, he now rose to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if the paper in question was a true proclamation, issued by the Duke of Wellington Per not. 'Mr. Wellesley Pole wished distinctly to genuine; but a charge had been made in the face of Europe--it might turn out that the charge would recoil on those by whom it was made-of such a nature, that he thought it impossible for that House not to feel itself called upon to ascertain the true character of the papers which had been communicated to them, as far as they had the means of doing so. In the absence of the noble lord, he would not describe the impression which the recent publication had made on his mind. Without going further into the subject be must observe, that there were two documents referred to in the French papers, which he thought, if at all in existence, must be in the office of the Foreign Department. One was a letter from the French minister, count Blacas, transmitting three letters to the Foreign minister of this country, and the other was the letter of the Duke of Wellington, said to be dated January the 4th, 1815, which con. tained a statement of his opinion on certain documents submitted to him relative to the conduct of Marshal Murat. He hoped the House would order the production of these two papers. If the letter of the Duke of Wellington were genuine, it could be produced with little delay, and the other document which he wished to see laid on the table, might also, he ap prehended, be immediately forthcoming, as it must be in the possession of the noble lord. He then moved for the production of a letter from count Blacas to lord Castlereagh, transmitting certain docu again bring the question under the consideration of the House.-The conversation was here considered to be at an end, when lord Castlereagh entered.- Mr. Horner then said, that seeing the noble lord in his place, he thought it might be desirable that he should now make him acquainted with the statement which he had made in his absence. He then shortly repeated his former speech, and described the motion which he had made, and the manner in which it had been proposed to dispose of it. ments relative to the conduct of Marshal | day, on which day he should certainly Murat, together with a letter from the Duke of Wellington on the same subject. The Chancellor of the Exchequer hoped, in the absence of his noble friend, the hon, and learned gentleman would suffer his motion to remain in the hands of the Speaker, as a notice of a motion for a future day. He had parted from his noble friend no longer ago than at four o'clock, when he left him preparing to come down to the House. He had expected him up to that moment, and surmised from his absence, that unexpected business of importance had detained bim. His noble friend, he doubted not would feel it to be his duty to communicate to the House all the information he possessed on the subject which had been brought under their consideration. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said he believed the letter of the duke of Wellington, which had appeared in the French papers, to be a genuine letter, but the opinion it expressed was not founded on the documents which his noble friend had communicated to the House; and the impression on the mind of the duke of Wellington with respect to the conduct of Marshal Murat, had experienced a complete change, when those documents to which he had last referred were laid before him. With respect to the statement contained in the foreign journals-it did not strike him that a charge of having forged the papers in question was set up against the ministers of this country; but it appeared that the French Government, for its own purposes, had represented certain persons in the Royal Government to have garbled the documents to which they had access, in order to make them such as should produce an undue impression on the minds of those to whom they were communicated. This was an explanation which he felt anxious to make. Mr. Horner said, he had not stated that the fabrication of the documents in question had been charged on this country. Every one who read the French papers must see that it was against the Royal Government of France. On the statement made by the right hon. gentleman, that his noble colleague would be anxious to give the House every information in his power on the subject which he had brought forward, he felt disposed to concur with the suggestion of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and to suffer his motion to be considered but as a notice for Mon Lord Castlereagh was disposed to express his acknowledgments to the hon. and learned gentleman for the early opportunity he had afforded him of offering some explanation on the publication which had been made in another country; but if the hon. and learned gentleman had delayed bringing this subject before the House, till the papers now printing were produced, it was probable that in them, he would have found much of the infor mation he wanted. The letter of the duke of Wellington, dated January 4, 1814, was a perfectly correct paper, but the opinion expressed therein applied to documents totally different from those which he had communicated to the House. It was certainly true, that some papers relative to the conduct of Murat were found, and communicated to the duke of Wellington, before he last left Paris, and the answer which he had given proved that there was no disposition on his part, as the servant of the English Government, hastily to decide against Murat, on charges which were not borne out by facts. The opinion he (the duke of Wellington) then expressed, was founded on documents totally distinct from those which had subsequently been obtained. Those which he (lord Castlereagh) had communicated, had been discovered on the interval which passed between the duke of Wellington's arrival at Vienna, and his (lord Castlereagh's) leaving Paris and arriving in London. These documents had been forwarded to him officially by the French minister, regularly certified. It was said that these papers had been falsified. There were in all eight letters, five of which were genuine beyond dispute. The only documents in which a question could be raised, were the three letters of Buonaparte, which had been found, not as the others were, but in the only state in which such docu ments could be found, in the form of copies or drafts of letters, to be sent to the persons to whom they were addressed. Count Blacas in taking copies of these had not been content with the precaution of getting them regularly certified in the official way; he had not stopped there, but that there might be no chance of their being mislaid, or of their not being forthcoming at any time, he had delivered the originals into the hands of the ministers of the Two Sicilies, prince Castelcicala. He (lord Castlereagh) had seen the minister of the Two Sicilies that morning, and had examined the originals of the papers of which he had received certified copies from count Blacas. Respecting five of them, no doubt whatever could be entertained of their being genuine. These clearly established the fact that Murat, endeavouring to manage for himself, was equally false to Buonaparté and the Allies. The last of these letters was completely proved to be genuine by the official letter of general Clarke, and enough was here proved to establish the only charge which had been preferred against Murat. When on investigation it was found, that the character attempted to be given to these documents was only a part of the system which the present French Government was acting upon when their proceedings in other respects, and their fabricated proclamations of the duke of Wellington were taken into consideration, it must be seen, that the effort made to induce the people of France to believe those documen's to be forgeries, was one of the expedients which was thought necessary to induce that deluded nation to determine for that desperate course which was necessary for the support of the ambition of that man, now unhappily at the head of it. The opinion first pronounced by the duke of Wellington on the documents submitted to him, ought, if any thing, to strengthen the presumption, that there was no undue disposition on the part of the Government of England hastily to form an unfavourable judgment on the actions of Murat. When those documents which he (lord Castlereagh) had subsequently received, were officially transmitted to the duke of Wellington at Vienna, his answer was very different from that which he had formerly made. He then said-" After receiving such undoubted proofs of the treachery of Murat, he could no longer retain his former opinion. He had submitted the documents to the allied Sove The reigns, who had no doubt on the subject, and were convinced they owed it to their own security to put it out of his power to act such a part by them again, and an attack on him was accordingly determined upon." But if all these documents were suffered to go for nothing, Murat's case would not be much improved, considering the events which had recently taken place; as he, in the spirit of his former treachery, had actually made an attack upon the Allies, before they had attempted to carry their resolution into effect. He repeated it, that the letter of the duke of Wellington was a genuine document, but founded on papers wholly distinct from those which he (lord Castlereagh) had submitted to the House. Of those documents last referred to, five were genuine beyond all doubt, and especially that of the Viceroy, which he (lord Castlereagh) had seen that morning, and he thought he himself knew enough of the hand-writing of that person to be able to pronounce on the authenticity of that document. only three documents on which a doubt could be raised were papers which could not have been found in any other form than that in which they had been discovered; and the attempt to falsify them from circumstances, ought only to be regarded as a lame attempt of the present Government of France to dispose the people to further the ambitious views of Buonaparte. Count Blacas could have no motive for forging the three documents in question, when all that he wished to show was more than proved by the other papers, on which no question could be raised. The letter of the duke of Wellington he had been made acquainted with when he was at Vienna. He thought a copy of it had been sent to him there, but of this he was not certain. If it was desired, it could easily be produced; but for the purpose of discussion, he was prepared to admit the copy of it which had appeared in the French papers to be genuine. Mr. Horner said, that much of the matter of the noble lord's speech was quite extraneous, as the question, whether the course which had been pursued with respect to Murat was or was not justified, was not the subject of this day's debate. The papers which the noble lord had brought before the House, it should appear, had not been in the possession of the French Government, or at least they had not known they were in possession of he (lord Castlereagh) thought they had both a common interest in throwing a light on that subject; but he could rather have wished that the hon. and learned gentleman had not seemed to prefer giving his confidence to the statement made on the other side of the water, rather than to that which had been put forth on this side of it. Knowing the character of the two Governments, he should have hoped he would not have supposed the English ministers most likely to present a garbled statement to the world. With respect to the documents which had been produced, he again contended that five of the eight were genuine beyond all dispute; and he could not bring himself to believe that the other three were fabrications. From the inspection of the originals, he was convinced the fraud was too elaborate to have been so successfully accomplished. If the hon. and learned gentleman wished to see these documents, he (lord Castlereagh) thought he could procure him a sight of them; and he thought that would convince him they were no forgeries, and that he would thence be led to conclude that the attempt to falsify them was no other than an attempt of the present French Government, to build a fraud on them, by pretending one to have been built on them by the government of Louis 18. them, or if they did, had not thought them worth laying before the duke of Wellington so lately as in January last. It was important to know whether none of these letters were among the papers, on which his first opinion was founded. Whatever might be the weight of his ultimate decision, it must depend much on this question. It was said, that of eight letters which had been brought before Parliament, five were genuine beyond all doubt. But if three should prove fabrications, he should not think the authenticity of the others beyond all doubt, because the detection of their falsehood was not yet complete. The noble lord had too correct an understanding not to be sensible of this, that if three fabricated letters had been imposed upon him, the other five which were derived from the same source could not be depended upon -he could have no reliance on them. The question now before the House was not as to the good or bad conduct of Murat, but related solely to the authenticity of the documents which had been laid before Parliament. On this subject it had been satisfactory to him to find the noble lord anxious (as indeed he had expected he would be) to keep pace with his wishes, to outrun them indeed, in giving that information on the business which had become necessary. With respect to the papers, however, which had already been ordered, as the House had been kept waiting for them seventeen days, considering the period of the session at which they had arrived, he could not but think an unreasonable delay had taken place. Lord Castlereagh said, he had not meant, in what he had said, to throw any blame on the conduct of the hon. and learned gentleman; on the contrary, he had expressed gratitude to him for the early opportunity afforded him of giving that explanation which he thought necessary. He did not believe that any culpable delay had taken place on the part of the officers charged with the execution of the former order of the House for the production of papers; but the voluminous nature of them, added to the circumstance of many of them having to be translated, had necessarily caused a considerable portion of time to elapse before they could be produced. As to the questions of the hon. and learned gentleman respecting the documents on which the opinion of the Duke of Wellington had been founded, Mr. Horner said, with respect to the insinuation which had been thrown out by the noble lord, as to his readiness to credit the statements made on the other side of the water, he had only to assure him, that satisfied that his character was known to the House, he should treat it with the most perfect indifference. Mr. Tierney wished to know if the noble lord had not officially received a copy of the Duke of Wellington's letter at Vienna, and if he could not produce that copy? Could the noble lord state that none of the five genuine letters were among the documents on which that letter was founded? Lord Castlereagh was willing to produce the document, if it was in his possession. He distinctly recollected being told at Vienna, that certain documents respecting the conduct of Murat had been submitted to the Duke of Wellington, and also that he had been informed of the answer which he had given. He did not know if the letter was now in his office; but he admitted that which had been published to be genuine. He considered the docu |