nation, because of the easy access that is Mr. Pulteney replied as follows: upon Chelsea College, so that the public can Sir; I am surprised to hear objections made against the articles now mentioned; they really seem to be made for the sake of humour only; every one of the articles that have been objected against is in itself so necessary, and so much care has been taken in every one of them to reduce the public expence as low as possible, that it would seem as if gentlemen were resolved to find fault with something. As to the article of Chelsea College, I am persuaded, that all possible care has been taken to save the public money; no man has been lately admitted, but one who appeared plainly to be either a man who was grown old or infirm, or one who was actually disabled in the service of his country; such surely are objects of the public charity; and no man who has a regard for the service, or for the honour of his country, will grudge a poor subsistance to a brave man, who by serving the public has rendered himself incapable to serve or provide for himself. Twenty years service only, is not, it never was, a qualification sufficient by itself to intitle a man to be admitted as a pensioner upon Chelsea College; besides his service, every man who comes to be admitted, must have a regular discharge from his officer, and it is not to be presumed that any officer will discharge a brave old soldier, as long as he is in any way fit for service, even though he were to lose nothing by such a discharge; but we know that an officer is a real loser by every discharge he grants; what is allowed for levymoney is always paid to the officer, whether he has an occasion for any recruits or no; if he has no occasion for recruits, he puts it in his own pocket, and if the recruiting of his regiment comes to more money in a year than the allowance will answer, he must pay the surplus out of his own pocket; can we then imagine that any officer will discharge an able and a disciplined soldier, and thereby put himself to a great charge for a new man to be put in his stead, besides the trouble and fatigue which the officer must undergo to see such new men trained up to discipline? Such a supposi tion plainly appears to be unreasonable. Sir; I doubt not but all necessary precautions are taken, at present, as to the admitting of pensioners upon that college, but whatever strictness may be observed in the inquiries as to that affair, there may notwithstanding now and then an imposition happen; I believe the inquiries were made as strictly formerly as they are now, yet I know that some years ago there was one fellow got himself admitted a pen sioner, as having had two of his ribs broke by a cannon ball, though it was afterwards discovered that the fellow's ribs were broke by a fall from a house, when he was serving the builders as a day-labourer. The roads made in the Highlands may be very good, that country may be thereby rendered accessible, but certainly the more easy access is made thereto, the less necessary it is to keep up the independent companies; and since we have been at the expence of making the country accessible, we may be relieved from the charge of maintaining those companies. I believe if the case were examined into, there is not so much money raised for the public service in all that country, as will pay only those independent companies, and I do not see any reason why the rest of the nation should be put to any farther expence that way; I have not as yet heard any reason given for it, nor has there any answer been made to my objection against that article of the public accounts. I know that, when accounts have been demanded of the that the whole money charged would have been advanced and paid to the persons, that were principally concerned in inserting so many forgeries into that list: from thence we may judge how necessary a scrutiny was at that time, and what a large sum of money was saved to the public by such scrutiny. This, Sir, was one of the dark pieces of management in that administration, which never could be cleared up, at least it was never publicly avowed what was meant thereby. I remember likewise that at the time of that scrutiny, there was a great reduction among the Letter-men, yet that is no argument that it is not necessary to have any Letter-men at all; it is but reasonable that some poor fellows, who have served long as serjeants or corporals of horse, or gentlemen cadees, who have had the misfortune to be disabled in the service, should be allowed some sort of distinction, and have a little more pay than a common soldier, especially considering that such an allowance costs the pub-title to be protected and defended, as well as lick but a meer trifle. nies in the country is by much the best method of keeping the people in order; and if those Companies were to be disbanded, and the ser vice to be performed by detachments from the regiments in the low-country, I am sure the public would save nothing, for notwithstanding the highways that are now made, the marching of those detachments backwards and forwards, and the sending them provisions, which must be all sent from places in the low-country at a great distance, would cost the public full as much, if not more, every year, than the main, tenance of these six Independent Companies now amounts to. As for what money may be returned from that country for the public service, I do not know; but it is well known that every part of that country pays the landtax, and every other tax which they are subjected to by the articles of the union, and consequently they must certainly bear a part of the publick charge, and have from thence a just As to the roads made through the Highlands, I have heard them so much applauded by every body without doors, and the sum charged upon that account is so inconsiderable, that I wonder to hear any member of this House take notice of it. That there was a necessity for making such roads, must be evident to every man who considers the circumstances of the nation, and of that country in particular. It is well known that whenever any design was set on foot against the government, or any invasion intended, the first scene has been always laid in that country; that country was formerly so inaccessible, that the enemies of the government could safely land or rendezvous there, and could easily defend themselves till they found an opportunity of coming down to the lowcountry, and raising a disturbance through the whole nation. It is very true, that the men of that country are but men, they are in theinselves no better than other men, and were terrible only because they could not be come at; from their inaccessible country they made inroads and plundered their neighbours, and when a sufficient force was raised against them, they retired again and took shelter among their inaccesible rocks and mountains, where it was impossible to come at them; this only made them terrible, but by the highways that are now made, this cause of terror is removed; their neighbours are made easy, and that country will no longer be a safe landing or parading place for those who come to attack us, nor will it be a safe refuge for those who fly from the justice of the nation. Though these roads be now finished, and brought to a perfection far beyond what could have been expected in so short a time, or for so small a sur, yet, Sir, the Independent Companies are not thereby rendered unnecessary; I have been informed by every person, who has been in or knows the country and the nature of the people who are the inhabitants thereof, that the keeping of those Independent Compa any other part of the nation; North-Britain is a part of Britain as well as South Britain is; it is the same country, and I hope in all the Resolutions of this House it will always be look'd on as such. After this the Question being put on the said Motion, the same was agreed to. Feb. 1. The above Resolution, being re ported, was agreed to by the House. The Proceedings relating to the Sale of the late Earl of Derwentwater's Estate ordered to be laid before the Commons.] Feb. 2. The Commons ordered, That the proper Officer, do lay before them all such Proceedings, Papers, and other Instruments, as he had in his custody, relating to the Sale of the Estate of James late Earl of Derwentwater. Petition from the Proprietors of the Charitable Corporation, complaining of the Mismanagement of their Directors.] Feb. 3. Sir Thomas Rubinson presented to the Commons a Petition of the Proprietors of the Charitable Corporation, complaining," That by the most "The reader may remember, that in the last session, several Petitions were offered in the House of Cominons against the Charitable Corporation, It now became a very serious affair; for their capital was now enlarged by a royal licence to about 600,0001. George Robinson, member of parliament for Marlow, was their cashier, and having a statute of bank ruptcy issued against him, he disappeared, as did likewise one Thompson, who was the warehousekeeper. It was soon found out, upon enquiry, that a most pernicious, through incomprehen sible piece of villainy, had been carried on. In short, 30,000l. was all that could be discovered, to answer for a capital of 500,000/. It does not belong to this history to trace this black affair through all the particularities that did attend it; it is sufficient to say, that in pursuance of the enquiry set on foot by the Committee of the House of Commons, upon a notorious breach of trust in several persons, to whom the care and management of their affairs was committed, the said Corporation had been defrauded of the greatest part of their capital Petition presented to them by the proprietors for relief, it appeared, that sir Robert Sutton, a member of the House, and knight of the bath, one of his Majesty's most honourable privy council, had been guilty, as one of the Committee for managing the affairs of the Charitable Corporation, of promoting, abetting and carrying on, several indirect and fraudulent practices, for which he was expelled the House. "Nothing but the notoriety of the thing could have brought so severe a censure upon a gentleman, who, like sir Robert Sutton, had been distinguished by some of the eminent employments in the state, was amiable in bis private character, and happy in his connections, his friends, his family, and fortune; even his enemies were privately of opinion, that indolence and inadvertency were the chief causes of his misconduct. amounting to several hundred thousand pounds; and that all the Petitioners were become great sufferers thereby, and many of them reduced to the utmost degree of misery and distress; loni, who was well known to be the Pretender's banker and agent at Rome (as Arbuthnot was at Paris), to get Thompson secured. Belloni and Arbuthnot were the more pleased with this commission, because they were in hopes to manage it so, as to make the arrest of Belloni seem to be owing to the Pretender's zeal for baving justice done to the English nation. "The censure against sir Archibald Grant, another member of the House, was somewhat more harsh; for he was found guilty of having been concerned in copartnerships, in which the cash of the Corporation had been employed, and great sums lost and embezzled; and having been principally concerned in promoting, abetting, and carrying on, many other indirect and fraudulent practices in the management of the affairs of the said Corporation. "Besides those two gentlemen, Denis Bond, and William Burroughs, esquires, Mr. George Jackson, Mr. Benjamin Robinson, Richard Wooley, and Thomas Warren, were found principally concerned in these frauds; and a Bill was brought into the House, to restrain all of them from going out of the kingdom for one year, or to alienate their effects, and to oblige them to discover the same. "The whole, however, was managed with great tenderness, and even favour, to Thompson; for though he had pretended to make a full discovery of all his effects, and even gave orders for delivering them up, yet these orders and all the papers he had executed, were to remain in Arbuthnot the banker's hands, till such time as the House of Commons or the Charitable Corporation should agree to the proposals of Thompson, who by this time, was, together with Robinson the cashier, adjudged by act of parliament to be guilty of felony. Besides this the proposals of Thompson, though complied with, would have been of very little service to the Corporation. But the strain of the letter from Belloni to the Committee, left no manner of room to doubt, that the whole was a contrivance of the Pretender and his adherents. The parliament easily saw through this, and both Houses having held a conference, it was adjudged, nem. con., "That Belloni's letter is an insolent and audacious livel, attempting by false and insidious insinuations, to impose upon the parliament and British nation; and by specious pretences and professions of esteem, affection and compassion, to amuse the unhappy sufferers of the Charitable Corporation, with vain and deceitful hopes of relief; that the said paper is in itself, absurd and contradictory, conceived at the beginning in terms, and in the style, of power and authority, or as proceeding from some extraordinary interest and influence, but concluding in the person and character of a private banker of Rome, offering upon certain conditions, on the behalf of John Thompson, to deliver certain books and papers of the said Thompson; the contents, value and consequence of which, are unknown, without any offer to surrender the person of the said Thompson, although represented to have been arrested and detained in safe custody, from a sense of the frauds com mitted by him, and a due regard to justice. The conditions demanded and insisted upon by, and in behalf of Thompson, appearing at the same time to be loose, evasive and uncer tain, tending to procure advantages and indemnity to himself and his accomplices, without any intention or prospect of benefit to the Cor poration; and that this whole transaction ap pears to be a scandalous artifice, calculated purely to delude the unhappy, and to disguise and conceal the wicked practices of the professed enemies to his Majesty's person, crown While this Bill was depending, Mr. Sandys, chairman of the Committee, acquainted the House, that sir Robert Sutton had told him, that he had received a letter from one Mr. Arbuthnot, a correspondent of his, at Paris, in which was enclosed a letter, from signior Belloni, a banker at Rome, directed to the Committee of the Charitable Corporation, or in case the Committee did not subsist, to sir Robert Sutton and others, informing, that Belloni had procured John Thompson, late warehousekeeper to the Charitabie Corporation to be arrested and secured in the castle of St. Angelo at Rome. "That the whole of this contrivance was a low artifice of the Jacobites, appeared not only from the whole complection of its conduct, but by the character of the persons enployed to manage it. Arbuthnot the banker, was an avowed Jacobite. Sir Robert Sutton applied, in order to clear himself of all suspicion of being concerned with Thompson, to doctor Arbuthnot, the banker's brother, who at his request, prevailed with the banker to write to Bel and alledging, that some, who had been guilty of these frauds, had transported themselves to parts beyond the seas, and carried with them some of the books and effects of the said Corporation; and that there was great reason to believe, such an immense sum of money could not have been embezzled without the connivance and participation of others who continued here; and that the Petitioners were unable to come at the knowledge of their combinations, or to bring them to justice, without the aid of the power and authority of that House; and therefore praying, that the House would vouchsafe to enquire into the State of the said Corporation, and the Conduct of those who had had the care and management of their Affairs; and would give such Relief to the Petitioners, as to the House should seem meet." Debate on the said Petition.] This Petition being read, Mr. Oglethorp stood up and spoke as follows: Sir; I am persuaded that this Petition will be received in a manner deserving of the unhappy case of the sufferers, and of the justice of this House: I can hardly suspect that any gentleman that has the honour to be a member of this House, will oppose giving all the relief we can to such a number of unhappy people, who have been so much cheated and injured; and diguity." It was then unanimously voted, that the said infamous libel should be burnt at the Royal Exchange, by the hand of the common hangman. "Thus ended an affair, which notwithstand ing all the care and even earnestness of the government, brought destruction upon thousands of poor sufferers. Being many of them of the lowest rank, they gratified their revenge in murmuring against their superiors; and they were not wanting in throwing out abuse against the most venerable names in the nation, as being the authors of their calamities, or at least sharers in their spoils. But nothing could be more ridiculous, as well as unjust, than such aspersions, because it was plain from the spirit with which the government (who could have crushed the proceedings) joined in prosecuting the offenders, that no persons of the most exalted condition could have been concerned in the fraud; and if they had, they must have shared in the loss; as it is certain that the estates of the two gentlemen who were on that account expelled the House of Commons, were greatly injured, even independently of all proceedings against them, either legal or parliamentary. Add to this, that had Thompson, the warehouse-keeper, who must have been master of the secret, known of any such practices, he would undoubtedly have made his court at Rome by disclosing them; nor, considering the seyère examination the affairs and the books of the Company met with, both within and without doors, can it be imagined they could have been concealed." Tindal, yet because I have heard it whispered without doors that we ought not to receive this Petition, upon account, as is pretended, that the Com mon Seal was not regularly affixed thereto, I think it necessary to take some notice of that objection, in case any such be to be made; I must say, that if there be any irregularity as to the affixing of the public seal of that Company to this Petition, it is in my opinion so far fromn being an objection to our receiving the Petition, that it is a very strong reason for it; if there be any fault in form, it is the fault of those who had the keeping of the common seal, and as they may perhaps be some of those against whom the complaints made, and who upon inquiry be found by this House to be the guilty persons, we are therefore to look upon any neglect in form to be a wilful fault, and a plot laid for preventing the truth's being brought to light; such plots will, I hope, be always defeated by the wisdom of this House, and whenever it can be discovered that any frauds have been committed, or any indirect practices used by those who have the keeping of any common seal, this House will, I hope, make use of that power, with which it is by our constitution invested, for detecting and punishing the criminals: for my own part, I always was for encouraging the design upon which this Corporation was at first established; people may call it Charitable or not, as they please; but I always looked upon it as an act of charity to let necessitous persons have money to borrow upon easier terms than they could have it elsewhere; money like other things is but a commodity, and in the way of dealing, the use thereof, as well as of other things, is looked upon to be worth as much as people can get for it; if this Corporation let necessitous people have the use of their money, at a cheaper rate than any other person would lend money at, they were certainly useful to the public, and were so far to be reckoned a Charitable Corporation; and if they had asked more than what was usual to be given, they could not have had any customers; the design was therefore in itself good and useful, but the better the design was, the more those persons deserve to be punished, who by their frauds have disappointed the public of reaping the benefit, which might have accrued by an honest and faithful execution of so good an under taking. Sir Thomas Robinson spoke next: Sir; There is no doubt but that a great mauy frauds have been committed in the affair now before us; so large a sum of money could not have been lost in so short a time, hy the greatest misfortunes that possibly could have happened; nor could the greatest mismanage ment reduce such a capital to nothing in so few years, without some fraud at bottom; and as matters now stand, every man who had any hand in this unhappy affair, is accused by the general voice of the people; every man concerued is-presumed to have been a partaker in the crime, and the innocent suffer in their cha racters, as well as in their estates, by the frauds of the guilty. As the capital stock of this Corporation was divided among a great number of proprietors, the sufferers by these frauds must be very numerous, and amongst them there are without doubt a great many who are quite undone; it is enough to move the compassion of any man to think, that gentlemen and ladies, who have been bred to an affluent fortune, should thus at once be reduced to misery and starving; and that without any fault of their own, but merely by the frauds or by the neglect of those to whom they had intrusted the management of their estates. This is a case, Sir, that deserves to be inquired into in an extraordinary manner; such innocent sufferers deserve the most speedy redress that the justice of this nation can admit of; it would be cruelty to leave it to the ordinary forms, or to subject it to the long delays that necessarily attend the ordinary course of justice; and therefore I hope, that no member of this House will refuse to give ear to the just complaint of the Petitioners, or appear to be against giving them all the redress that can be given in a parliamentary method of proceeding. There are, I think, three things that must come under our consideration in the present case: We must endeavour to relieve as much as possible those who are the unhappy sufferers in this affair; we must endeavour as much as we can to discover those who are really guilty, and punish them as severely as their crimes deserve; and we must endeavour to vindicate the characters of those who are innocent, and who at present suffer by being blended with those that are guilty. These things demand a most strict and a most exact scrutiny into the management of the affairs of this Corporation, and therefore this Petition ought not only to be referred to a Committee, but to a select Committee of a certain number of members to be chose by ballot, which Committee ought to be a Committee of Decrecy. Captain Vernon agreed in every thing to what sir Thomas Robinson had moved for, except as to the Committee's being a Committee of Secrecy, in which he was seconded by went about current and in great plenty in Change Alley. Sir Robert Sutton and Mr. Denis Bond said, That as they had the misfortune to be named as managers of the affairs of that corporation, they thought themselves obliged to say something upon the present occasion: That they were both very considerable proprietors, and consequently were very great sufferers, but though they had been named as nanagers, yet they were but seldom there, and knew very little of what was done. Sir Archibald Grant said, That as he likewise had the misfortune to be a Manager, he thought himself obliged to say something to the affair then before them; that he also was a very considerable proprietor, had no less than 1500 shares of their capital in his own right, which had cost him above 8000l. That he was very willing the management should be inquired into, because he hoped the fraudulent' and deceitful would thereby be distinguished from those, who had been deceived and imposed upon. Several Members spoke for the Committee being a Secret Committee, because it had been always observed, that such Committees made the most narrow and the most speedy inquiry into the affairs that had been referred to them: That if every member had a liberty of coming there, it would occasion such disturbance and so many delays, that it would be impossible for the Committee to finish their report, or for the House to give any relief to the unhappy sufferers, during that session of parliament. That its being a Committee of Secrecy could not be any loss, as to their getting all possible information from the other members of the House, who could make any discoveries; for that the gentlemen of the Committee would te known, and it was to be presumed that every member, that could make any discovery of consequence, would immediately give information thereof to some of the gentlemen of the Committee. The said Petition referred to a Committee.] Then it was resolved, without opposition, "That the said Petition be referred to a Com Mr. Hopkins, who said, That a Public mittee of twenty one, to be chosen by balCommittee would be more for the purpose, beloting.' But a motion being made, and the cause in such case he and every other member of the House, who could give them any inform-Committee of Secrecy, it passed in the negaquestion put, That the said Committee be a ation, could then attend and know what they tive by 212 votes against 132. were about, by which they would learn how to assist the Committee in making discoveries, and clearing up facts which they might be in any doubt about." He added, "That in the management of this affair, he could not but take notice of one fact, which to him appeared something extraordinary; which was, that at one time there were Bonds or Notes of that Corporation issued, to the value of about 120,000l. about which time the York Buildings Stock rose from 18 or 19 to 36 or thereabout per cent. This sudden rise, he believed, was principally owing to the Bonds and Notes of The Charitable Corporation, which at that time Sir R. Walpole's motion for reading the Pension Bill a third time.] Feb. 7. A Motion was made by sir Robert Walpole, for having the Pension Bill read the third time, on the 10th instant, in a full House, because he did not know but that he might then offer several reasons against it, and endeavour to shew, that it was neither a proper Bill for redressing the evil complained of, nor was it offered at a proper season. Mr. Pulteney said, That that Bill had been two years successively before that House; during which time they had had many oppor |