§ Lord A. Hamiltonrose to put a question to the 1097 right hon. the chancellor of the exchequer, on a subject to which he had long since called the attention of the house, and the prosecution of which he had on that occasion relinquished, in consequence of an assurance given to him and to the public, that the proper steps were in train for procuring justice to the public. The subject he alluded to was, the matter of one of the Reports of the commissioners of Military Inquiry, respecting the conduct of Mr. Alexander Davison. It was now nearly twelve months since he had received the assurance that proper measures were to be pursued on this head, and yet all that the house knew at present was, that an inquiry had been instituted, and it was manifest that very great irregularities, to say the least, had been committed. The question he had to put was, to ascertain by the answer, to what extent the measures, which it might have been desirable to resort to, had been acted upon. If the answer he should receive should not prove satisfactory to him, he should feel it his duty, in an early part of the next session, to bring the subject in some shape or other before the house. He had but one more observation to add to what had been stated, and which was rather of a nature personal to himself. It had been intimated to him from several quarters, that, if he had not taken up the matter, it would have been in the hands of others, who would not have lost sight of it, and consequently he was bound to bring it under the consideration of the house.
The Chancellor of the Exchequercould not have the smallest objection to the production of the fullest information on the subject of the inquiry to which the noble lord had alluded. The noble lord could not be unaware that a parliamentary commission had been appointed, to whom the whole of Mr. Davison's accounts had, in consequence, been referred. That commission had from time to time made Reports upon the subject of the inquiry intrusted to them, to the Treasury, which regularly submitted these Reports to the law advisers of the crown for their opinion, whether a civil or criminal process should be founded thereon. It appeared upon some of them that the inquiries were not sufficient; upon others, on the contrary, it was considered that a legal demand existed on the part of the nation, to be recovered by civil process; and in every such case, application had been made to 1098 the party, as was customary in all private transactions, for payment of the sum demanded before the commencement of a civil suit, with directions, in case of noncompliance with the application, to resort to legal process. As the inquiries were still in prosecution, the noble lord might, in the next session, if he desired information upon the subject, apply to the treasury, and he had no doubt the business would then be in such a state as to allow of the whole proceedings being laid before parliament. For the present, he was sure the noble lord would not expect him to explain further, but of this he could assure that noble lord, that the subject had never been lost sight of by his majesty's ministers.