Commons Sitting of 12 February 1812

CORN INTERCOURSE ACT.
Sir J. Newportsaid, be did not entertain any doubt
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that if he bad made the complaint which now occasioned him to rise, to his Majesty's government, they would have paid every attention to it. But he considered, when the object was one of great national importance, it was better to state the grievance in the House than out of it; and whenever any attempt was made to place the letter of the Act of Union in competition with its spirit, he would always consider it his duty to notice it. By the Corn Intercourse Act of 1807, which was founded on the Act of Union, all vessels laden with corn from England and Ireland, were permitted to enter the ports of the two countries respectively, as if coasters, without being subjected to the difficulties of a formal entry at the Custom-house. This provision was complied with in all the ports of this country, with the exception of Liverpool and Bristol. Of the conduct pursued at the former port he had some time since complained. His present complaint related only to the latter, and the ground of it was this: every person knew, that when a vessel was laden with corn, it was necessary, for its preservation from the water, which exuded through the side of the ship, that it should be protected by mats; and as it was a cargo more likely than any other to shift, and thus endanger the safety of the crew and vessel, it was necessary that boards should be used to keep it steady. Now, when vessels arrived at the port of Bristol, laden with corn from Ireland, the Custom-house officers there insisted, that those mats and boards should be entered as being the produce of Russia. This was most unjust; for no fraud could possibly be intended. Those mats and boards were much cheaper here than in Ireland; and if any person thought proper to export them from that country, it would be at their own certain loss. He had received a representation from a respectable gentleman on the subject, and trusted that such an infraction" of the spirit of the Corn Intercourse Act would no longer be permitted.
Mr. W. Polesaid, that no application had been made either to the board of Customs or the Treasury, on the subject. If the circumstance had been stated to him, he would have apprised the Treasury of it, where, he was sure, no well-founded-complaint ever went unredressed. He would, however, immediately inquire into the circumstances. Certainly, the Custom-house officers at Bristol could have no wilful intention to infringe a law so,

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beneficial to both countries. They might have conceived that some smuggling was intended, and perhaps the act to which the right hon. baronet referred, might stand in need of some amendment.
Sir J. Newportagain observed, that he preferred mentioning the business publicly, than having recourse to a private communication.

ROYAL MARINE CORPS.
Mr. Hutchinsonrose, pursuant to notice, to call the attention of the House to the present state and condition of the Royal Marine Corps. He said, he felt so convinced that the claims of this deserving body of men wanted nothing but inquiry to make their justice and validity generally acknowledged, that he was only anxious that the inquiry might be promptly entered upon, and actively followed up, and should be more than satisfied if his motion should have even incidentally so favourable a result. The immediate object of his motion was the production of certain papers, and if he could prevail upon the House to grant those papers, it was his ultimate intention to found upon them a further motion for an Address to the Prince Regent, that he would be graciously pleased to take the present state of the Royal Marine Corps into his consideration. He was at the same time willing to avow, that should he receive from the First Lord of the Admiralty, any satisfactory declaration of his intentions to remedy what appeared to him to be serious grievances, he could have no objection to withdraw his motion. The merits of the Marine Corps were at once so high and so notorious, as to be acknowledged universally, and to be admitted among the first claimants to the gratitude of their country. If such a body complained of any alleged grievance, their complaint had a weighty claim upon the attention of that House; but it was not less the duty of that House to see them done justice to, because their commendable sense of their duty, as a military body, had kept them silent, patient, and forbearing, under the consciousness of existing grievances. He did not stand up there to complain on their behalf, as their commissioned advocate. He merely stood forward as an independent member of parliament, to point out what appeared to him to be grievances, and if the House thought them so, to call upon parliament to redress them. The Marine Corps were not placed upon an equal footing with every other corps in
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the service, either with respect to rank or emolument. All the superior stations of their corps, as for instance, generals and colonels of marines, were filled by navy officers. Their senior commandants, after 50 or 60 years service, were worse paid than even a colonel of militia: they were never placed on the staff, they never obtained either governments or regiments, while both were given to navy officers, who enjoyed lucrative situations in Greenwich hospital and elsewhere, to which marine officers were never once admitted, though they contributed to the support of those establishments. The general of marines, the lieutenant-general, and the major-general, had been, and always were, admirals in the navy. The first had, as general of marines, 5l. a day, the lieutenant-general 4l. and the major-general 3l. a day, exclusive of their pay and rank as admirals, while the senior commandant, or in other words, the acting general of marines, had but 50 s. a day, and was allowed but one horse, while the major-general on the staff was allowed, on an average, from ten to fourteen. If marine officers could not be placed upon the staff, there could be no objection to grant them staff allowances proportioned to their rank, at least equal to those enjoyed by the naval generals.—Another hardship peculiar to this service, was the singular slowness by which merit rose to rank. A man with all the zeal of one who loved his country, and with all the ambition of a soldier, might, for 30 or 40 years, be fighting the battles of that country, before he arrived at the rank of a field officer. There was, indeed, a contemptible paucity of field officers. The proportion of these field officers to those of the line, were as one to four, and as one to five, compared with the artillery. The Royal Marine Corps constituted one-fourth of the British navy, and yet among 35,000 men, there were but 45 field officers: while the artillery, not exceeding 17,000 men, had, he believed, eighty field officers. Hence one of the causes of the slow promotion, and hence also the frequent, necessity of imposing on captains not field officers, the duty of field officers. So slow had been the promotion, that there were not then in the line 20 captains of the same standing with the senior captains of the marines. Many of those who were now admirals and generals, were not in the service when some of the senior captains of marines had already distinguished themselves. If this

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system operated so severely on the higher ranks of officers, how must it be felt by the subalterns? But it was not so much the feelings of individual classes, as the well grounded dissatisfaction of a great and meritorious military body, that called for consideration. The marine officers felt themselves, as it were, superseded in their rank. (Hear, hear! from Mr. Yorke.) He should explain to the right hon. gentleman what he meant when he said superseded in their rank. A regulation some years ago had been adopted, excluding the marine corps from any garrison command. The wisdom of this regulation he could not see, but the consequences of it operated rather harshly upon this corps; for land were they might, they always were compelled to give way to the garrison officer, however inferior his rank to that of the commandant of marines; so that this most deserving corps had not only the mortification to see the higher situations of its own establishments filled by officers, not of the corps, but to feel itself in a worse situation in point of staff advantages, than any other description of force in the British empire, and at the same time to see that it was placed in the degraded situation of having neither established rank in the line as a corps, nor efficient individual rank at their respective head quarters.—He had said, that their promotion was tediously disheartening. He would take, for instance, the year of the Jubilee, 1810, the number of naval officers promoted were as follows, 33 admirals, 113 captains, 156 commanders, 437 lieutenants: during the same period there had not been promoted, even to brevet rank in the marines, more than 37 officers; not two steps had taken place in the corps within that period; the ex-pence to the public arising from this naval promotion amounted to 60,000 l. a year, while that of the marines did not exceed 700 l. But it might be said, that the marine corps formed part of the navy: if it did so, why should so effective a part of that navy be the only part excluded from the ordinary naval advantages of rank and emolument? Did it deserve to be so disgracefully distinguished from the rest of the navy? And if it did not, where was the equity or policy in making men suffer a degradation which they were conscious of not deserving? The right hon. gentleman had cried "hear!" Was it not degrading a senior marine officer
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to subject him in all garrisons to the command of any garrison officer, however junior to him, and so to subject him, not in compliance with any general rule, but by making the corps to which he belonged the ground of a solitary exception to a general military regulation? Another hardship was, that the pay captains of grand divisions had no allowance for paying the several companies of which they were in charge, though the saving to the public in consequence of the laborious duties of those officers, was very considerable, though every captain of the line had an allowance for paying his respective company. The Serjeants of marines when admitted into Greenwich Hospital, had no better allowance than that possessed by the private of marines, or the common sailor, while the serjeant of the line in Chelsea Hospital received an increase of pension in some instances to the amount of 2s. 3d. per day, though the marine serjeant had but one shilling. The Serjeants and soldiers in the line were allowed to reckon three for every two years of service in the East or West Indies, for the purpose of claiming an increase of pay and pension in case of discharge. That regulation did not extend to the marines; the commissioned officers of marines could hold no situation in the government or management of either Chelsea or Greenwich hospitals, though they contributed annually a day's pay and a certain proportion of their prize-money, to both those great national institutions. It appeared, then, that if the marines were compared with the line or artillery, they were excluded from the staff; they had no adequate proportion of field officers, and that the promotion was most dishearteningly slow. He should propose to remedy these grievances without delay: the corps should be increased, the situation of its commandant improved, promotion accelerated—all of which might be done without any addition to the public burthens. The number of second lieutenants might be curtailed, and the pay and allowances of the drummers now noneffective, might also be applied to that purpose, as completely to cover the ex-pence, which could not exceed 5,000 l. a year; but it was not for him to do more than invite the attention of the House and the Admiralty to this subject. He said that in the comparison he had made between the marines and the navy, he wished distinctly to be understood as

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not meaning the slightest insinuation that the rewards or honours of the British navy were at all beyond its merits; far from it; it was barely possible for the gratitude of the country to keep pace with the illustrious claims, the skill and valour of the British navy were making upon it every hour; all he meant was, not that the navy should have less, but that the marines should have more. He then moved, "That there be laid before this House, a Copy of the Memorial of the commandants, field officers, and senior captains of the Royal Marines, to the right honourable the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, relative to the situation of that corps in 1810:" If this was agreed to, it was his intention to move for "A copy of the Letters of colonels Desbrowe and Trench, as to the appointments and rank in the said corps, addressed to the Board of Admiralty in the year 1810."
Mr. Yorkesaid, that, as to the latter motion, he was convinced that the House would not require a private letter to be produced. As the object of moving for the other paper was declared to be in order to ground an Address to the Prince Regent upon, he thought it necessary to make a few observations upon the case which the hon. gentleman had submitted to them. He perfectly agreed with every thing that had been said about the merits of the corps, but as they were well known to the House and to the empire at large, he did not think it necessary to say much upon that point. The House were always slow in interfering with matters of pure military regulation and detail; and unless they were convinced that the executive had neglected its duty, they seldom or never interfered in these points. How, he would ask, what could be a matter of purely military detail, more than the rank which marine officers should have upon garrison duty? It must be recollected. by the House, that there was no complaint of any of the old regulations for the marine corps having been departed from, but that it was merely a wish of the hon. gentleman to substitute some others in their place. The reason why they had not the same rank in garrisons, was, that they were seldom or never called upon to do garrison duty. If they were called upon to do garrison duty with other corps, there was no doubt but that their officers would take rank according to the date of their commissions; but the fact was, that while they were on shore, all that was required
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of them was to remain orderly in their barracks, and therefore no question of rank arose. Out of the whole number of 35,000 marines, 25,000 were generally on board ships, where, from the very nature of the service, they must necessarily be under the command of the captain of the ship. It would be recollected, however, that no officer higher than a captain of marines could be called upon to serve on board a ship; and therefore when they arrived at the rank of field officers, they had little or no duties to do, and they lived in a sort of retirement from the service. From the difference of the services they were called upon to perform, there was little analogy between the situation of officers of marines, and officers either in the line or the artillery. Keeping these general points in view, he would also observe, that the system now acted upon in the marine service, was that which had always subsisted. The active services of the matines as a body, were always performed under the orders and superintendance of the sea captain, or admiral of the fleet. Even when the marines were occasionally landed in boats, for the purpose of attacking any place, they were under the command of an officer of the navy. This, of course, prevented them from having the same number of field officers as were possessed by other corps; but if any occasion occurred when they were landed, and acted in battalion, then they acted under their own field officers. There was at present a battalion of marines in actual service in Porta gal, which was commanded by its own officers, and had proved extremely effective and useful. The hon. gentleman had founded his complaint chiefly on the small number of staff officers which belonged to the marine corps, and the inferior amount of their emoluments, when compared with those of other branches of the naval and military service. Now, as to these points, he would beg leave to obsecre, that the whole subject was taken into the consideration of government only three years ago, and a very material addition was then made to the emoluments enjoyed by the superior officers of the marines. He was quite persuaded that the greater part of these officers were at present extremely satisfied with their situation, as compared with that of other branches of the service; and as this improvement of their general situation and prospects had taken place so lately as 1809, he was convinced that there was no

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necessity for again recommending that subject to the attention of the Prince Regent, or of the House.—The right hon. gentleman here entered into a comparison between the pay and emolument of the colonels, commandants', and majors of marines, and those of officers of similar rank in the army, from which, upon the whole, he inferred that the inequality of the emoluments was trifling, if any, and not greater than what was occasioned by the diversity of service. The hon. gentleman had complained of the slowness of promotion in the marine service, and that so very few officers reached the rank of commandants. But similar complaints were equally applicable to promotions in the army; for how few colonels in the army were there, comparatively speaking, who could be promoted to the command of regiments? Besides, during war, the proportion of marines on shore was extremely small, when compared with those who were on shipboard, and these entitled to all the advantages which belonged to the naval service, such as the chance of prize money, &c.; advantages which inferior officers in the army did not possess. Were there even, therefore, some inequality in the pay of these respective branches of service, he saw no reason for chaffering as the hon. gentleman had done, about a few shillings or pounds, more or less. But the divisions of marines which were on shore, and which never amounted to more than 10,000 men out of their whole number, were, undoubtedly sufficiently supplied with staff officers. Every division consisting of 1,000 men had generally a colonel commandant, and four majors; so that, in this respect, he really never heard a matter of complaint which was less entitled to the consideration of the Housed The service of the artillery, with which that of the marines had been compared, without meaning at all to depreciate the latter, was one of more responsibility, and of a more arduous nature, and which necessarily required a greater number of officers of rank; the great body of marines being, as he had often stated, under the orders and directions of naval captains.—As to the slowness of promotion on the part of marine officers, he believed, that if the hon. gentleman compared it with what necessarily took place in the promotion of inferior officers in the army and navy, there would appear little or no ground of complaint.—With regard to Greenwich hospital, the marines contributed the same
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as the seamen to that establishment, and enjoyed from it the same advantages, with this single exception, that the superior officers of that national establishment were generally chosen from the navy; but this in itself was such a trifle, (there being only four or five situations of the description alluded to,) as hardly to deserve the attention of the House—The hon. gentleman had also complained that marines, serving in the East and West Indies, were not entitled to the advantage possessed by soldiers serving in those parts, of having every two years counted for three, in the computation of their pensions. But surely the hon. gentleman must be aware, that the marines remaining generally on board their ships, where they were much less exposed to the dangers of the climate, and which was always, in those latitudes, the most healthy situation in which they could be placed. On board ships their officers were besides entitled to the same allowance as naval officers, and came in for their due proportion of prize money. Upon the whole, he believed that the marine service was one of the most eligible of the various branches of our military establishments; and he thought the House would agree with him in thinking, that no sufficient ground had been laid for the Address which was now proposed.
Sir Edward Bullerdeclared, that he never heard it insinuated that the Marine Corps had any peculiar ground of complaint.
Mr. Grenfellsaid, that might be so; but still his hon. friend, as an individual, might be convinced they had ground of complaint. If that were so, he hoped he would persevere in his motion, and would not suffer the door to be shot on the present discussion.
Mr. Robinsondeclared that to any idea which the hon. member might entertain as to prejudices existing in the Admiralty Board, either against the hon. gentleman, or any measure recommended by him, such an idea was wholly unfounded.
Mr. Hutchinsonreplied, declaring that he had felt himself impelled by an imperious duty to call the attention of the Admiralty to the degraded military state of the Marine Corps, and to the supercession in rank of the officers of that corps, by which they were not allowed to share in the garrison duty, which, he conceived, was a great slur on the corps. It was no answer to tell him that the officers in this corps did not purchase their commissions.

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The artillery officers did not purchase their commissions; and in the army many of the officers did not purchase their commissions. The Artillery service was as 17 to 31, in comparison with that of the corps of Marines; and there were not twenty captains in the whole army with nearly the same length of service, as the marine captains. The statement of the first lord of the Admiralty, which the House bad just heard, would be received with surprise, not to say with indignation; and the right hon. gentleman would shortly find that there were things connected with the corps of Royal Marines which were at this moment well worthy of his most serious and anxious attention. He had called the attention of the House to a grave case. He knew he was correct in saying that there were feelings in the corps of Marines which now required to be attended to. In submitting this question to the House, he had only discharged an imperious public duty.
The question was then put on Mr. Hutchinson's first motion, which was negatived without a division; and the second he agreed to withdraw.

TRANSPORTATION TO NEW SOUTH WALES.
Sir S Romilly,in rising to make his motion for a committee to inquire into the state of punishment by transportation to New South Wales, said, that as it was not likely it would meet with any opposition, he should not trouble the House with many words on the subject. All he felt anxious for was, that the House should receive the necessary information, not only as to the effect, but as to the nature of the punishment of transportation to New South Wales. It was extremely important that the House should be informed on both of those points. We who were every day adding to our penal code, must feel it of extreme importance that both the nature and effect of such a punishment as this should be known, not only to those who made the laws, bet to those who administered the punishment annexed to the violation of them. Many of our magistrates were quite uninformed, not only as to the nature and extent of this punishment, but also as to the effects produced by the infliction of it. There were many offences of a very slight nature, when compared with others, to which this punishment was annexed and inflicted. It behoved the 'House, therefore, to be better acquainted on this subject than they at present were.
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—The object of his motion was not to impute suspicion or censure to any class of persons. But when he considered that the House was in possession of so little information respecting the colony of New South Wales, and that the information which existed, and was to be found in the works of Mr. Collins and Mr. Mason, could not be said to come before the House in an authentic form, he felt strongly that no serious objection could be urged against bis motion. The practice of transporting to Botany Bay had now prevailed since 1792: it was in every respect different from the former system of transportation to the American colonies; and, as a new experiment, deserved the fullest enquiry. He moved, therefore, "That a Committee be appointed to inquire into the manner in which sentences of transportation have been executed, and into the effects which have been produced by that mode of punishment."
After a short conversation the question was put and agreed to.