§ Colonel Palmerstated his anxiety to correct a misrepresentation he was sorry to have seen in the papers, of what he was reported to have stated in answer to the 1259 assertion, that an order had been issued to his royal highness the Prince Regent's regiment to exclude the admission of Irishmen. Being aware that there were some grounds for such statement, he did not at the time take upon himself to contradict it fully; but he was now enabled to state, from the highest authority, that no order of the kind had ever been issued. He admitted that the recruiting officers had received instructions from the commanding officer, col. Quintin, to enlist Englishmen in preference to Irish, and if any blame was to be attached to him for this, he begged, as far as his own opinion went of the propriety, to take his share. He had not stated, as reported, that his objection had been on account of the Irish deserting to the enemy; on the contrary, no one was more convinced than himself, in common, he believed, with every other British officer, of the loyalty, courage, and fidelity of the Irish. What he did state was, that the description of Irish they met with in this country were liable to desert, which was a reason for objecting to them; and to prove that his regiment entertained no national prejudice, they objected in the same manner, to various classes of their own countrymen—to ail Londoners, and inhabitants of manufacturing towns, and confined their recruits to that class of persons brought up to agricultural pursuits; for they found that Irishmen, and those of their own country, who were not in early life accustomed to the care of horses, made bad grooms—and thought the best infantry were objectionable as cavalry. He therefore trusted these reasons would clear his regiment of all suspicion of the motive which had been attributed to it. He would add, that this system was not confined (as had been stated) to his own regiment and the 15th, but that it was pursued by every English cavalry regiment in the service. He would only add, to prove that he never objected to Irishmen who were well recommended, and still less that he preferred foreigners, that the number of Irish then in the regiment exceeded that of the foreigners: and that the amount of the latter did not exceed thirty, out of a complement of nearly nine hundred. He concluded by observing, that it was an unpleasant subject, and that he should not have taken a part in the debate of last night, had he not felt called upon to do justice to a brother officer, than whom, he believed, there was not a more deserving man in the service, and to whom 1260 that credit for its appearance and discipline, which he trusted was not unworthily bestowed on the regiment, was due.