RUSSIAN-DUTCH LOAN (Hansard, 6 February 1832)

§ Mr. Robinson

felt it to be his duty to take that opportunity of reverting to a question which he had put to the noble Lord, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on Friday evening last, relative to the situation in which this country had been placed by his Majesty's Ministers with respect, to the Russian-Dutch Loan. He did not wish to provoke discussion upon the merits of the case, but merely to deal with the facts as they appeared at present. The House would recollect that the Motion which the hon. member for Harwich had submitted upon the subject was to the effect that the payments which had taken place since the separation of the Belgic provinces from Holland were without warranty in law. The House negatived that proposition; but no step had since been taken, to shew that the payments were made by warrant of law. He apprehended, therefore, that the question remained precisely where it was; and that being the case, he begged, for one moment, to call the attention of the House to it. He, for one, contended that the Government, after the separation of Belgium from Holland, had no right to make any further payments on account of the Russian-Dutch loan without bringing the merits of the case before Parliament, and obtaining its opinion upon them. He stated this because, among the arguments which Mi- 1285 nisters had set up in their defence, the noble Lord (the Paymaster of the Forces) had contended, that their conduct was justified by certain circumstances growing out of the negotiations of 1830 and 1831. If the Government could make out a sufficient case, he had so good an opinion of Parliament as to believe that it would sanction, if the matter were submitted to it, the making of those further payments which were required to complete the obligations of the Treaty of 1815. But reading that treaty literally and plainly, and strictly interpreting the words of the Act of Parliament which was founded upon it, he denied that the Government had the power to make any further payments without the sanction of Parliament. He begged to ask, therefore, whether the Government considered themselves warranted in making any further payment without bringing the subject under the consideration of Parliament? If the question, with all its details, were to be submitted to that House, he should be prepared to let it rest until brought forward by Ministers; but, if that were not the case, so convinced was he of the breach of the constitutional privileges of that House which would occur in any further payments, that, unless the hon. member for Harwich, who was much more competent to the task, would undertake to move a resolution upon the subject, he should undoubtedly feel it to be his duty to do so himself.