§ MR. FORBES MACKENZIE moved that Sir William Jolliffe be added to the Select Committee on the Norwich petitions.
1359MR. STAFFORD, in seconding the Motion, said that he would take that opportunity of alluding to a matter in which he was personally concerned. It had been stated in an influential morning paper of the previous day, that, whereas—
In 1860, the Admiralty had resigned the dangerous patronage of the dockyard at Chatham into the hands of Sir Baldwin Walker, surveyor of the Navy, who exercised it without regard to politics, the Duke of Northumberland and Mr. Stafford last year took it from him, burked his remonstrance addressed to the Board, and threw the patronage back into the old corrupt channel, so far as actually to degrade the efficient men selected by Sir Baldwin Walker, and put partisans into their places.He begged to say that the late Board of Admiralty were not at all aware of the charges brought against them by the witnesses before the Committee, for they had no knowledge of what was there stated, except so far as it might be gathered from the examination in chief and the cross-examination, which were often contradictory, and might be taken for anything or nothing. To the statement to which he alluded, he begged to give the most unqualified contradiction, and all he asked was, that the House would postpone its judgment on the conduct of the late Board of Admiralty until the Board should have had an opportunity of vindicating themselves, or, at all events, of knowing what were the charges against them. That was an act of justice which, as jurymen, they would not refuse to the meanest criminal, and which, as gentlemen, he was certain they would not refuse to the late Board of Admiralty.
§ Motion agreed to.