§ THE EARL OF LUCAN rose to move—That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying Her Majesty that She will be graciously pleased to give Directions that the Report of the Chelsea Board of Officers be laid upon the table of the House. The noble Earl said that he regretted to find himself compelled to seek from their Lordships that justice which he could not obtain from the Minister of War; but he thought it was impossible to question this fact—that it was the fixed purpose of the Minister of War not to present the Report of the Chelsea Commissioners to Parliament during the present Session. The noble Lord began to be exceedingly entertained, and he could promise the noble Lord more 1014 amusement before he concluded. He believed that the fixed purpose of the noble Lord was to withhold the Report from Parliament and from the country; and such a course of conduct appeared to him (the Earl of Lucan) to be inconsistent with common justice. Indeed, it was difficult to understand the feelings that could have prompted that determination on the part of the noble Lord, or the boldness and assurance that could support it; but unquestionably it had been in every mouth for a long time past, that it was not the intention of the noble Lord to present this Report to Parliament this Session. The answers given in that House to questions put by him (the Earl of Lucan) to the noble Lord left it without a doubt that that was his intention; and his (the Earl of Lucan's) firm belief was, that unless he could prevail upon their Lordships that night to agree to this Motion, justice would be denied to the officers of the array by the withholding the Report. To satisfy their Lordships that he was not doing an injustice to the noble Lord, he should remind them that on the previous Monday week the noble Lord stated, in answer to a question put by him (the Earl of Lucan), that he believed the Report had not at that time reached Her Majesty, and that in consequence of the illness of the Commander in Chief, it was very doubtful when it would; and that after it had been laid before Her Majesty, it would have to be considered by the Government what course they should take upon it before it could be laid upon the table of the House. However, on a subsequent occasion the noble Lord admitted that he had been misinformed—that he had since found the fact to be that the Report had been laid before Her Majesty, but that up to that time (Friday last) it still continued in Her Majesty's hands, in consequence of no printed copy of the evidence having been forwarded with the Report to Her Majesty; and that it would remain with Her Majesty till She had an opportunity of comparing it with that evidence. He hoped to hear on the present occasion from the noble Lord that the Report had reached him from Her Majesty, Now he (the Earl of Lucan) knew not what object the noble Lord had in the statement to which he had just referred, but it appeared to him (the Earl of Lucan) that that statement might lead to the inference that Her Majesty was, to some extent, a party to the injustice which 1015 the withholding of the Report inflicted upon the officers whose conduct was referred to in it; but it was well known that Her Majesty's first care was to do honour to Her army, and that she had deeply sympathised in the sufferings which they had undergone in the Crimea; and, therefore, no one could for one moment suppose that Her Majesty would be a party to the doing of an injustice to any portion of that army. He would tell the noble Lord that it was upon him, and upon him alone, that the whole injustice of withholding the Report must be laid. The noble Lord had said that it would he necessary for him to read over every word of the evidence before he could advise Her Majesty as to what steps should be taken in reference to that evidence, and to the Report which had been founded upon it. In that case there would be little chance of the Report being laid before Parliament during the present Session. But what was the course which had been taken by the noble Lord with reference to the Report of the Crimean Commissioners? Let the House for a moment contrast the noble Lord's conduct with respect to that Report with his conduct with respect to the Report now asked for. In the case of the Report of the Crimean Commissioners there was so much precipitancy and haste displayed by the noble Lord, that he found it impossible to refer that Report for the consideration of the Commander in Chief; indeed, he went farther, and said that he had scarcely allowed himself time to peruse it before he laid it before Parliament. Undoubtedly, such a Report ought to have been referred to the Commander in Chief; but such was the haste to lay it before Parliament, that that course was not taken, and though the document was only signed during the last two or three days of January, it was on the table of their Lordships' House by the 4th or 5th of February. The contrast was not favourable to the noble Lord, who now showed himself so slow in repairing injustice by presenting an exculpatory Report. The noble Lord now smiled. [Lord PANMURE: No.] But he could assure the noble Lord that he (the Earl of Lucan) knew no more about the contents of the Report than the noble Lord himself. However, this he did know—he knew every word of the evidence given before the Commissioners, and having the greatest confidence in their honour and integrity, 1016 he felt sure that the whole of the allegations made against him (the Earl of Lucan) and other officers must be stamped by the Commissioners as totally unfounded. For himself he felt little concern, because immediately after the conclusion of the evidence Colonel Tulloch came over to him, and though he had never said a word or communicated with that gallant officer before, he (Colonel Tulloch) said he thought it due to him (the Earl of Lucan) to state that had he not been misled by the evidence given him in the Crimea, by Colonel Gordon and Sir Richard Airey, he or the other Commissioner would never have said a word to his (the Earl of Lucan's) disadvantage. After such a statement as that, taken in connection with the evidence given at Chelsea, he (the Earl of Lucan), thought he was fully warranted in assuming that the Report was, so far as he was concerned, an exculpatory Report. The Minister of War excused himself on the last occasion for not producing the Report, and stated that he was acting under the advice of the Judge Advocate General. He did not desire to comment upon the manner in which that learned Gentleman conducted himself on that inquiry, or he might say that he appeared to him. (the Earl of Lucan) to assume more the authority of the Board than the position of the legal adviser of the Board. What character the learned Gentleman assumed during the deliberations, with closed doors, he would not say, but he could not shut his eyes to the fact that he was a colleague of the noble Lord the Minister of War, and was, therefore, no doubt most unfairly, open to the suspicion that he might not he inure impatient for the drawing up of the Report than the noble Lord was for producing it. The noble and learned Lord Chief Justice shook his head; but that did not alter the facts, and he (the Earl of Lucan) could not regard the noble and learned Lord's shake of the head as an answer to what he was putting to the House.
LORD CAMPBELLhoped the noble and gallant Earl would pardon his interruption, when he said that he (Lord Campbell) could not hear any one in a judicial situation accused without what he considered any ground, and not express his dissent from the accusation.
THE EARL OF LUCANbelieved it to be repugnant to all sense of justice that, in a political inquiry a political partisan should 1017 be the officer to advise the court. A review of the proceedings at Chelsea made it clear that the administration of justice before military courts required consideration on the part of the Legislature, and, as he believed that consideration could not be given to it in a more fitting place than their Lordships' House, he hoped the next Session would not pass away without the attention of their Lordships being called to the office of the Judge Advocate General, the functions of that officer, his tenure of office, and the mode of procedure before military courts, which he did not hesitate to say was at present unnecessarily tedious and obstructive to eliciting truth. Well, the Report had, no doubt, been presented, and the evidence had been printed, for it was printed from time to time while the inquiry was being proceeded with; but something had been said about the appendix not being printed. Now, he could not understand how that could be, because some papers had been returned to him on the ground that they could not he received after the close of the inquiry, and if all the papers proposed to be printed were in the hands of the Commissioners when the inquiry terminated he could not account for the delay in printing the appendix. However, he did not think it necessary that the appendix should be printed before the Report was laid upon the table of the House, for the House had frequently received Reports and the papers which accompanied them volume by volume. On a former occasion the noble Lord the Minister of War stated that in the case of the Commission on the Convention of Cintra, the manuscript remarks made on the Report by George IV. were countersigned by Lord Castlereagh, after the Report was returned to the Government by the King, and that this was done before the document was presented to the House. Now, seeing that it had been stated that Parliament would be up in a week from this time, if the noble Lord intended to follow the precedent of the Cintra Convention Commission Report, he (the Earl of Lucan) did not think it likely that the Minister of War would produce the Report of the Chelsea Commissioners during the present Session, if the House did not express some opinion on the subject. He thought he could not be charged with any undue haste in bringing this question before Parliament. The Report had been signed fourteen days; eleven days had elapsed since it was laid before Her Majesty; this was the 18th of July; and in 1018 the course of another week, the present Session of Parliament would be brought to a close. Entertaining, therefore, as he did, the conviction that the Minister of War would not produce this Report to the House unless their Lordships expressed an opinion on the subject, he hoped he should not be considered unreasonable in calling upon the House to support his Motion. The noble Earl concluded by moving—
That a humble address be presented to Her Majesty, praying Her Majesty that She will be graciously pleased to give directions that the Report of the Chelsea Board of Officers be laid upon the table of the House.
§ LORD PANMUREsaid, that after the speech of the noble Earl, in which he complained that it was his (Lord Panmure's) intention to withhold from him justice on this occasion, he thought that the very few facts which he (Lord Panmure) was about to state to their Lordships would show them the utter unreasonableness of the address to which they had just listened. Throughout the whole of his statement the noble Earl had told them of apprehensions which existed in his own mind, but for which, in his (Lord Panmure's) opinion, the noble Earl had given no reason whatever. Let him just trace the course of these proceedings; and let their Lordships mark the course which the noble Earl had pursued with reference to them. On the 7th July this Report was first presented to the Queen. On the 8th the noble Earl demanded to know when it would be laid before Parliament. He (Lord Panmure) said nothing on that occasion to justify the noble Earl in arriving at the conclusion that he was averse to laying the Report before Parliament. He (Lord Panmure) admitted the reasonableness of the anxiety felt by the noble Earl, for himself, and on the part of the officers whose case had been before the Commissioners at Chelsea; and all he claimed for the Government was time for the consideration of the Report before it was laid upon the table of the House. That Report was delivered to the Queen in manuscript on the 7th of July: every page of that Report referred to the proceedings which were not delivered to Her Majesty till the 9th. The 10th intervened; and late on the evening of the 11th he received that Report and those proceedings from Her Majesty, with an expressed desire that She should receive the advice of Her Cabinet on the subject. On the 12th he laid the Report before the Cabinet; the 1019 13th was Sunday; and the Report, which he had sent to be printed on the evening of the 12th, was delivered to him in a printed shape, occupying some thirty pages of close type, on the 15th. This was the 18th; and during the time that had intervened between the day he received the Report and that on which he received it in its printed shape he instructed the Under Secretary of State to state, in reply to a question which was to be put in the other House of Parliament, that it would be laid upon the table as soon as possible. His colleagues and himself had between the 15th instant and the present day perused the Report. They had not yet advised Her Majesty with respect to it; but between that day and Monday they would tender that advice to Her Majesty; and, therefore, he could not conceive why the noble Earl had arrived at the inference that the Report was not intended to be laid upon the table before the rising of Parliament. He could assure the noble Earl that it was his intention to lay the Report upon the table on Monday, and not only the Report, but the proceedings attached to it, and the appendix, which he could not understand why the noble Earl assumed was not printed. That appendix was printed with the rest of the proceedings, which he believed had been printed and published from day to day during the inquiry. So much as to the documents. Now, with regard to the whole proceeding, it seemed to him that the noble Earl had been trying to fix upon him some intention, personally, of withholding justice from him (the Earl of Lucan) and the other officers. He could assure the House that no such intention had ever existed in his mind; and in reply to the noble Earl's charge that the inquiry at Chelsea had been a political one, he (Lord Panmure) begged most distinctly and positively to aver that there had never been any proceeding more removed from the character of a political inquiry. That inquiry was a military-judicial inquiry, demanded by the officers themselves, and referred to officers of as high character as that of any officers in Her Majesty's service, without reference to their political opinions in the smallest degree. Nay, more, it was his conviction that if the political opinions of the Chelsea Board were inquired into, they would be found to be very much more in accordance with those of the noble Earl than with those of Her Majesty's Government. But because the Judge Advocate General, in his official 1020 capacity, was the adviser of the military Board on that occasion, the noble Earl gave that as a reason, forsooth, why that Board should assume a political hue. There was one answer for that—namely, that there was not an officer on that Board who, whatever might be the position of a public servant brought in connection with him in the discharge of judicial duties, would allow political opinions to bias him in respect to the conduct of the inquiry. The noble Earl insinuated that during the time the doors of the Board-room were closed, and while the public was excluded, the Board might have received some advice or other from his (Lord Panmure's) right hon. and learned Friend the Judge Advocate, which might have delayed the production of the Report in the first place to Her Majesty. Now, on a former occasion he (Lord Panmure) had stated that in the inquiry at Chelsea, while in most respects following the precedent of that which took place in 1808 with reference to the Convention of Cintra, in some it was deviated from, so far as allowing a fuller examination of the matters in hand, so as to assist the Commissioners in arriving at a conclusion. He found, on referring to the Report in the Cintra Convention case, that the Report was delivered to the King on the 22nd of December; and as far as he could gather from the order made by the House of Commons for the printing of the document, it was not laid before Parliament till the 31st of January. He did not know whether Parliament had been sitting before that date, but his impression was that it had been, for in 1808 Parliament assembled at an earlier period of the year than it now usually did; but it was clear that a very considerable delay had taken place in the delivery of the Report to the House from the time it was presented to the King. He did not, when before speaking on this subject, say that that Report was not signed by the Secretary of State; but what he said was, that the remarks made on that Report by His Majesty were countersigned by Lord Castlereagh as Secretary for State. The noble Earl had contrasted the time which had elapsed since the Chelsea Report reached the hands of the Government with the immediate production of the Report of the Commissioners from whose statements the late inquiry had emanated. But the Report from the Commissioners sent to the Crimea was made under a very different state of circumstances. The Commissioners who 1021 were sent to the Crimea to inquire into allegations which had been made by other sources were sent by the Government; the Government announced to Parliament that they had sent them, and gave Parliament distinctly to understand that as soon as the Commissioners reported, their Report should be laid upon the tables of both Houses. He would again repeat, that, so far from there being any intention on the part of Her Majesty's Government of withholding the result of the present inquiry, it was his (Lord Panmure's) intention to have presented the Report to both Houses of Parliament on Monday next; and under those circumstances he could see no necessity whatever for the noble Earl's Motion.
§ THE EARL OF DERBYsaid, that after the assurance given by the noble Lord, his noble and gallant Friend would not of course press his Motion for an Address to the Crown for the production of the Report; and he had no doubt that had such an assurance been given to his noble and gallant Friend at an earlier period, he would not have thought it necessary to bring forward the present Motion. The language, however, of the noble Lord opposite on the two occasions upon which the subject was mentioned was, as he understood—not having been present on either of those occasions—such as to lead his noble and gallant Friend to suppose that there would be considerable delay in the production of the Report.
§ LORD PANMUREI did not use any such language.
§ THE EARL OF DERBYcould only say what he had heard was the language of the noble Lord. It was such as to leave his noble and gallant Friend under the impression that it was not the intention of the noble Lord, on the part of the Government, to bring forward the Report previous to the recess. On the first occasion to which he referred, the noble Lord had erroneously stated, as a ground for delay, that the papers had not then been presented to Her Majesty. The noble Lord, it appeared, was in error in that statement. And on the second occasion of the question being asked, the noble Lord stated that the papers were not received back from Her Majesty, and that when She did send them back it would be necessary for the Government to review them. [Lord PANMURE: No, no!] He could only say what he had heard was the nature of the language used by the noble Lord— 1022 that it was not likely the papers would be produced before the rising of Parliament; and certainly those conversations had left his noble and gallant Friend under the impression that it was not likely an opportunity would be afforded to their Lordships for a consideration of the Report before the recess. That being the case his noble and gallant Friend was naturally anxious for the production, as soon as possible, of the Report which so materially concerned himself and other gallant officers. His noble and gallant Friend was, therefore, quite justified under such circumstances in giving notice of a Motion for an Address to the Crown on the subject. But now, whether the production of the papers on Monday should be considered as the spontaneous act of the noble Lord, or the result of this Motion for an Address to the Crown, the result was such as to render a perseverance by his noble and gallant Friend in this Motion unnecessary.
§ EARL BEAUCHAMPbore his testimony to the impartial manner in which the whole inquiry was conducted.
LORD CAMPBELLsaid, that as the noble Earl had made a charge against the Judge Advocate, imputing misconduct during the investigation in question, he (Lord Campbell) thought it his duty to say that he was sure no one could have conducted himself more honourably or impartially during the trial than that distinguished functionary.
THE EARL OF LUCANdenied that he had ever made any such imputation against the Judge Advocate General. He certainly expressed an opinion on the fact of the Judge Advocate acting as adviser to the Board in a political inquiry; and he thought that it was just possible that the Judge Advocate would have shown no more anxiety in the drawing up of the Report than the noble Lord opposite had done in the presentation of it to the House.
LORD CAMPBELLsaid, he was of opinion that the Judge Advocate had conducted himself with the utmost possible impartiality.
§ Motion (by Leave of the House) withdrawn.