§ THE EARL OF ELLENBOROUGHsaid, that it would be in their Lordships' recollection that, about a month ago, a noble and gallant Lord not now present, (Lord Melville) made some statement with respect to the discipline of the Bengal army, and in the course of that statement he mentioned that an officer had made a complaint to him, which complaint in the first instance had been made by a non-commissioned officer of the 3rd Bombay Native Infantry, that notwithstanding orders had been given to prevent officers from passing, three engineer officers of the Bengal army had forced their way through a gate after the capture of Moultan. When questioned as to something which they had under a tarpaulin, they replied that it was engineering stores; but that on the removal of the tarpaulin, it was discovered that it was, in fact, plunder. This statement struck him as very extraordinary at the time; and only two days ago he received a letter from Major Harvey Maxwell, of the Bengal Engineers, who was brigadier major of the Engineers at the siege of Moultan, requesting him (the Earl of Ellenborough), on the part of himself and his brother officers, of whom twenty-three were present 1506 at the siege, to state that the matter was inquired into by the late General Whish, and on inquiry it was found that the officers in question were not guilty of the charge imputed to them. Why that communication was not made to Lord Melville he (Major Maxwell) did not know, but he had written to India, and in the meantime he begged him (the Earl of Ellenborough), with great reason, to ask their Lordships to suspend any opinion that they might form on the question, as regards the Bengal Engineers, until the particulars of the investigation were sent from India. It so happened, however, that General Whish had been dead several years, and, therefore, he was afraid that there might be some difficulty in obtaining the information that had been written for. All that he could say was, that the officers of the Bengal Engineers were well known as selected officers who had been taken into that corps after passing a competitive examination, that they had entrusted to them matters of great responsibility with respect to the whole of the public works constructed in Bengal, and he had never before heard of a single instance in which the smallest charge had been made against the integrity of any of the officers in that corps.