3S 



ANNUAL REGISTER, 1804. 



men. The war appeared to be on 

 our side purely defensive. Amidst 

 the dangers of this country, it was 

 a melancho!}' drcum&tancc, that no 

 man kncv, whether we had an ex- 

 ecutive government or not : he con- 

 cluded by defending the right of 

 volunteers to recommend their own 

 officers. 



Colonel Crawford opposed the 

 speaker's leaving the chair. He 

 Avas sure, that if parliament m ere to 

 pass this bill, ministers would con- 

 strue it into an acquiescence in their 

 system of defence. When he con- 

 sidered the formidable attack with 

 vhich this country was threatened, 

 and the powerful means it possess. 

 #d, (if these means had not been 

 shackled and repressed by the imbe- 

 cility of ministers), he thought the 

 house ougl'.t to be occupied by more 

 serious discussion, than about this 

 insigniQcant bill, lie did not abso- 

 lutely fear that the country would 

 be conquered, for, notwithsiaiiding 

 the faults of ministers, he trusted it 

 would defend itself. it would, 

 however, be disgracefn! for the na- 

 tion to be always merely on the de- 

 fensive. The present bill was too 

 contemptible to build any thing 

 great upon. He considered, that 

 since the very commencement of thj 

 war, the aliairs of the country had 

 ^ been grossly mismanaged ; and, if a 

 day was to be appointed for a dis- 

 cussion of that subject, he would 

 engage to prove it. He believed, 

 that the naval defence of our coun- 

 try had been miserably xiegle6ti.'d, 

 and he never heard a weaker de- 

 fence than had been set up by lord 

 Castlereagh, in support of the admi- 

 ralty. He thought that beginiiing 

 the war with an army so excellent 

 in spirit, who proudly recollected 

 the recent glory of th& British arms 



in Egypt, it would have been pos- 

 sible to have infused the same spirit 

 into a great mass of our population, 

 and th;it the regular army ought to 

 have been considerably increased. 

 He considered, that, instead of a de- 

 finite number of privileged volun- 

 teers, the whole aftive j)opulation 

 of the country ought to be in arms. 

 He contended that the French levy, 

 which assisted at the battle of Je- 

 mappe, were very difterent from our 

 volunteers. He thought the strongest 

 illustration of the comparative me- 

 rits of the two systems, Avas to be 

 seen in the Vcmlcan war, where a 

 mere armed peasantry often defeat- 

 ed armies of national guards, which 

 did resemble our volunteers. One 

 great advantage of an armed pea- 

 santry over the volanteer system, 

 would be, that they would be three 

 or four times more numerous ; their 

 dress would not be expensive, nor 

 their instruction difficult. In fai^t, 

 the present_/rtc/?(/M(', which was bor- 

 rowed from the Pru.ssi;tn school, 

 although very lit for the great ])lains 

 that armies could act on in Germa- 

 nj', was totally unfit to be practised 

 in this country, in real action. He 

 then took a general view of the 

 condiiftofgovernment since the war, 

 as far as it related to the means of 

 providing for the national defence, 

 in which he went over very nearly 

 the same grounds as had before 

 been urged by Mr. Windham. 



General Maitland was sorry to 

 perceive the view the honourable 

 colonel had taken of the subje6l. 

 When he s-jjoke of the armies of 

 France, and their leader, he had 

 given them the most unqualified 

 praise for their military talents, but 

 M'hcn he spoke of the armies of his 

 own country, he secured to forget 

 Ihat we had regulars and militia, 



who 



