Is this justice? Is this the treatment which the officers of the navy deserve at the hands of those who call themselves his Majesty's Government? Does the country know of this injustice? Will this too be defended? If I express myself with warmth I trust in the indulgence of the House. I cannot suppress my feelings. Should 31 commissioners, commissioners' wives, and clerks have 3899l. more amongst them than all the wounded officers of the navy of England?
I find upon examination that the Wellesleys receive from the public 34,729£, a sum equal to 426 pairs of lieutenants' legs, calculated at the rate of allowance of Lieutenant Chambers's legs. Calculating for the pension of Captain Johnstone's arm, viz. 45l., Lord Arden's sinecure is equal to the value of 1022 captains' arms. The Marquis of Buckingham's sinecure alone will maintain the whole ordinary establishment of the victualling department at Chatham, Dover, Gibraltar, Sheerness, Downs, Heligoland, Cork, Malta, Mediterranean, Cape of Good Hope, Rio de Janeiro, and leave 5460£ in the Treasury. Two of these comfortable sinecures would victual the officers and men serving in all the ships in ordinary in Great Britain, viz. 117 sail of the line, 105 frigates, 27 sloops, and 50 hulks. Three of them would maintain the dockyard establishments at Portsmouth and Plymouth. The addition of a few more would amount to as much as the whole ordinary establishments of the royal dockyards at Chatham, Woolwich, Deptford, and Sheerness; whilst the sinecures and offices executed wholly by deputy would more than maintain the ordinary establishment of all the royal dockyards in the kingdom.
Even Mr. Ponsonby, who lately made so pathetic an appeal to the good sense of the people of England against those whom he was pleased to term demagogues, actually receives, for having been thirteen months in office, a sum equal to nine admirals who have spent their lives in the service of their country; three times as much as all the pensions given to all the daughters and children of all the admirals, captains, lieutenants, and other officers who have died in indigent circumstances, or who have been killed in the service.
III.
(Page 258.)
The following letter, too long to be quoted in the body of the work, but too important to be omitted, was addressed by Lord Cochrane to the Brazilian Secretary of State. It gives memorable evidence of the treatment to which he was subjected by the Portuguese faction in Brazil.
Rio de Janeiro, May 3rd, 1824.
MOST EXCELLENT SIR,
I have received the honour of your excellency's reply to my letter of the 30th of March, and as I am thereby taught that the subjects on which I wrote are not now considered so intimately connected with your excellency's department as they were by your immediate predecessor, nor even so far relevant as to justify a direct communication to your excellency, I should feel it my duty to avoid troubling you farther on those subjects, were it not that you at the same time have freely expressed such opinions with respect to my conduct and motives as justice to myself requires me to controvert and refute.
With regard to your excellency's assurance that it has ever been the intention of his Imperial Majesty and Council to act favourably towards me, I can in return assure your excellency that I have never doubted the just and benign intention of his Imperial Majesty himself, neither have I doubted that a part of his Privy Council has thought well of my services; and if I have imagined that a majority has been prejudiced against me, I have formed that conclusion merely from the effects which I have seen and experienced, and not from any undue prepossession against particular individuals, whether Brazilian or Portuguese. But when your excellency adds that those transactions between the late minister and myself, which, owing to their having been conducted verbally, have been ill-understood, have invariably been decided in a manner favourable to me, I confess myself at a loss to understand your excellency's meaning, not having any recollection of such favourable decisions, and therefore not feeling myself competent either to admit or deny unless in the first place your excellency shall be pleased to descend to particulars. I do indeed recollect that the late ministers, professing to have the authority of his Imperial Majesty, and which, from the personal countenance I have experienced from that august personage, I am sure they did not clandestinely assume, proffered to me the command of the imperial squadron, with every privilege, emolument, and advantage which I possessed in the command of the navy of Chili; and this, your excellency is desired to observe, was not a verbal transaction, but a written one, and therefore not liable to any of those misunderstandings to which verbal transactions, as your excellency observes, are naturally subject. Now, in Chili my commission was that of commander-in-chief of the squadron, without limitation as to time or any other restriction. My command, of course, was only to cease by my own voluntary resignation, or by sentence of court-martial, or by death, or other uncontrollable event. And accordingly the appointment which I accepted in the service of his Imperial Majesty, and in virtue of which I sailed in command of the expedition to Bahia, was that of commander-in-chief of the whole squadron, without limitation as to time or otherwise; and this, too, your excellency will be pleased to observe, was not a verbal transaction, but a solemn engagement in writing, bearing date the 26th day of March, 1823, and now in my possession. I had also the assurance in writing of the Minister of Marine, that the formalities of engrossment and registration of such appointment were only deferred from want of time, and should be executed immediately after my return.