283 sive army, to go to, who have any fault to fi id with my conduct, personal or public, in the different duties entrusted to my care. And I shall now ask any candid mind,. whether entering on a department under the disadvantages of personal prejudice, and retiring under the approbation of his general conduct, is not more meritorious than entering on a department without any adverse prejudice, and retiring without the least approbation.

It will ill become me to enter upon my immediate answers to the different points which the honourable gentleman has urged with so much ingenuity, before I offer to you, sir, and to this house, my most sincere thanks for the patience and indulgence with which I have already been honoured. The house, however, will observe, that the transactions now under discussion originated twenty years ago; and as all other efforts have failed to abase me in the estimation of my country, these have been resorted to. The Cape, Buenos Ayres, and Copenhagen, have been worked threadbare; no more is expected to re-ult from them, and as little I trust will result from this; for whatever length the examination may go to, it can never alter the principal feas ture of the case, that I preferred ac ive employment to the dissipation of every description which at that time I might have entered into. The char..es which the honourable gentleman has brought forward, I shall class under four heads; that I went to India without the consent of the East India company, contrary to their exclusive charter; that I had smuggled part of the cargo of the Etrusco in Ireland and England; that I had absconded from India; and had escaped from the ship in Ostend roads. If I was disposed, sir, to contend that the last letter from the admiralty was the only one which was binding on me, I might certainly do so, and in that letter it has been seen that no restricti n whatever was imposed on me in regard to the company's settlements; it gave me unrestricted leave to go to India, and to reside two years at Fredericknagore, on the express condition of my resigning my half-pay: but I will not separate the inference which might be drawn from the first ap lica ion, which was rejected, and in which application I stated I had no intention of going to the company's settlements with a view of remaining there. I will state the fact the house exactly as it s ood. When I sailed from Europe it was my intention to domicile my self at Serampour, I do not mean to say I should not have

stopped at Calcutta on passing, but my fixed residence would certainly have been in the former place. In my voyage out, however, the ship struck on an unknown rock in the Mozambique channel: I was obliged to go to Bombay, and on my arrival there I found several English ships under foreign colours, commanded by Englishmen,' and who had sailed from the port of Ostend in the same manner I had done. The treatment which these ships had experienced from the government of Bombay, certainly changed my view of the subject; no restrictions were enforced on them, no las put in force against them, and the policy of encouraging this trade was an obvious feature in the general conduct of the government and the servants of the company. Under these circumstances was it not, sir, natural that I should avail myself of the same attention, and the same advantages, hich were held out to others at the time it was supposed they were offending against a prohibitory law of the company? From Bombay I went to Madras; from Madras to Calcutta, though not in my ship; and on the moment of my arrival there, I was applied to by the governort-general to assist on a particular service ordered by the court of directors; I in course acceded to the proposition; and having now occasion to state that I was so employed by lord Cornwallis, I beg to disclaim the slightest intention of aspersing the charac ter of that illus rious nobleman by any thing I could ever have said on the subject of his conduct towards me. All I meant to state was, that the governor general knew I was a British subject, and that I was in the command of a foreign ship; and although the honourable gentleman' has stated that the government of India had not the power of prosecuting the ship, yet he had the power of seizing me, as an individual, and sending me under an arrest to Eng land; a power, I believe, equally possessed by all the presidencies of India: but, on the contrary, the govern ment not only abstained from noticing the trade in which I had been engaged, but, conceiving I had performed some services to the company by gratuitously applying my professional exertions in various instances, wrote in the strongest terms to the court of directors; which letter, page 45, I will take the liberty of reading, and by which it will be seen that the court of directors was particularly solicited to recommend me to the lords of the admiralty. Extract of the public letter from the governor-general inv.

council of Bengal, dated November 25th, 1791, to the court of directors: "You will observe, in his letter dated the eth of September, that Mr. Popham, a lieutenant in his majesty's navy, has rendered a very important service to your settlement of Prince of Wales's Island, and to the navigation of that part of India, by effecting a survey of. the south channel; and ascertaining that vessels of any. depth of water not exceeding twenty-four feet may now make their passage, and thus avoid a great loss of time, to which, previous to the survey, they were obliged to submit in working out of the harbour of Pulo Penang to: the northward, when bound to the southward. Mr. Popham has been desired to deliver to us a chart of his survey upon this occasion, and we shall transmit it to you when we recei e it, reserving a copy to be kept in this country. The present instance is not the first, of a liberal exertion made by Mr. Popham in the line of his profession for the service of the company in India. At the request of government he assisted in the year 1788 in the survey of New Harbour and the adjacent channel; and to the merit thus acquired, he has now added that arising from the performance of a service likely to prove highly advan tageons to your commercial interests. Unemployed ast Mr. Popham is under the company, his zeal, and gra tuitous direction of his professional talents to the advancement of the public good, on the two occasions we have mentioned, and especially the last, claimed more than common notice, and we have accordingly expressed to him our sense of the readiness he has manifested to promote the interests of your service. We have also directed that a piece of plate may be prepared, bearing an inscription expressive of the occasion upon which it is given; and we have instructed our secretary to present› it to him in the name of the governor-general in council. Permit us to request that the services performed by Mr. Popham may be represented in the terins they merit by your honourable court to the lords commissioners of the admiralty in England." In consequence of this recommendation I was reinstated in his majesty's service, which; but for the war of 1793, i never should have had the honour of being. In this transaction, sir, 1 must therefore be considered as a private individual, and could not, in the words of the honourable gentleman's resolution, have "disgraced the character of a British officer." The

papers on your table prove that I was struck off the list of lieutenants in April 1791: I heard of it in October; and believe the Etrusco, which was taken by admiral Robinson in Ostend road, was purchased by me in December of the same year; and, however I might have erred as a lieutenant by going to India on a mercantile speculation, I certainly had a right, when I was no longer in the service, to pursue that speculation, with every exertion I possessed, for the sake of my family. And here, sir, I cannot help asking, against whom was I offending? Was I offending against any general law of the country? No, but against the protecting law of the monopoly of the East India company. Did the company prosecute me? No; but they rewarded me by recommending me, after my sins, to the notice of his majesty's government. In short, sir, it was the policy of the company at that time, if not to en courage, certainly to countenance, the trade of English capitals under foreign flags; and every body considered the relaxation of the governments in India, in enforcing their protecting law against the foreign trade, as amount. ing almost to an abrogation of it. With respect, sir, to the expences of captain Robinson, it was not owing to any fault of mine, or any neglect on my part, that they have not been paid long ago. On my return from the Cape of Good Hope my proctor presented me with the accounts; and seeing upwards of 9001. for travelling and inoidental charges from 1793, when the ship was taken, till 1803, when the captor had no occasion to travel any more, and an interest on that sum of near S007. making in all 12007., I do confess I hesitated to pay it; and am certain every person will feel that the charge is a little extraordinary for travelling to Deptford, where the ship lay, or to London, for a few opinions on the mode of prosecuting her; and was it not a little extraodinary during the last five years, not a stroke of law was struck? These accounts are now before the register of the court of admiralty, and merchants of the city of London, duly appointed; and I am happy to say, as a proof of the propriety of my objection, that they struck off the interest the moment they saw it. The agent of admiral Robinson refused the ar bitration of gentlemen which I proposed, as I consider it on all occasions the best reference for points in dispute; and which, as I before had the honour of mentioning in this house, was the course I pursued towards Messrs. Pax:

tor, antecedent to this case being tried and which I have again done by my solicitor, although the issue of that trial was against them. Now, as to the honourable gentleman's charge of absconding from justice, how does that stand? A coarser observation was never applied to any individual; in the same way I felt many of the honourable gentleman's observations; but as he has not been called to order by the house, I must rest satisfied the language he used was completely within its rules. In one month after the capture of the Etrusco, I was reinstated on the list of lieutenants, and appointed to act with the army in Holland, and I do not believe any offcer in that army will accuse me of absconding from the various and fatiguing duties which my situation in it im posed upon me. I did not return to England till 1796, nor did I even hear of the compulsory process till it was mentioned in this house by the honourable gentleman. The honourable member has stated too, that just before the Etrusco was seized, a person had escaped from her with a boat-load of goods; that person, sir, was myself: I had an undoubted right to act as I pleased; to hoist my boats out when I pleased, and to go, where it was very natural I should go, to my family, after an absence of twenty months. That I did take such articles as I thought would be acceptable presents to my family, is most true; I wish I had taken twenty boat-loads; and if I could have taken the ship into Ostend harbour, then, I apprehend, the bonourable and learned gentleman would not have had this opportunity of making his liberal practice on my character. But if there was any impropriety in my going on shore, why did not the gallant officer whose conduct has been so highly extolled by the honourable gentleman, prevent me? The reason, I conclude, may be easily inferred by reading admiral Wole's deposition, therefore on this point I shall make no further comment. The honourable gentleman has asserted that a bribe had been offered to admiral Robinson to relinquish the capture: I can only say, I never heard of this extraordinary cir cumstance till this night; nor can I imagine that any person was so much interested in the ship and cargo as myself, or could possibly have been justified in adyancing so extravagant a proposition; and this was my reason for not denying it...

I now, sir, come to the charge of smuggling, so un