Addington’s ministry was made memorable by the formation of the Northern Confederacy against us, and its immediate and total overthrow by Nelson’s cannon; and for the Peace of Amiens, severely criticised in Parliament, as that of Utrecht and every subsequent treaty with a similar object had been, but defensible both on grounds of domestic policy, as well as on that of affording us a much-needed respite from the strain of war; though it proved to be only a respite, and a feverish one, since at the end of two years the war was renewed, to be waged with greater fury than ever.  But it was too short-lived for any constitutional questions to arise in it.  And when, in 1804, Pitt resumed the government, his attention was too completely engrossed by the diplomatic arrangements by which he hoped to unite all the nations east of the Rhine in resistance to a power whose ever aggressive ambition was a standing menace to every Continental kingdom, for him to be able to spare time for the consideration of measures of domestic policy, except such as were of a financial character.  But, though his premature death rendered his second administration shorter than even Addington’s, it was not wholly unproductive of questions of constitutional interest.  It witnessed a recurrence to that which cannot but be regarded as among the most important privileges of the House of Commons, the right of impeaching a minister for maladministration.  A report of a commission appointed for the investigation of the naval affairs of the kingdom had revealed to Parliament a gross misapplication of the public money committed by the Paymaster of the Navy.  And, as that officer could not have offended as he had done without either gross carelessness or culpable connivance on the part of the Treasurer of the Navy, Lord Melville, who had since been promoted to the post of First Lord of the Admiralty, the House of Commons ordered his impeachment at the Bar of the House of Lords; the vote being passed in 1805, during Pitt’s administration, though the trial did not take place till the year following.  In reality, the charge did not impugn Lord Melville’s personal honor, on which at first sight it appeared to press hardly, Mr. Whitbread himself, the member for Bedford, who was the chief promoter and manager of the impeachment, admitting that he never imputed to Lord Melville “any participation in the plunder of the public;” and, as Lord Melville was acquitted on every one of the charges brought against him, the case might have been passed over here with the barest mention of it, were it not that Lord Campbell has pointed out the mode of procedure as differing from that adopted in the great trial of Warren Hastings, twenty years before; and, by reason of that difference, forming a model for future proceedings of the same kind, if, unhappily, there should ever be occasion given for a similar prosecution.  The credit of the difference Lord Campbell gives to the Chancellor, Lord Erskine, who, “instead of allowing the