Mr. Tierney, who led the defence for ministers, would agree only to the first and second motions; and he moved, as an amendment to the first, that it should include all other armed ships and vessels employed in the public service.  He denied Mr. Pitt’s assertions, and combated his arguments.  It was an extraordinary proceeding, he said, that an inquiry should be proposed, having for its object the censure of the Admiralty, when every port of the enemy was sealed up, our commerce protected in every direction, and our trade prosperous in an unexampled degree.  Our naval force was immense, and admirably calculated for a great variety of service.  We had 1,530 vessels employed, of which 511 included the force from line-of-battle ships to hired armed vessels; and 624 were a flotilla completely equipped and ready for immediate service; besides 9 block-ships supplied by the Trinity-house, 19 ships furnished by the East India Company, and 373 lighters, and small craft, fitted in the King’s yards.  Of 100,000 seamen and marines voted by Parliament, 98,174 had been raised, besides 25,000 sea-fencibles; and this, although the volunteer force of the country was 450,000.  He strongly condemned the practice of building ships in merchants’ yards.  He alluded to the Ajax, which had been thus built.  She had cost 41,000_l_., and the bargain was thought a good one, yet in three years she required a further sum of 17,000_l._ to fit her for service.

Two parties in the House supported the motions; Admiral Berkeley, Mr. Wilberforce, and others, because they agreed with Mr. Pitt in condemning the measures of the Admiralty; Mr. Fox and his friends, because they considered that an inquiry would redound most highly to the credit of Earl St. Vincent.  They contended that ministers opposed it only to screen their notorious incapacity under the shelter of his great name.  On the other hand, Admiral Sir Charles Pole, Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Addington, Captain Markham, and others, supported Mr. Tierney, and confirmed all his statements.  Nothing, it was said, could afford a stronger proof how enormous were the abuses which Earl St. Vincent had corrected, than the argument of Mr. Pitt and his friends, that men-of-war could not be built in the King’s yards, although 3,200 men were employed in them; and it was known that forty-five shipwrights could build a seventy-four in a year.  Four hundred of the men discharged had been receiving six shillings a day for doing nothing.  Blockmakers’ and coopers’ work, for which 2,000_l._ had been paid, was proved upon a survey to be worth only 200_l._ As to the gun-boats alluded to, which were built by contract in the last war, they were so bad, that eighty-seven out of a hundred-and-twenty had been sold by public advertisement for almost nothing.  The men-of-war launched from private yards had been the ruin of the navy.  Three of them went to Portugal, and were found so defective that it was necessary to send them home, with a frigate for convoy.  The arrangements