Earl
Spencer Was First Lord Of The Admiralty - In Pitt's Administration (1783
To 1801) - When The Application Was Made.
The Quarterly Review of August 1810 (volume 4 page 42) fell into a
singular error in blaming Addington's administration for the issue of the
passports.
Pitt's ministry did not fall till March 1801; and the censure
which the reviewer levelled at the "good-natured minister," Earl St.
Vincent, who was Addington's First Lord of the Admiralty, for
entertaining the French application, was therefore undeserved by him. "A
few months after the retirement of Mr. Pitt from office and the
succession of Mr. Addington, that is to say, in June 1800," are the
opening words of the Quarterly article - an extraordinary blunder for a
contemporary to make. The Quarterly was, of course, bitterly adverse to
Addington's administration, in politics; but though party bias is
responsible for strange behaviour, we shall be safe in attributing to
lapse of memory this censure of a minister for the act of his
predecessor. St. Vincent was in active service, as Admiral in command of
the Channel Fleet, when the passports were issued.
It cannot be assumed that Spencer would have complied with such a request
from a nation with which his country was at war, had he not been
satisfied that the expedition was what it professed to be, one for
discovery and scientific research. The passports granted guaranteed to Le
Geographe and Le Naturaliste protection from hostile attack from British
ships, and bespoke for them a favourable reception in any British port
out of Europe where they might have to seek shelter.
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