Lord’s Amendment, as promising to afford some degree of preliminary information, which may tend to illustrate the more important matter in the Enquiry which I have now proposed to set on foot. [Sidenote: Mr. P[e]nt[o]n.] Mr. _P[e]nt[o]n_, in reply, begged pardon for troubling the house, but hoped they would indulge him in a few words, as he felt himself particularly called on to answer some reflections which the Honourable Gentleman, who had spoke last, had thought proper to throw out against that board where he had the honour to sit.—He said, that, at the time of the fitting out of Mr. K[e]pp[e]l’s fleet, he had made it his business to be very much at Portsmouth, where, though it was a task exceedingly repugnant to his private feelings and taste, he had, however, considered it as an official service incumbent on one in his department, to personally experiment the several provisions and stores prepared for that equipment. That, impelled by such motives, he had, on several occasions, drank the small beer, not unfrequently tasted the gin, and sometimes smoak’d, nay chewed the tobacco; that, in his humble opinion, they were all super-excellent in their several kinds. And, as to the imputed delinquency relative to potatoes, he could assure the house, he had bought up several tuns of the same species, for the consumption of his own family—nay, he would go further, he would venture to acquaint that house, that with some of those very identical potatoes, he had lately had the happiness and honour to regale a certain Great Personage, then his guest; a personage indeed of too high a rank to have his name even alluded to, though on so weighty, and so important a business. [Sidenote: Mr. B[urke].]