(although it was foreseen and pointed out | France, with regard to the designs she was by the king to both Houses of Parliament then pursuing; but may, in its future conat the close of the last session, and is ex-sequences, probably tend to draw the arms pressly referred to in his majesty's speech of that crown into those parts, where they at the opening of this) seems to us highly can act with the greatest advantage, and derogatory to the rights, honour and dig- engage this nation as principals in a land nity of the great council of the nation, and war, the expence and danger of which are a very dangerous precedent to future much more certain and evident, than the times. support we shall find in it from other powers, or the means we shall have of carrying it on. 3. "Because the restoring the balance of power in Europe, by raising the House of Austria to its former condition of influence, dominion and strength, is an object quite unattainable by the arms of Great Britain alone: and for the attaining of which, no other power has joined, or is likely to join with us in any offensive engagements, either against the emperor, or against France. 4. "Because such assistance to the queen of Hungary, as the situation of her affairs, and that of all Europe, as well as the particular interest and policy of this island require, would have been more properly given in money, with much less expence and danger to us, with much more effect and advantage to our ally. The 38,000 men, now said to be paid for her service, costs this nation 1,400,000l. one half of which sum would have enabled her to maintain a greater number of men capable of acting wherever her affairs might require; so that above 700,000l., seems to be wantonly lavished away upon this occasion, besides the lives of many of the subjects of Great Britain. 5. "Because we apprehend, that the troops of the elector of Hanover cannot be employed to act in Germany against the head of the empire, whose title and cause have been avowed by the whole body, in granting him an aid of fifty Roman months for his support in this very war, without incurring the risk of such consequences upon any ill success, as neither consists with the safety of Hanover, nor with the prudence of England; in which apprehension we are strongly confirmed by those troops not having acted in opposition to marshal Maillebois, at a juncture of time when such an assistance, given to the queen of Hungary, might have been decisive; and for losing which opportunity, no other natural or probable reason appears. 6. "Because the assembling an army in Flanders, not then attacked by the French, nor, as it appears to us, in any danger of being attacked, could be of no use to the power we designed to assist, nor give any hindrance or terror to of 7. "Because we observe with the utmost concern, that while Great Britain is exhausting itself, almost to ruin, in pursuance of schemes pretended to be founded on our engagements to the queen Hungary, the electorate of Hanover, though under the same engagements, as well as under the same prince, does not appear to contribute any thing as an ally to her assistance, but is paid by Great Britain for all the forces it has now in the field; and the bargain made for those forces, is much more disadvantageous to us, than what we concluded with that electorate in the year 1702. For, in the convention, then signed, there is no stipulation, either for levy money, or for recruit money, with both which we are charged in the present demand, besides other extraordinary articles; and we conceive, that the article of levy money, amounting alone to no less a sum than 139,3137. is a more particular hardship upon us, because it is known to all the world, that the 16,000 men were not levied at the request, nor for the service of England; but that the only addition made to the usual establishment of the electoral forces in time of peace, was 6,000 men raised some time before, upon the death of the late emperor, and for the service of his majesty's German dominions; nor can we help observing, that when we contracted for Hanover troops in June, 1702, their pay did not commence until the beginning of that very month in which some had already taken the field, and the rest were actually upon their march; so that the contract being only to the first of January following, England received the benefit of the service of those troops during a whole campaign, for the pay of seven months only; whereas, by now taking those troops into pay, on the 31st of August 1742 (that is a month before they began their march into Flanders) until the 26th of December, 1748, we shall give them sixteen months pay for the service of one campaign only, if they should ever make a campaign at all; so that Hanover not only receives the great and immediate profit of this advantageous bargain, but is also exonerated of above half the number of forces, which it used to maintain in times of the most profound tranquillity. 66 8. Because the making so unnecessary a bargain, in so very unthrifty a manner, when this nation is groaning under so heavy a load of debts and taxes, engaged in a maritime war, at a mighty expence, and with doubtful success, maintaining a great national army abroad; and at the same time burdened at home with 23,000 nen (the use of which we cannot discover) over and above 11,550 marines, excites in our minds the most alarming and melancholy apprehensions of the dissatisfaction and jealousy that may arise in the breasts of his majesty's most faithful subjects, if ever the servile ambition of any minister should attempt to gain, and to taint the royal ear, by a mistaken adulation to an imagined partiality (which we are persuaded does not, and cannot exist) in the behalf of an interest, foreign to that of this kingdom, were it ever to be suspected from any such new and surprising appearances, that this nation could be engaged in the most expensive, chimerical and dangerous scheme, entered into without the advice or approbation of parliament; that its treasure could be exhausted, its honour exposed, and its safety risked, for no other end than to advance that foreign interest, and make such a compliance the price of favour and power: we are convinced it would be attended with more alienation of the hearts of the people from his majesty's person and family, than almost any other mismanagement could ever produce. We therefore think it the highest duty we owe to our king and country, to enter our timely protest against the approach of so fatal a mischief, to deprecate the pernicious effects of it in the most solemn manner we can, and to express our earnest desire, that this motion had been complied with, in order to stop an evil in its beginnings, by the prudent and salutary intervention of one House of Parliament, which by the encreasing corruption of ministers, may be extended so far, as either to throw this nation into the greatest disorder, or reduce it to a state of the meanest dependency.(Signed) Chesterfield, Rockingham, Westmoreland, Beaufort, Shaftsbury, St. John, Montjoy, Bedford, Stanhope, Bridge water, Sandwich, Aylesbury, Haversham, Hereford, Talbot, Coventry, Oxford and Mortimer, Northampton, Aylesford, Litchfield, Denbigh, Craven, Abingdon, Foley." The Motion for discharging the Hanoverian troops being thus rejected, The Earl of Scarborough rose and said: My lords; it has been justly observed in the debate of this day, that the opinions of the people of Great Britain are regulated in a great measure by the determinations of this House; that they consider this as the place where truth and reason obtain a candid audience, as a place sacred to justice and to honour, into which passion, partiality and faction have been very rarely known to intrude; and that they therefore watch our decisions as the great rules of policy and standing maxims of right, and readily believe those measures necessary in which we concur, and that conduct unblamable which has gained our approbation. This reputation, my lords, we ought diligently to preserve by an unwearied vigilance for the happiness of our fellowsubjects; and while we possess it, we ought likewise to employ its influence to beneficial purposes, that the cause and the effect may reciprocally produce each other, that the people, when the prosperity which they enjoy by our care inclines them to repose in us an implicit confidence, may find that confidence a new source of felicity; that they may reverence us, because they are secure and happy, and be secure and happy, because they reverence us. This great end, my lords, it will not be very difficult to attain; the foundation of this exalted authority may easily be laid, and the superstructure raised in a short time; the one may be laid too deep to be undermined, and the other built too firmly to be shaken; at least they can be impaired only by ourselves, and may set all external violence at defiance. To preserve the confidence of the people, and consequently to govern them without force, and without opposition, it is only necessary that we never willingly deceive them, that we expose the public affairs to their view, so far as they ought to be made public, in their true state, that we never suffer false reports to circulate under the sanction of our authority, nor give the nation reason to think we are satisfied, when we are in reality suspicious of illegal designs, or that we suspect those measures of latent mischiefs with which we are in reality completely satisfied. But it is not sufficient, my lords, that we publish ourselves no fallacious representations of our counsels; it is necessary likewise, that we do not permit them to be published, that we do obviate every falshood in its rise, and propagate truth with our utmost diligence: for if we suffer the nation to be deceived, we are not much less criminal than those who deceive it; at least we must be confessed no longer to act as the guardians of the public happiness, if we suffer it to be interrupted by the dispersing of reports which we know to be at once false and pernicious. Of these principles, which I suppose will not be contested, an easy application may be made to the business of the present day. A question has been debated with great address, great ardour, and great obstinacy, which is in itself, though not doubtful, yet very much diffused, complicated with a great number of circumstances, and extended to a multitude of relations; and is therefore a subject upon which sophistry may very safely practise her arts, and which may be shown in very different views to those, whose intellectual light is too much contracted to receive the whole object at once. It may easily be asserted by those who have long been accustomed to affirm without scruple whatever they desire to obtain belief, that the arguments in favour of the motion, which has now been rejected by your lordships, were unanswerable; and it will be no hard task to lay before their audience such reasons as, though they have been easily confuted by the penetration and experience of your lordships, may, to men unacquainted with politics and remote from the sources of Intelligence; appear very formidable, lords, an affair in which the interest of all the western world is engaged, it is necessary to take away all suspicions, when the nation is about to be involved in a war for the security of ourselves and our posterity; in a war which, however prosperous, must be at least expensive, and which is to be carried on against an enemy who, though not invincible, is in a very high degree powerful. It is surely proper to shew in the most public manner our conviction, that neither prudence nor frugality has been wanting, that the inconveniences which will be always felt in such contentions, are not brought upon us by wantonness or negligence, and that no care is omitted by which they are alleviated, and that they may be borne more patiently, because they cannot be avoided." This attestation, my lords, we can only give by a solemn address to his majesty of a tendency contrary to that of the motion now rejected; and by such an attestation only can we hope to revive the courage of the nation, to unite those in the common cause of liberty whom false reports have alienated or shaken, and to restore to his majesty that confidence, which all the subtilties of faction have been employed to impair. I therefore move, "That in the unsettled and dangerous situation of affairs in Europe, the sending a considerable body of British forces into the Austrian Netherlands, and augmenting the same with 16,000 of his majesty's electoral troops, and the Hessians in the British pay, and thereby in conjunction with the queen of Hungary's troops in the Low Countries, forming a great army for the service of the common cause, was a wise, useful, and necessary measure, manifestly tending to the support and encouragement of his majesty's allies, and the real and effectual assistance of the queen of Hungary, and the restoring and maintaining the balance of power, and has already produced very advantageous conse The Earl of Oxford: It is therefore not sufficient, that your lordships have rejected the former motion, and shewn, that you do not absolutely dis-quences." approve the measures of the government, since it may be asserted, and with some appearance of reason, that barely not to admit a motion by which all measures of the last year would have been at once overturned and annihilated, is no proof that they have been fully justified and warmly confirmed, since many of the transactions might have been at least doubtful, and yet this motion not have been proper. In an affair of so great importance, my [VOL. XII. ] My lords; the necessity of supporting our reputation and of preserving the confidence of the public, I am by no means inclined to dispute, being convinced, that from the instant in which we shall lose the credit, which our ancestors have delivered down to us, we shall be no longer considered as a part of the legislature, but be treated by the people only as an assembly of hirelings and dependents, con[4 G] vened at the pleasure of the court to ratify its decisions without examination, to extort taxes, promote slavery, and to share with the ministry the crime and the infamy of oppression. For this reason it is undoubtedly proper, that we avoid not only the crime, but the appearance of dependence, and that every doubtful question should be freely debated, and every pernicious position publicly condemned; and, that when our decisions are pot agreeable to the opinion or expectations of the people, we should at least shew them, that they are not the effects of blind compliance with the demands of the ministry, or of an implicit resignation to the direction of a party. We ought to shew, that we are unprejudiced and ready to hear truth, that our determinations are not dictated by any foreign influence, and that it will not be vain to inform us, or useless to petition us. In these principles I agree with the noble lord who has made the motion; but in the consequences which are on this occasion to be drawn from them, I cannot but differ very widely from him; for, in my opinion, nothing can so much impair our reputation as an address like that which is proposed; an address not founded either upon facts or arguments, and from which the nation can collect only, that the protection of this House is withdrawn from them, and that they are to perish as a sacrifice to the interest of Hanover. continue her labours, and all the lower ranks of mankind are overwhelmed with the general calamity. There may perhaps be some among your lordships, who may think this representation of the state of the public exaggerated beyond the truth. There are many in this House who see no other scenes than the magnificence of feasts, the gaieties of balls, and the splendour of a court; and it is not much to be wondered at, if they do not easily believe, what it is often their interest to doubt, that this luxury is supported by the distress of millions, and that this magnificence exposes multitudes to nakedness and famine. It is my custom, when the business of the parliament is over, to retire to my estate in the country, where I live without noise, and without riot, and take a calm and deliberate survey of the condition of those that inhabit the towns and villages about me. I mingle in their conversation, and hear their complaints; I enter their houses, and find by their condition, that their com plaints are just; I discover, that they are daily impoverished, and that they are not able to struggle under the enormous burthens of public payments, of which I am convinced, that they cannot be levied another year without exhausting the people, and spreading universal beggary over the nation. from which nothing but insurrections and bloodshed can release them? If they retain any hopes of relief from this House, they must soon be extinguished, when they find in the next clause, that we are sunk to such a degree of servility as to acknowledge benefits which were never received, and to praise the invisible service of our army in Flanders. What can be the opinion of the public, when they see an address of this House, Let us consider what we are now in- by which new expences are recommended? vited to assert; and it will easily appear, Will they not think that their state is deshow well this motion is calculated to pre-perate, and that they are sold to slavery. serve and to advance the reputation of this House. We are to assert, my lords, the propriety of a new war against the most Formidable power of the universe, at a time, when we have been defeated and disgraced in our contests with a kingdom of inferior force. We are to declare our readiness to pay and raise new taxes, since no war can be carried on without them, at a time when our commerce, the great source of riches, is obstructed; when the interest of debts contracted during a long war, and a peace almost equally expensive, is preying upon our estates; when the profits of the trade of future ages, and the rents of the inheritances of our latest descendants, are mortgaged, and what ought yet more to affect us, at a time when the out-cry of distress is universal, when the miseries of hopeless poverty have quak the nation into despair, when industry scarcely retains spirit sufficient to If it be necessary, my lords, to impose upon the public, let us at least endeavour to do it less grossly; let us not attempt to persuade them, that those forces have gained victories, who have never seen an enemy, or that we are benefited by the transportation of our money into another country. If it be necessary to censure those noble lords who have supported the former motion, and to punish them for daring to use arguments which could not be confuted; (for this is the apparent tendency of the present motion,) let us not lose all consideration of ourselves, nor sacrifice the honour of the House to the resentment of the ministry. For my part, my lords, I shall continue to avow my opinion in defiance of cenBures, motions, and addresses; and as I struggled against the former ministry, not because I envied or hated them, but because I disapproved their conduct, I shall continue to oppose measures equally destructive with equal zeal, by whomsoever they are projected, or by whomsoever pa tronised. The Earl of Chesterfield: My lords; after so full a defence of the former motion as the late debate has produced, it is rather with indignation than surprise, that I hear that which is now offered. It has been for a long time the practice of those, who are supported only by their numbers, to treat their opponents with contempt, and when they cannot answer to insult them; and motions have been made, not because they were thought right by those who offered them, but because they would certainly be carried, and would by being carried mortify their opponents. This, my lords, is the only intent of the present motion, which can promote no useful purpose, and which, though it may flatter the court, must be considered by the people as an insult; and therefore, though I believe all opposition fruitless, 1 declare that I never will agree to it. And to shew, my lords, that I do not oppose the ministry for the sake of obstructing the public counsels, or of irritating those, whom I despair to defeat, and that I am not afraid of trusting my conduct to the impartial examination of posterity, I shall beg leave to enter, with my protest, the reasons which have influenced me in this day's deliberation, that they be considered when this question shall no longer be a point of interest, and our present jealousies and animosities are forgotten. The question being then put upon lord Scarborough's motion, the same was agreed to. Ayes 78, Noes 35. Charitable Corporation Petition.*] From the Secker Manuscript. nuary 21. The order of the day being read, for taking into consideration the Petition of the Charitable Corporation for relief of industrious poor, by assisting them with small sums, upon pledges, at legal interest, for leave to bring in a Bill, to appoint commissioners, to make the in might be appointed by parliament to state the accounts which the Chancellor had decreed. Lord Carteret objected, that one party or other might, for ought we knew, within 5 years appeal from the decree, and in the mean time we could not interpose. Lord Warwick said, we had only the assertions of the petitioners before us, and that commissioners might be as slow as Masters in Chancery, and it was going out of the road. The duke of Bedford answered, that appointing commissioners would not hinder an appeal, and if there was one they must stand still till it was heard, just as the Masters must, and if there was none, the matthe common way: that in private causes the ter would go on quicker in their hands than in length of time before the Masters is a great hardship, and in this cause there could be no end: that it was desired the commissioners should be Masters, but confined to a short time: that there were 5 persons appointed by parliament to settle the accounts of this Corporation before, and no more is desired now: that in things of consequence new precedents may be made, and one use of the parliament is to make them : that unfair delays have been used as much as possible, and kept the cause eight years depending. That where numerous parties are concerned, each side should appoint a representative to avoid delays: that in the committee, information might be received as to the methods of settling this affair, and he hoped the Chancellor would now speak to it and direct the House. This last he pressed very much; but the Chancellor did not speak, but got lord Cholmondeley to oppose the motion, who said nothing material: It was then rejected without a division. They say the Chancellor may appoint two Masters to sit de die in diem. Some days after this, Mr. Grove, one of the managers for the Proprietors, told me, that he and the rest were well pleased with the rejection of the Petition, which they had presented only to shew the other proprietors, that they would go as far as they could, but that they had now spent the S0,000l., which was the remainder of the stock of the Corporation, and there would be nothing to be got were the account to be taken ever so soon, the persons of whom the demand was first to be made, being dead or beyond Ja- seas, or insolvent, and sir R. Sutton having sworn himself not to be worth 300, a year. He says the directors lost 200,000/. in East India stock, and that 43,000l. was given, it ing a charter, and that sir R. Sutton had doth not appear to whom, to facilitate obtain27,000, of it, Jan. 21. Petition of the Charitable Corporation. |