"We have been, for these twenty years, under the guidance, I may truly say, of one man, of one single minister. We now, at last, find ourselves upon a dangerous precipice. Ought we not then immediately to inquire. whether we have been led upon this precipice by his ignorance or wickedness; and if by either, to take care not to trust to his guidance for our safety? This is an additional and a stronger argument for this inquiry than ever was urged for any former one, for if we do not inquire, we shall probably remain under his guidance; because, though he be removed from the Treasury Board, he is not removed from the King's Court, nor will he be, probably, unless it. be by our advice, or unless we lodge him in a place at the other end of the town, where he cannot so well injure his country. Sir, our distress at home evidently proceeds from want of economy, and from our having incurred many unnecessary expenses. Our distress and danger abroad are evidently owing to the misconduct of the war with Spain, and to the little confidence which our natural and ancient allies have reposed in our councils. This is so evident, that I should not think it necessary to enter into any particular explanation, if an honourable gentleman on the other side had not attempted to justify most of our late measures both abroad and at home. But as he has done so, though not, in my opinion, quite to the purpose of the present debate, I hope I shall be allowed to make some remarks upon what he has said on the subject; beginning, as he did, with the measures taken for punishing the South Sea Directors, and restoring public credit after the terrible shock it received in the year 1720.

"As those measures, Sir, were among the first exploits of our late, (I fear I must call him our present,) Prime Minister; and as the committee proposed, if agreed to, will probably consist of one and twenty members; I wish the motion had extended one year further back, that the number of years might have corresponded with the number of inquirers, and that it might have comprehended the first of those measures to which I have before alluded; as it now stands, it will not comprehend the methods taken for punishing the directors, nor the first regulation made for restoring public credit; and with regard to both, some practices might be discovered that would deserve a much severer punishment than any of those directors experienced. Considering the many frauds made use of by the directors. and their agents for luring people to their ruin, I am not a little surprised to hear it now said, that their punishment was considered too severe. Justice by the lump was an epithet given to it, not because it was thought too severe, but because it was an artifice to screen the most heinous offenders, who, if they did not deserve death, deserved, at least, to partake of that total ruin which they had brought upon many unthinking men. They very ill deserved, Sir, those allowances which were made them by parliament.

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Then, Sir, as to public credit, its speedy restoration was founded upon the conduct of the nation, and not upon the wisdom or justice of the

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measures adopted. Was it a wise method to remit to the South Sea Company the whole seven millions, or thereabouts, which they had solemnly engaged to pay to the public? It might as well be said, that a private man's giving away a great part of his estate to those who no way deserved it, would be a wise method of reviving or establishing his credit. If those seven millions had been distributed among the poor sort of annuitants, it would have been both generous and charitable; but to give it among the proprietors in general was neither generous nor just, because most of them deserved no favour from the public. As the proceedings of the directors were authorized by general courts, those who were then the proprietors were in some measure accessary to the frauds of the directors, and therefore deserved to be punished rather than rewarded, as they really were, because every one of them who continued to hold stock in that company received nearly fifty per cent., added to his capital, most part of which arose from the high price annuitants were, by act of Parliament, obliged to take stock at, and was therefore a most flagrant piece of injustice done to the annuitants. But we need not be at a loss for the true cause of this act of injustice, when we consider that a certain gentleman had a great many friends among the old stockholders, and few or none among the annuitants.

"Another act of injustice, which I believe we may ascribe to the same cause, relates to those who were engaged in heavy contracts for stock or subscription, many of whom groan under the load to this very day; for after we had, by act of Parliament, quite altered the nature, though not the name, of the stock they had bought, and made it much less valuable than it was when they engaged to pay a high price for it, it was an act of public injustice to leave them liable to be prosecuted at law for the whole money which they had engaged to pay. I am sure this was not the method to restore that private credit, upon which our trade and navigation so much depend. Had the same regulation been here adopted which was observed towards those who had borrowed money of the Company, or had a sort of uti possidetis been enacted, by declaring all such contracts void so far as related to any future payments, this would not have been unjust; on the contrary, such a regulation, Sir, was extremely necessary for quieting the minds of the people, for preventing their ruining one another at law, and for restoring credit between man and man. But there is reason to suppose that a certain gentleman had many friends among the sellers in those contracts, and very few among the buyers, which was the reason that the latter could obtain little or no relief or mercy, by any public law or regulation.

"Then, Sir, with regard to the extraordinary grants made to the civil list, the very reason given by the honourable gentleman for justifying those grants is a strong reason for an immediate inquiry. If considerable charges have arisen upon that revenue, let us see what they are; let us examine whether they were necessary. We have the more reason to do this, because the revenue settled upon his late Majesty's civil list was at least as great as

that which was settled upon King William or Queen Anne.* Besides there is a general rumour without doors, that the civil list is now greatly in arrear, which, if true, renders an inquiry absolutely necessary; for it is inconsistent with the honour and dignity of the Crown of these kingdoms to be in arrear to its tradesmen and servants; and it is the duty of this house to take care that the revenue which we have settled for supporting the honour and dignity of the Crown, shall not be squandered or misapplied. If former parliaments have failed in this respect, they must be censured, though they cannot be punished; but we ought now to atone for their neglect.

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I come now, in course, to the excise scheme, which the honourable gentleman says ought to be forgiven, because it was easily given up.† Sir, it was not easily given up. The promoter of that scheme did not easily give and it up; he gave it up with sorrow, with tears in his eyes, when he saw, not until he saw, it was impossible to carry it through the House. Did not his majority decrease upon every division? It was almost certain that if he had pushed it further, his majority would have turned against him. His sorrow showed his disappointment; and his disappointment showed that his He was, design was deeper than simply to prevent frauds in the customs.

No specific sum was settled upon William III. in respect of the civil list; but certain taxes, producing, on an average of years, about £680,000 per annum, were appropriated for that purpose. In the reign of Queen Anne, the civil list income amounted to about £700,000; and on the accession of George I. this sum was granted for the expenses of the civil government. In the last six years of the reign of George I., during the whole of which period Sir Robert Walpole was prime minister, grants amounting to the sum of £1,144,000 were made to the civil list, besides its being freed from the payment of an annual sum of £36,000, payable in respect of pensions and annuities. In the year 1727, the entire revenue of the civil list, which produced about £100,000 more than the sum granted to George I., was, upon the proposal of Sir Robert Walpole, settled upon George II. for life; and in the year 1729, an extraordinary grant of £115,000 was made to the civil list. Queen Anne, as stated by Mr. Pitt, appropriated £100,000 per annum for the expenses of the war.-Sinclair's Hist. of the Revenue, vol. ii. pp. 38, 50, 59. Coxe's Walpole, chap. xxxiii. Parl. Hist. vol. xii. p. 452.

+ The excise scheme of Sir Robert Walpole was a project introduced by him in the year 1733 for ultimately easing the landed interest of the whole land-tax, which had been reduced in the previous year to one shilling in the pound, by converting the duties on tobacco and wine, payable on importation, into inland duties, payable on taking them out of warehouses for home consumption; that is, changing the customs duties on those two commodities into excise duties. It was computed, that, in consequence of the check which the proposed change in the mode of collecting the duties on wine and tobacco would give to smuggling, the revenue would derive an increase which, with the continuance of the salt-tax, revived in the preceding year, would be amply sufficient to compensate for the total abolition of the land-tax. The political opponents of Sir Robert Walpole, by representing his proposition as a scheme for a general excise, succeeded in raising so violent a clamour against it, and in rendering it so highly unpopular, that, much against his own inclination, he was obliged to abandon it.-Coxe's Walpole, chaps. xl. xli. Parl. Hist. vol. viii. p. 1232. For an interesting account of the proceedings relative to the excise scheme, see Lord Hervey's Memoirs of the Court of George II. chaps. viii. and ix.

at that time, sensible of the influence of the excise-laws and excise-men with regard to elections, and of the great occasion he should have for that sort of influence at the approaching general election. His attempt, Sir, was most flagrant against the constitution; and he deserved the treatment he met with from the people. It has been said, that there were none but what gentlemen are pleased to call the mob concerned in burning him in effigy ; but, as the mob consists chiefly of children, journeymen, and servants, who speak the sentiments of their parents and masters, we may thence judge of the sentiments of the higher classes of the people.

"The honourable gentleman has said, these were all the measures of a domestic nature that could be found fault with, because none other have been mentioned in this debate. Sir, he has already heard one reason assigned why no other measures have been particularly mentioned and condemned in this debate. If it were necessary, many others might be mentioned and condemned. Is not the maintaining so numerous an army in time of peace to be condemned? Is not the fitting out so many expensive and useless squadrons to be condemned? Are not the encroachments made upon the sinking fund; † the reviving the salt duty; the rejecting many useful bills and motions in Parliament, and many other domestic measures, to be condemned? The weakness or the wickedness of these measures has often been demonstrated. Their ill consequences were at the respective times foretold, and those consequences are now become visible by our distress.

"Now, Sir, with regard to the foreign measures which the honourable gentleman has attempted to justify. The Treaty of Hanover‡ deserves to be

* See Lord Hervey's Memoirs of the Court of George II. vol. i. p. 203.

In the year 1717, the surplus of the public income over the public expenditure was converted into what was called The Sinking Fund, for the purpose of liquidating the national debt. During the whole reign of George I., this fund was invariably appropriated to the object for which it had been created; and rather than encroach upon it, money was borrowed upon new taxes, when the supplies in general might have been raised by dedicating the surplus of the old taxes to the current services of the year. The first direct encroachment upon the sinking fund took place in the year 1729, when the interest of a sum of £1,250,000, required for the current service of the year, was charged on that fund, instead of any new taxes being imposed upon the people to meet it. The second encroachment took place in the year 1731, when the income arising from certain duties which had been imposed in the reign of William III., for paying the interest due to the East India Company, and which were now no longer required for that purpose, in consequence of their interest being reduced, was made use of in order to raise a sum of £1,200,000, instead of throwing such income into the sinking fund, as ought properly to have been done. A third perversion of this fund took place in the year 1733, before the introduction of the excise scheme. In the previous year the land-tax had been reduced to one shilling in the pound; and, in order to maintain it at the same rate, the sum of £500,000 was taken from the sinking fund, and applied to the services of the year. In 1734 the sum of £1,200,000, the whole produce of the sinking fund, was taken from it; and in 1735 and 1736, it was anticipated and alienated. -Sinclair's Hist. of the Revenue, vol. i. p. 484, et seq. Coxe's Walpole, chap. xl.

The Treaty of Hanover, so called from having been signed at Hanover, was a

first mentioned, because from thence springs the danger to which Europe is now exposed; and it is impossible to assign a reason for our entering into that treaty, without supposing that we then resolved to be revenged on the Emperor for refusing to grant us some favour in Germany. It is in vain now to insist upon the secret engagements entered into by the Courts of Vienna and Madrid, as the cause of that treaty. * Time has fully shown that there never were any such engagements; and his late Majesty's speech from the throne cannot here be admitted as any evidence of the fact. Every one knows that in Parliament the King's speech is considered as the speech of the minister; and surely a minister is not to be allowed to bring his own speech as an evidence of a fact in his own justification. If it be pretended that his late Majesty had some sort of information that such engagements had been entered into, that very pretence furnishes an unanswerable argument for an inquiry; for, as the information now appears to have been groundless, we

defensive alliance, bearing date the 3rd of September, 1725, between England, France, and Prussia, to which the United Provinces, Sweden, and Denmark, afterwards acceded. Its real objects were the preservation of Gibraltar, the abolition of the Ostend Company, which was considered by England and Holland as contrary to the Treaty of Westphalia, and the frustration of the alleged plan for restoring the Pretender to the throne of Great Britain.-Coxe's Walpole, chap. xxviii.

An alliance consisting of three separate treaties was concluded at Vienna in 1725 between Austria and Spain. By the first, signed on the 30th of April, the two sovereigns confirmed the articles of the Quadruple Alliance; the Emperor renounced his pretensions to the Spanish throne, and Philip acknowledged the Emperor's right to Naples and Sicily, the Milanese, and the Netherlands, and guaranteed the Pragmatic Sanction, or the succession to the hereditary dominions of the house of Austria in the female line. The second and third treaties were signed on the 1st of May. The second, which was a treaty of commerce, opened the ports of Spain to the subjects of the Emperor, sanctioned the establishment of the Ostend Company, and granted to the Hanseatic towns the same privileges of trade as were enjoyed by the English and Dutch. The third was a treaty of mutual defence, the two sovereigns agreeing to support each other, should either be attacked. The large concessions which were made by these treaties to the Emperor, immediately raised a suspicion that there had been other and secret articles concluded in favour of Spain; and these articles were said to have been to the effect that the Emperor should give in marriage his daughters, the two arch-duchesses, to Don Carlos and Don Philip, the two infants of Spain; that he should assist the King of Spain in obtaining by force the restitution of Gibraltar, if good offices would not avail; and that the two Courts should adopt measures to place the Pretender on the throne of Great Britain. The fact of there having been a secret treaty was placed beyond doubt by the Austrian ambassador at the Court of London having shown the article relating to Gibraltar in that treaty, in order to clear the Emperor of having promised anything more than his good offices and mediation upon that head. (Coxe's History of the House of Austria, chap. xxxvii.) With reference to the stipulation for placing the Pretender on the throne of Great Britain, Mr. J. W. Croker, in a note to Lord Hervey's Memoirs of the Court of George II. vol. i. p. 78, says that its existence "is very probable;" but that it is observable that Lord Hervey, who revised his Memoirs some years after the 29th March, 1734, when Sir Robert Walpole asserted in the House of Commons that there was such a document, and who was so long in the full confidence of Walpole, speaks very doubtfully of it.