cion that this Minister has done so, we ought certainly to inquire into it, not only for the sake of punishing him if guilty, but as a terror to all future ministers.

"This, Sir, may therefore be justly reckoned among the many other sufficient causes for the inquiry proposed.-The suspicion that the civil list is greatly in debt is another; for if it is, it must either have been misapplied, or profusely thrown away, which abuse it is our duty both to prevent and to punish. It is inconsistent with the honour of this nation, that the King should stand indebted to his servants or tradesmen, who may be ruined by delay of payment. The Parliament has provided sufficiently to prevent this dishonour from being brought upon the nation, and, if the provision we have made should be lavished or misapplied, we must supply the deficiency; we ought to do it, whether the King makes any application for that purpose or not; and the reason is plain, because we ought first to inquire into the management of that revenue, and punish those who have occasioned the deficiency. They will certainly choose to leave the creditors of the Crown. and the honour of the nation in a state of suffering, rather than advise the King to make an application which may bring censure upon their conduct, and condign punishment upon themselves. Besides this, Sir, another and a stronger reason exists for promoting an inquiry. There is a strong suspicion that the public money has been applied towards corrupting voters at elections, and members when elected; and if the civil list be in debt, it affords reason to presume that some part of this revenue has, under the pretence of secret service money, been applied to this infamous purpose.

"I shall conclude, Sir, by making a few remarks upon the last argument advanced against the proposed inquiry. It has been said that the Minister delivered in his accounts annually; that these accounts were annually past and approved by Parliament; and that therefore it would be unjust to call him now to a general account, because the vouchers may be lost, or many expensive transactions have escaped his memory. It is true, Sir, estimates and accounts were annually delivered in. The forms of proceeding made that necessary, but were any of these estimates and accounts properly inquired into? Were not all questions of that description rejected by the Minister's friends in Parliament? Did not Parliament always take them upon trust, and pass them without examination? Can such a superficial passing, to call it no worse, be deemed a reason for not calling him to a new and general account? If the steward to an infant's estate should annually, for twenty years together, deliver in his accounts to the guardians; and the guardians, through negligence, or for a share of the plunder, should annually pass his accounts without examination, or at least without objection; would that be a reason for saying that it would be unjust in the infant, when he came of age, to call his steward to account? Especially if that steward had built and furnished sumptuous palaces, living, during the whole time, at a much greater expense than his visible income warranted, and yet

amassing great riches? The public, Sir, is always in a state of infancy; therefore no prescription can be pleaded against it-not even a general release, if there is the least cause for supposing that it was surreptitiously obtained. Public vouchers ought always to remain on record; nor ought any public expense to be incurred without a voucher-therefore the case of the public is still stronger than that of an infant. Thus, Sir, the honourable gentleman who made use of this objection must see how little it avails in the case before us; and therefore I trust we shall have his concurrence in the question."

Lord Limerick's motion was carried by a majority of seven, the numbers being 252 to 245; and a committee of secrecy, consisting of twenty-one members, was appointed and selected by ballot. Of these all except two had been the uniform opponents of Lord Orford. The committee having failed to obtain the evidence of corruption which they had expected, Lord Limerick, their chairman, introduced a bill to indemnify such persons as should make discoveries relating to the conduct of Lord Orford; but this measure was rejected by the House of Lords. The committee, nevertheless, made a report, in which they charged Lord Orford, first, with the exercise of undue influence at elections; secondly, with having granted fraudulent contracts; and thirdly, with peculation and profusion in the expenditure of the secret service money. No impeachment, however, was instituted against Lord Orford in respect of these charges. Indeed Tindal, who was a contemporary historian, says that the report was received by the public with contempt. In the following session an attempt was made to renew the inquiry into the public conduct of Lord Orford, but it was defeated by a majority of 253 to 186.*

DEBATE ON TAKING THE HANOVERIAN TROOPS INTO BRITISH PAY.

Upon the death of the Emperor Charles VI., on the 20th of October, 1740, without leaving male issue, his eldest daughter, Maria Theresa, succeeded to the inheritance of the Austrian dominions by virtue of the Pragmatic Sanction. She was possessed of a commanding figure, great beauty, animation, and sweetness of countenance, a pleasing tone of voice, and fascinating manners; and united to every feminine grace a strength of understanding, and an intrepidity above her sex. But she succeeded to the throne of Austria under circumstances of great difficulty. The army was in an inefficient state, the finances were embarrassed, and a scarcity, almost amounting to famine, pervaded many parts of her dominions. Immediately after her accession, the King of Prussia, taking advantage of her youth and inexperience, as well as of the embarrassments of her position, revived an

Coxe's Walpole, chaps. lxi. lxii.

VOL. I.

D

ancient claim to Silesia, and marched an army into that province. Alarmed at this unexpected aggression, Maria Theresa appealed to England for the aid which that country, as one of the guarantees of her succession, had bound itself by treaty to grant to her. After having in vain endeavoured to bring about an accommodation between Austria and Prussia, Great Britain, in the month of April, 1741, granted a subsidy of £300,000 to the Queen of Hungary. Besides the King of Prussia, other claimants on the Austrian succession soon started up. The Elector of Bavaria pretended to be the proper heir to the kingdom of Bohemia. Augustus II., Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, having married the eldest daughter of the Emperor Joseph I., elder brother of Charles VI., claimed the whole of the hereditary dominions of Austria. The King of Spain did the same; and the King of Sardinia made pretensions to the duchy of Milan. Aided by France, these various pretenders entered into a powerful confederacy for the partition amongst them of the Austrian territories. Bohemia and Upper Austria were allotted to the Elector of Bavaria; Moravia and Upper Silesia to the Elector of Saxony; Lower Silesia and the county of Glatz to the King of Prussia; Austrian Lombardy to Spain; and some territorial compensation was to be made to the King of Sardinia. But Maria Theresa was not of a spirit to be borne down even by such a storm as had now gathered around her, and threatened the disruption of the Austrian empire. At the commencement of her reign she had conciliated the affection of her Hungarian subjects, by taking the oath which had been abolished by Leopold, for the confirmation of their just rights, privileges, and ancient customs. She resolved, therefore, to appeal to their fidelity and generosity in her present exigency; and accordingly repaired to Presburgh. Having summoned the States of the Diet of Hungary, she entered the hall of the castle, where they were assembled, clad in deep mourning, and habited in the Hungarian dress, with the crown of St. Stephen on her head, and the scimetar at her side, both objects of high veneration among the natives. She traversed the apartment with a slow and majestic step, ascended the tribune from which the Sovereigns had been accustomed to harangue the States, and, after the Chancellor had detailed her distressed situation, she addressed them in Latin, a language in familiar use among the Hungarians, and in which they preserved the deliberations and the records of the kingdom. Impressed with the youth, the beauty, and the extreme distress of Maria Theresa, who was then pregnant, the deputies immediately responded to her appeal, and, drawing their swords from their scabbards, exclaimed, with a shout that resounded throughout the hall, "Our lives and our blood for your Majesty. We will die for our King Maria Theresa."* Overcome with this display of zealous enthusiasm and loyalty, the Queen, who had hitherto preserved a calm and dignified deportment, burst into tears, and the members of the State, roused

* In Hungary the Sovereign is always styled King, the female title of Queen being applied only to Queens Consort.

almost to frenzy by this proof of her sensibility, voted a liberal supply of men and money. The resolutions to which the Diet, animated by the presence of their Sovereign, had come, were supported by the nation at large. Croats, Pandours, and Sclavonians, crowded to the royal standard; and by their dress and arms, as well as by the ferocity of their manners and their singular mode of warfare, struck terror into the disciplined troops of France and Germany. Divisions now began to arise among the Queen's enemies; and the King of Prussia, jealous of the influence of France, was induced to enter into negotiations for peace with Maria Theresa. At length, on the 11th June, 1742, a treaty was signed at Breslau between Austria and Prussia, by which the Queen of Hungary ceded to the King of Prussia, in full sovereignty, all Upper and Lower Silesia, with the county of Glatz, except the towns of Troppau and Jagerndorf, and the high mountains beyond the Oppan. The Elector of Saxony also agreed by this treaty to withdraw his troops from the French army, and to acknowledge the Pragmatic Sanction.*

When Sir Robert Walpole retired from office, the martial spirit of George II. prompted him to give a more decided support to the cause of Maria Theresa than he had hitherto done by the mere grant of subsidies. With this view, therefore, sixteen thousand British troops were despatched in the month of April, 1742, to Flanders, and in the ensuing August, they were joined by sixteen thousand Hanoverians, and six thousand Hessians, who were taken into British pay. These measures for the assistance of the Queen of Hungary were by no means approved of by the people of England; and the complaint which had been so frequently raised since the accession of the House of Hanover, of the interests of this country being made subservient to, and, indeed, sacrificed to, those of that electorate, was now heard.

On the 10th of December, 1742, a motion being made in the House of Commons by Sir William Yonge, t "that the sum of £265,191 6s. 51d. be granted to his Majesty for defraying the charge of 5,513 horse and 10,755 foot of the troops of Hanover, together with the general officers and the train of artillery in the pay of Great Britain, from the 31st of August to the 25th of December, 1742, both inclusive," a long debate .ensued, in which many able speakers took part. Sir J. S. Aubin and Lord Quarendon opposed the motion; Mr. Bladen and Mr. Henry Fox supported it. The latter gentleman having at the conclusion of his speech observed that "he should vote for the continuance of these measures till better should be proposed, and should think that those troops ought to be retained, unless it could be shown that others might be had who might be less dangerous or of greater use," Mr. Pitt answered him thus :—

66

Sir, if the honourable gentleman determines to abandon his present sentiments as soon as any better measures are proposed, the Ministry will

quickly be deprived of one of their ablest defenders; for I consider the measures hitherto pursued so weak and so pernicious, that scarcely any alteration can be proposed that will not be for the advantage of the nation.

"The honourable gentleman has already been informed that no necessity existed for hiring auxiliary troops. It does not appear that either justice or policy required us to engage in the quarrels of the continent; that there was any need of forming an army in the Low Countries; or that, in order to form an army, auxiliaries were necessary.

"But, not to dwell upon disputable points, I think it may justly be concluded that the measures of our Ministry have been ill concerted, because it is undoubtedly wrong to squander the public money without effect, and to pay armies, only to be a show to our friends and a scorn to our enemies.

"The troops of Hanover, whom we are now expected to pay, marched into the Low Countries, Sir, where they still remain. They marched to the place most distant from the enemy, least in danger of an attack, and most strongly fortified, had an attack been designed. They have, therefore, no other claim to be paid, than that they left their own country for a place of greater security. It is always reasonable to judge of the future by the past; and therefore it is probable that next year the services of these troops will not be of equal importance with those for which they are now to be paid. I shall not, therefore, be surprised, if, after such another glorious campaign, the opponents of the Ministry be challenged to propose better men, and be told that the money of this nation cannot be more properly employed than in hiring Hanoverians to eat and sleep.

"But to prove yet more particularly that better measures may be takenthat more useful troops may be retained—and that, therefore, the honourable gentleman may be expected to quit those to whom he now adheres; I shall show that, in hiring the forces of Hanover, we have obstructed our own designs; that, instead of assisting the Queen of Hungary, we have withdrawn from her a part of the allies, and have burthened the nation with troops from which no service can reasonably be expected.

"The advocates of the Ministry have, on this occasion, affected to speak of the balance of power, the Pragmatic Sanction, and the preservation of the Queen of Hungary, not only as if they were to be the chief care of Great Britain, which (although easily controvertible) might, in compliance with long prejudices, be possibly admitted; but as if they were to be the care of Great Britain alone. These advocates, Sir, have spoken as if the power of France were formidable to no other people than ourselves; as if no other part of the world would be injured by becoming a prey to an universal monarchy, and subject to the arbitrary government of a French deputy; by being drained of its inhabitants only to extend the conquests of its masters, and to make other nations equally wretched; and by being oppressed with exorbitant taxes, levied by military executions, and employed only in supporting the state of its oppressors. They dwell upon the importance of public faith, and the necessity of an exact observation of treaties, as if the