Mr. Pulteney spoke as follows:—­Sir, I know not by what fatality it is, that all the motions made by one party are reasonable and necessary, and all that are unhappily offered by the other, are discovered either to be needless, or of pernicious tendency.  Whenever a question can be clouded and perplexed, the opponents of the ministry are always mistaken, confuted, and, in consequence of the confutations, defeated by the majority of votes.  When truth is too notorious to be denied, and too obvious to be contested, the administration claim the honour of the first discovery, and will never own that they were incited to their duty by the remonstrances of their opponents, though they never, before those remonstrances, had discovered the least intention of performing it.

But that the motion is allowed to be just and proper, is sufficient; the importance of it will be easily discovered.  For my part I shall always consider that motion as important, which tends to contract the expenses of the publick, to rescue merit from neglect, and to hinder the increase of the dependents on the ministry.

Sir Robert Walpole answered:—­Sir, there is no temper more opposite to that incessant attention to the welfare of the publick, which is the perpetual boast of those who have signalized themselves by opposing the measures of the administration, than a lust of contradiction, and a disposition to disturb this assembly with superfluous debates.

Whether this disposition is not discovered in the reply made to the declaration of his majesty’s intentions, and the confession of the propriety of the motion, let the house determine.  It must surely be confessed, that it is not necessary to advise what is already determined.

Nor is it less evident, that many of the officers whose interest is now so warmly solicited, must be incapacitated by their age for service, and unable to receive any benefit from the offer of new commissions.  To deny this, is to question the flux of time, or to imagine that the constitution of a soldier is exempt from its injuries.

Mr. Sandys explained himself to this effect:—­Sir, I am far from intending by this motion to fill the army with decrepit officers, or to obstruct in any manner the service of the publick; nor have I any other intention, than to secure to those whose years permit, and whose inclinations incite them to enter once more into the army, that preferment to which they have a claim, not only from their past services, but from the state of penury and obscurity in which they have languished.

I desire to preserve those, whose valour has heretofore made our nation the terrour of the world, from the mortification of seeing themselves insulted by childhood, and commanded by ignorance; by ignorance exalted to authority by the countenance of some rhetorician of the senate, or some mayor of a borough.