Mr. WALPOLE then spoke, to the following purpose:—­Sir, it is not without reason that the honourable gentleman desires to be informed of the stipulations contained in the treaty by which we have engaged to support the Pragmatick sanction; for I find that he either never knew them or has forgotten them; and, therefore, those reasonings which he has formed upon them fall to the ground.

We are obliged, sir, by this treaty, to supply the house of Austria with twelve thousand men, and the Dutch, who were engaged in it by our example, have promised a supply of five thousand.  This force, joined to those armies which the large dominions of that family enable them to raise, were conceived sufficient to repel any enemy by whom their rights should be invaded.

But because in affairs of such importance nothing is to be left to hazard, because the preservation of the equipoise of power, on which the liberties of almost all mankind, who can call themselves free, must be acknowledged to depend, ought to be rather certain, than barely probable; it is stipulated farther, both by the French and ourselves, that if the supplies, specified in the first article, shall appear insufficient, we shall unite our whole force in the defence of our ally, and struggle, once more, for independence, with ardour proportioned to the importance of our cause.

By these stipulations, sir, no engagements have been formed that can be imagined to have been prohibited by the act of settlement, by which it is provided, that the house of Hanover shall not plunge this nation into a war, for the sake of their foreign dominions, without the consent of the senate; for this war is by no means entered upon for the particular security of Hanover, but for the general advantage of Europe, to repress the ambition of the French, and to preserve ourselves and our posterity from the most abject dependence upon a nation exasperated against us by long opposition, and hereditary hatred.

Nor is the act of settlement only preserved unviolated by the reasons of the present alliance, but by the regular concurrence of the senate which his majesty has desired, notwithstanding his indubitable right of making peace and war by his own authority.  I cannot, therefore, imagine upon what pretence it can be urged, that the law, which requires that no war shall be made on account of the Hanoverian dominions without the consent of the senate, is violated, when it is evident that the war is made upon other motives, and the concurrence of the senate is solemnly desired.

But such is the malevolence with which the conduct of the administration is examined, that no degree of integrity or vigilance can secure it from censure.  When, in the present question, truth and reason are evidently on their side, past transactions are recalled to memory, and those measures are treated with the utmost degree of contempt and ridicule, of which the greatest part of the audience have probably forgotten the reasons, and of which the authors of them do not always stand up in the defence, because they are weary of repeating arguments to those who listen with a resolution never to be convinced.