Absolute monarchs have, therefore, this advantage over us, that they can be sooner prepared for war, and to this must be ascribed all the success which the Spaniards have obtained.  This, my lords, will not be obviated by the bill now before us, nor will it, indeed, procure any other benefit to the trade, or any addition to the power of the nation.

Of the ten clauses comprised in the bill, the greatest part is universally allowed to be injudiciously and erroneously proposed; and those few, which were thought of more importance, have been shown to contain no new expedients, nor to add any thing to the present regulations.

I cannot, therefore, discover any reason, my lords, that should induce us to refer to a committee this bill, of which part is confessedly to be rejected, and the rest is apparently superfluous.

[Then the question being put, whether the bill should be referred to a committee; it passed in the negative.  Content, 25.  Not content, 59.

On the rejection of this bill by the lords, a bill which related to an affair of no less importance than the security of trade and navigation, and which had been unanimously passed by the commons, it was satirically remarked, that the upper house understood trade and navigation better than the lower.  However, the circumstances that attended it, made the publication of the bill, with the amendments and the reasons offered by the lords on both sides, expected with the more impatience.]

HOUSE OF LORDS, NOVEMBER 16, 1742.

Parliament having met, according to the royal summons, on this day, his majesty made a speech from the throne, which being afterwards read by the president, lord TWEEDALE rose, and spoke as follows: 

My lords, it is not without the highest satisfaction, that every lover of mankind must look upon the alterations that have lately been produced in the state of Europe; nor can any Briton forbear to express an immediate and particular pleasure to observe his country rising again into its former dignity, to see his own nation shake off dependence, and rouse from inactivity, cover the ocean with her fleets, and awe the continent with her armies; bid, once more, defiance to the rapacious invaders of neighbouring kingdoms, and the daring projectors of universal dominion; once more exert her influence in foreign courts, and summon the monarchs of the west to another confederacy against the power of France.

The queen of Hungary, who was lately obliged to retire at the approach of her enemies, to leave her capital in danger of a siege, and seek shelter in the remotest corner of her dominions, who was lately so harassed with invasions, and so encircled with dangers, that she could scarcely fly from one ravager, without the hazard of falling into the hands of another, is now able to give laws to her persecutors, to return the violence which she has suffered, and instead of imploring mercy from those who had no regard but to their own interest, and were determined to annihilate her family and divide her dominions, now sits in full security on her throne, directs the march of distant armies, and dictates the terms on which those who have entered her dominions shall be suffered to escape.