Elevated with such success, and encouraged by such prospects, we ought surely, my lords, to press forward in a path, where we have hitherto found no difficulties, and which leads directly to solid peace and happiness, which no dangers or terrours can hereafter interrupt:  we ought, instead of relaxing, to redouble our efforts; and to remember, that by exerting all our strength and all our influence for a short time, we shall not only secure ourselves and our posterity from insolence and oppression, but shall establish the tranquillity of the world, and promote the general felicity of the human species.

For these great purposes, my lords, are those auxiliaries retained, of which some lords now require the dismission; and those armies transported, which part of the nation is by false reports inclined to recall; but I hope that such unreasonable demands will not be gratified, and that the faith of treaties, the ties of friendship, the call of justice, and the expectations of our allies, will easily prevail upon your lordships to despise the murmurs of prejudice, and the outcries of faction.

Lord BATH replied to the following effect:—­My lords, as I am far from thinking, that my advice or opinion can be of any use in this illustrious assembly, I should have listened in silence to this debate, important as it is, had I not thought it my duty to defend here what I approved in the council; and considered it as an act of cowardice and meanness to fall passively down the stream of popularity, and to suffer my reason and my integrity to be overborne by the noise of vulgar clamours, which have been raised against the measures of the government by the low arts of exaggeration, fallacious reasonings, and partial representations.  It is not without concern, my lords, that even in this house I observe some inclination to gratify the prejudices of the people, and to confirm them in their contempt of the foreign troops, by the poor artifice of contemptuous language.  To dispute about words, is, indeed, seldom useful; and when questions so weighty as these are before us, may be justly censured as improper.  I shall, therefore, only observe that the term mercenaries, which is in the motion applied to the forces of Hanover, seems designed rather to affect the passions than influence the reason, and intended only to express a partiality which cannot be justified.

But it is far more necessary, my lords, to consider upon what motives the troops of Hanover were hired, than by what denomination they may most properly be called; and therefore I shall endeavour to explain the reasons which induced the ministry to retain them, and which, I suppose, have prevailed upon the commons to provide for their support.