The first consideration that claims our attention is the reverence due to the senate, to the great council of the nation, which ought always to be consulted when any important design is formed, or any new measures adopted; especially if they are such as cannot be defeated by being made publick, and such as an uncommon degree of expense is necessary to support.

These principles, my lords, which I suppose no man will contest, have been so little regarded by the ministry on the present occasion, that they seem to have endeavoured to discover, by a bold experiment, to what degree of servility senates may be reduced, and what insults they will be taught to bear without resentment; for they have, without the least previous hint of their design, made a contract for a very numerous body of mercenaries, nor did they condescend to inform the senate, till they asked for money to pay them.

To execute measures first, and then to require the approbation of the senate, instead of advice, is surely such a degree of contempt as has not often been shown in the most arbitrary reigns, and such as would once have provoked such indignation in the other house, that there would have been no need in this of a motion like the present.

But, my lords, in proportion as the other house seems inclined to pay an implicit submission to the dictates of the ministry, it is our duty to increase our vigilance, and to convince our fellow-subjects, by a steady opposition to all encroachments, that we are not, as we have been sometimes styled, an useless assembly, but the last resort of liberty, and the chief support of the constitution.

The present design of those, who have thus dared to trample upon our privileges, appears to be nothing less than that of reducing the senates of Britain to the same abject slavery with those of France; to show the people that we are to be considered only as their agents, to raise the supplies which they shall be pleased, under whatever pretences, to demand, and to register such determinations as they shall condescend to lay before us.

This invasion of our rights, my lords, is too flagrant to be borne, though were the measures which we are thus tyrannically, required to support, really conducive in themselves to the interest of Britain, which, indeed, might reasonably have been expected; for what head can be imagined so ill formed for politicks as not to know, that the first acts of arbitrary power ought to be in themselves popular, that the advantage of the effect may be a balance to the means by which it is produced.

But these wonderful politicians, my lords, have heaped one blunder upon another; they have disgusted the nation both by the means and the end; and have insulted the senate with no other view than that of plundering the people.  They have ventured, without the consent of the senate, to pursue measures, of which it is obvious that they were only kept secret because they easily foresaw that they would not be approved.