crown had been more lavish and unscrupulous than at any former period in granting away its lands and estates to favorites.  And no one had been so largely enriched by its prodigality as the most grasping of William’s Dutch followers, Bentinck, the founder of the English house of Portland.  Among the estates which he had obtained from his royal master’s favor was one which went by the name of the Honor of Penrith.  Subsequent administrations had augmented the dignities and importance of his family.  Their Earldom had been exchanged for a Dukedom; but the existing Duke was an opponent of the present ministry, who, to punish him, suggested to Sir James Lowther, a baronet of ancient family, and of large property in the North of England, the idea of applying to the crown for a grant of the forest of Inglewood, and of the manor of Carlisle, which hitherto had been held by Portland as belonging to the Honor of Penrith, but which, not having been expressly mentioned in the original grant by William III., it was now said had been regarded as included in the honor only by mistake.  It was not denied that Portland had enjoyed the ownership of these lands for upward of seventy years without dispute; and, had the statute of James been one of continual operation, it would have been impossible to deprive him of them.  But, as matters stood, the Lords of the Treasury willingly listened to the application of Sir James Lowther; they even refused permission to the Duke to examine the original deed and the other documents in the office of the surveyor, on which he professed to rely for the establishment of his right; and they granted to Sir James the lands he prayed for at a rent which could only be regarded as nominal.  The injustice of the proceeding was so flagrant, that in the beginning of 1768 Sir George Savile brought in a bill to prevent any repetition of such an act by making the statute of James I. perpetual, so that for the future a possession for sixty years should confer an indisputable and indefeasible title.  The ministers opposed it with great vehemence, even taking some credit to themselves for their moderation in not requiring from the Duke a repayment of the proceeds of the lands in question for the seventy years during which he had held them.  But the case was so bad that they could only defeat Sir George Savile by a side-wind and a scanty majority, carrying an amendment to defer any decision of the matter till the next session.  Sir George, however, was not discouraged; he renewed his motion in 1769, when it was carried by a large majority, with an additional clause extending its operation to the Colonies in North America; and thus, in respect of its territorial rights, the crown was placed on the same footing as any private individual, and the same length of tenure which enabled a possessor to hold a property against another subject henceforth equally enabled him to hold it against the crown.  The policy not less than the justice of such an enactment might have been thought