In the House of Commons there are undoubtedly powerful people who may be supposed to be influenced by patronage; but the higher and more powerful part of the country is more directly represented by your Lordships than by us, although we have of the first blood of England in the House of Commons.  We do, indeed, represent, by the knights of the shires, the landed interest; by our city and borough members we represent the trading interest; we represent the whole people of England collectively.  But neither blood nor power is represented so fully in the House of Commons as that order which composes the great body of the people,—­the protection of which is our peculiar duty, and to which it is our glory to adhere.  But the dignities of the country, the great and powerful, are represented eminently by your Lordships.  As we, therefore, would keep the lowest of the people from the contagion and dishonor of peculation and corruption, and above all from exercising that vice which, among commoners, is unnatural as well as abominable, the vice of tyranny and oppression, so we trust that your Lordships will clear yourselves and the higher and more powerful ranks from giving the smallest countenance to the system which we have done our duty in denouncing and bringing before you.

My Lords, you have heard the account of the civil service.  Think of their numbers, think of their influence, and the enormous amount of their salaries, pensions, and emoluments!  They were, you have heard, an intolerable burden on the revenues and authority of the Vizier; and they exposed us to the envy and resentment of the whole country, by excluding the native servants and adherents of the prince from the just reward of their services and attachments.  Here, my Lords, is the whole civil service brought before you.  They usurp the country, they destroy the revenues, they overload the prince, and they exclude all the nobility and eminent persons of the country from the just reward of their service.

Did Mr. Francis, whom I saw here a little while ago, send these people into that country?  Did General Clavering, or Colonel Monson, whom he charges with this system, send them there?  No, they were sent by himself; and if one was sent by anybody else for a time, he was soon recalled:  so that he is himself answerable for all the peculation which he attributes to the civil service.  You see the character given of that service; you there see their accuser, you there see their defender, who, after having defamed both services, military and civil, never punished the guilty in either, and now receives the prodigal praises of both.