Both Houses held long and earnest deliberations on the state of the nation.  The King, when he requested their advice, had, perhaps, not foreseen that his words would be construed into an invitation to scrutinise every part of the administration, and to offer suggestions touching matters which parliaments have generally thought it expedient to leave entirely to the Crown.  Some of the discontented peers proposed that a Committee, chosen partly by the Lords and partly by the Commons, should be authorised to inquire into the whole management of public affairs.  But it was generally apprehended that such a Committee would become a second and more powerful Privy Council, independent of the Crown, and unknown to the Constitution.  The motion was therefore rejected by forty-eight votes to thirty-six.  On this occasion the ministers, with scarcely an exception, voted in the majority.  A protest was signed by eighteen of the minority, among whom were the bitterest Whigs and the bitterest Tories in the whole peerage.347

The Houses inquired, each for itself, into the causes of the public calamities.  The Commons resolved themselves into a Grand Committee to consider of the advice to be given to the King.  From the concise abstracts and fragments which have come down to us it seems that, in this Committee, which continued to sit many days, the debates wandered over a vast space.  One member spoke of the prevalence of highway robbery; another deplored the quarrel between the Queen and the Princess, and proposed that two or three gentlemen should be deputed to wait on Her Majesty and try to make matters up.  A third described the machinations of the Jacobites in the preceding spring.  It was notorious, he said, that preparations had been made for a rising, and that arms and horses had been collected; yet not a single traitor had been brought to justice.348

The events of the war by land and sea furnished matter for several earnest debates.  Many members complained of the preference given to aliens over Englishmen.  The whole battle of Steinkirk was fought over again; and severe reflections were thrown on Solmes.  “Let English soldiers be commanded by none but English generals,” was the almost universal cry.  Seymour, who had once been distinguished by his hatred of the foreigners, but who, since he had been at the Board of Treasury, had reconsidered his opinions, asked where English generals were to be found.  “I have no love for foreigners as foreigners; but we have no choice.  Men are not born generals; nay, a man may be a very valuable captain or major, and not be equal to the conduct of an army.  Nothing but experience will form great commanders.  Very few of our countrymen have that experience; and therefore we must for the present employ strangers.”  Lowther followed on the same side.  “We have had a long peace; and the consequence is that we have not a sufficient supply of officers fit for high commands.  The parks and the camp at Hounslow were very poor