ADDRESS TO THE KING.

The pension-bill was once more revived, and lost again in the house of peers. All the reasons formerly advanced against a standing army were now repeated; and a reduction of the number insisted upon with such warmth, that the ministerial party were obliged to have recourse to the old phantom of the pretender. Sir Archer Croft said, a continuation of the same number of forces was the more necessary, because, to his knowledge, popery was increasing very fast in the country; for in one parish which he knew, there were seven popish priests; and that the danger from the pretender was the more to be feared, because they did not know but he was then breeding his son a protestant. Sir Robert Walpole observed, that a reduction of the army was the chief thing wished for and desired by all the Jacobites in the kingdom; that no reduction had ever been made but what gave fresh hopes to that party, and encouraged them to raise tumults against the government; and he did not doubt but that, if they should resolve to reduce any part of the army, there would be post-horses employed that very night to carry the good news beyond sea to the pretender. His brother Horatio added, that the number of troops then proposed was absolutely necessary to support his majesty’s government, and would be necessary as long as the nation enjoyed the happiness of having the present illustrious family on the throne. The futility, the self-contradiction, and the ridiculous absurdity of these suggestions, were properly exposed; nevertheless, the army was voted without any reduction. Sir Wilfred Lawson having made a motion for an address to the king, to know what satisfaction had been made by Spain for the depredations committed on the British merchants, it was, after a violent debate, approved and the address presented. The king in answer to this remonstrance gave them to understand, that the commissaries of the two crowns had been so long delayed by unforeseen accidents, that the conferences were not opened till the latter end of the preceding February; and that as the courts of London and Madrid had agreed that the term of three years stipulated for finishing the commission should be computed from their first meeting, a perfect account of their proceedings could not as yet be laid before the house of commons. A bill had been long depending for granting encouragement to the sugar colonies in the West Indies; but, as it was founded upon a prohibition that would have put a stop to all commerce between the French islands and the British settlements in North America, it met with a very warm opposition from those who had the prosperity of those northern colonies at heart. But the bill being patronised and supported by the court interest, surmounted all objections, and afterwards passed into a law. While the commons deliberated upon the supply, sir Robert Walpole moved, that five hundred thousand pounds should be issued out of the sinking fund for the service of the ensuing year. Sir William Wyndham, Mr. Pulteney, and sir John Barnard, expatiated upon the iniquity of pillaging a sacred deposit, solemnly appropriated to the discharge of the national debt. They might have demonstrated the egregious folly of a measure, by which the public, for a little temporary ease, lost the advantage of the accumulating interest which would have arisen from the sinking fund, if properly managed and reserved. All objections vanished before the powers of ministerial influence, which nothing now could check but the immediate danger of popular commotion. Such hazardous interposition actually defeated a scheme which had been adopted by the minister, and even before its appearance alarmed all the trading part of the nation.