ALTERCATION IN THE COMMONS.

The house of commons resolved to address his majesty for a copy of the treaty of Vienna. Sir John Rushout moved for another, desiring that the letters and instructions relating to the execution of the treaty of Seville, should be submitted to the inspection of the commons; but, after a hard struggle, it was over-ruled. The next motion was made by Mr. Sandys, a gentleman who had for some time appeared strenuous in the opposition, and wrangled with great perseverance. He proposed that the house should examine the instructions which had been given to the British minister in Poland, some years before the death of king Augustus, that they might be the better able to judge of the causes which produced this new rupture among the powers of Europe. The motion being opposed by all the court members, a contest ensued, in the course of which Mr. Pulteney compared the ministry to an empyric, and the constitution of England to his patient. This pretender in physic, said he, being consulted, tells the distempered person there were but two or three ways of treating his disease; and he was afraid that none of them would succeed. A vomit might throw him into convulsions that would occasion immediate death; a purge might bring on a diarrhoea that would carry him off in a short time; and he had been already bled so much, and so often, that he could bear it no longer. The unfortunate patient, shocked at this declaration, replies, “Sir, you have always pretended to be a regular doctor; but now I find you are an arrant quack. I had an excellent constitution when I first fell into your hands, but you have quite destroyed it; and now I find I have no other chance for saving my life, but by calling for the help of some regular physician.” In the debate, the members on both sides seemed to wander from the question, and indulge themselves in ludicrous personalities. Mr. H. Walpole took occasion to say, that the opposition treated the ministry as he himself was treated by some of his acquaintances with respect to his dress. “If I am in plain clothes,” said he, “then they call me a slovenly dirty fellow; and if by chance I wear a laced suit, they cry, What, shall such an awkward fellow wear fine clothes?” He continued to sport in this kind of idle buffoonery. He compared the present administration to a ship at sea. As long as the wind was fair, and proper for carrying us to our designed port, the word was, “Steady! steady!” but when the wind began to shift and change, the word was necessarily altered to “Thus, thus, and no nearer.” The motion was overpowered by the majority; and this was the fate of several other proposals made by the members in the opposition. Sir John Barnard presented a petition from the druggists, and other dealers in tea, complaining of the insults and oppression to which they were subjected by the excise laws, and imploring relief. Sir John and Mr. Perry, another of the city members, explained the grievous hardships which those traders sustained, and moved that the petition might be referred to the consideration of the whole house. They were opposed by Mr. Winnington, sir W. Yonge, and other partisans of the ministry; and these skirmishes brought on a general engagement of the two parties, in which every weapon of satire, argument, reason, and truth, was wielded against that odious, arbitrary, and oppressive method of collecting the public revenue. Nevertheless, the motion in favour of the sufferers was rejected. When the commons deliberated upon the supply, Mr. Andrews, deputy-paymaster of the army, moved for an addition of eighteen hundred men to the number of land forces which had been continued since the preceding year. The members in the opposition disputed this small augmentation with too much heat and eagerness. It must be acknowledged, they were by this time irritated into such personal animosity against the minister, that they resolved to oppose all his measures, whether they might or might not be necessary for the safety and advantage of the kingdom. Nor indeed were they altogether blameable for acting on this maxim, if their sole aim was to remove from the confidence and councils of their sovereign, a man whose conduct they thought prejudicial to the interests and liberties of their country. They could not, however, prevent the augmentation proposed; but they resolved, if they could not wholly stop the career of the ministry, to throw in such a number of rubs as should at least retard their progress. The duke of Bolton and lord Cobham had been deprived of the regiments they commanded, because they refused to concur in every project of the administration. It was in consequence of their dismission, that lord Morpeth moved for a bill to prevent any commissioned officer, not above the rank of a colonel, from being removed, unless by a court-martial, or by address of either house of parliament. Such an attack on the prerogative might have succeeded in the latter part of the reign of the first Charles; but at this juncture could not fail to miscarry; yet it was sustained with great vigour and address. When the proposal was set aside by the majority, Mr. Sandys moved for an address to the king, desiring to know who advised his majesty to remove the duke of Bolton and lord Cob-ham from their respective regiments. He was seconded by Mr. Pulteney and sir William Wyndham; but the ministry foreseeing another tedious dispute, called for the question, and the motion was carried in the negative. The next source of contention was a bill for securing the freedom of parliament, by limiting the number of officers in the house of commons. It was read a first and second time; but when a motion was made for its being committed, it met with a powerful opposition, and produced a warm debate that issued in a question which, like the former, passed in the negative. A clergyman having insinuated in conversation that sir William Milner, baronet, member for York, received a pension from the ministry, the house took cognizance of this report; the clergyman acknowledged at the bar that he might have dropped such a hint from hearsay. The accused member protested, upon his honour, that he never did nor ever would receive place, pension, gratuity, or reward from the court, either directly or indirectly, for voting in parliament, or upon any other account whatever. The accusation was voted false and scandalous, and the accuser taken into custody; but in a few days he was discharged upon his humble petition, and his begging pardon of the member whom he had calumniated. The duty upon salt was prolonged for eight years; and a bill passed against stock-jobbing.