VOTE OF CREDIT.

For the support of those expensive treaties, Mr. Scroope, secretary of the treasury, moved in the house of commons, that in the malt-tax bill they should insert a clause of appropriation, empowering the king to apply such sums as should be necessary for defraying the expenses and engagements which had been, or should be made before the twenty-fifth day of September, in concerting such measures as he should think most conducive to the security of trade, and restoring the peace of Europe. To little purpose did the members in the opposition urge that this method of asking and granting supplies was unparliamentary; that such a clause would render ineffectual that appropriation of the public money, which the wisdom of all parliaments had thought a necessary security against misapplication, which was the more to be feared as no provision was made to call any person to account for the money that should be disposed of by virtue of this clause; that great sums had already been granted; that such an unlimited power ought never to be given in a free government; that such confidence in the crown might, through the influence of evil ministers, be attended with the most dangerous consequences; that the constitution could not be preserved, but by a strict adherence to those essential parliamentary forms of granting supplies upon estimates, and of appropriating these supplies to services and occasions publicly avowed and judged necessary; that such clauses, if not seasonably checked, would become so frequent as in time to lodge in the crown and in the ministers an absolute and uncontrollable power of raising money upon the people, which by the constitution is, and with safety can only be, lodged in the whole legislature. The motion was carried, the clause added, and the bill passed through the other house without amendment, though not without opposition. Notwithstanding this vote of credit, sir William Yonge moved, that towards the supply granted to the king, the sum of three hundred and seventy thousand pounds should be raised by loans on exchequer bills, to be charged on the surplus of the duties on coal and culm, which was reserved for the parliament’s disposal. Though this motion was vigorously opposed by sir Joseph Jekyll and Mr. Pulteney, as a dangerous deviation from several votes and acts of parliament, by which the exceed-ings of the public funds were appropriated to the discharge of the national debt, or to the increase of the sinking fund, it was carried by the majority.