VAST SUMS GRANTED FOR THE SERVICES OF THE ENSUING YEAR.

Harley, Foley, and Harcourt, presented to the house a state of the receipts and issues of the revenue, together with two reports from the commissioners of accounts concerning sums issued for secret services, and to members of parliament. This was a discovery of the most scandalous practices in the mystery of corruption, equally exercised on the individuals of both parties, in occasional bounties, grants, places, pensions, equivalents, and additional salaries. The malcontents therefore justly observed, the house of commons was so managed that the king could baffle any bill, quash all grievances, stifle accounts, and rectify the articles of Limerick. When the commons took into consideration the estimates and supplies of the ensuing year, the king demanded forty thousand men for the navy, and above one hundred thousand for the purposes of the land service. Before the house considered these enormous demands, they granted four hundred thousand pounds by way of advance, to quiet the clamours of the seamen, who were become mutinous and desperate for want of pay, upwards of one million being due to them for wages. Then the commons voted the number of men required for the navy; but they were so ashamed of that for the army, that they thought it necessary to act in such a manner as should imply that they still retained some regard for their country. They called for all the treaties subsisting between the king and his allies; they examined the different proportions of the troops furnished by the respective powers; they considered the intended augmentations, and fixed the establishment of the year at four-score and three thousand, one hundred, and twenty-one men, including officers. For the maintenance of these they allotted the sum of two millions, five hundred and thirty thousand, five hundred and nine pounds. They granted two millions for the navy, and about five hundred thousand pounds, to make good the deficiencies of the annuity and poll bills; so that the supplies for the year amounted to about five millions and a half, raised by a land-tax of four shillings in the pound, by two more lives in the annuities, a further excise on beer, a new duty on salt, and a lottery.

Though the malcontents in parliament could not withstand this torrent of profusion, they endeavoured to distress the court interest, by reviving the popular bills of the preceding session; such as that for regulating trials in cases of high treason, the other for the more frequent calling and meeting of parliaments, and that concerning free and impartial proceedings in parliament. The first was neglected in the house of lords; the second was rejected; the third was passed by the commons, on the supposition that it would be defeated in the other house. The lords returned it with certain amendments, to which the commons would not agree: a conference ensued; the peers receded from their corrections, and passed the bill, to which the king however refused his assent. Nothing could be more unpopular and dangerous than such a step at this juncture. The commons, in order to recover some credit with the people, determined to disapprove of his majesty’s conduct. The house formed itself into a committee, to take the state of the kingdom into consideration. They resolved, that whoever advised the king to refuse the royal assent to that bill, was an enemy to their majesties and the kingdom. They likewise presented an address, expressing their concern that he had not given his consent to the bill; and beseeching his majesty to hearken for the future to the advice of his parliament, rather than to the counsels of particular persons, who might have private interests of their own, separate from those of his majesty and his people. The king thanked them for their zeal, professed a warm regard for their constitution, and assured them he would look upon all parties as enemies who should endeavour to lessen the confidence subsisting between the sovereign and the people. The members in the opposition were not at all satisfied with this general reply. A day being appointed to take it into consideration, a warm debate was maintained with equal eloquence and acrimony. At length the question being put that an address should be made for a more explicit answer, it passed in the negative by a great majority.