EXORBITANT DEMAND OF THE EMPRESS-QUEEN OPPOSED.

Every article of expense, however, was warmly disputed by the anti-courtiers, especially the demand of the queen of Hungary, which was deemed unreasonable, exorbitant, and rapacious, considering the seas of blood which we had shed, and the immensity of treasure we had exhausted for her benefit; and surely the subjects of this nation had some reason to complain of an indulgence of this nature, granted to a power which they had literally snatched from the brink of ruin-a power whose quarrel they had espoused with a degree of enthusiasm that did much more honour to their gallantry than to their discretion-a power that kept aloof, with a stateliness of pride peculiar to herself and family, and beheld her British auxiliaries fighting her battles at their own expense; while she squandered away, in the idle pageantry of barbarous magnificence, those ample subsidies which they had advanced in order to maintain their armies, and furnish out her proportion of the war. The leaders of the opposition neglected no opportunity of embittering the triumphs of their adversaries; they inveighed against the extravagance of granting sixteen thousand pounds for the pay of general and staff officers, during a peace that required no such establishment, especially at a juncture when the national incumbrances rendered it absolutely necessary to practise every expedient of economy. They even combated the request of the city of Glasgow, to be indemnified for the extraordinary exaction it underwent from the rebels, though it appeared from unquestionable evidence, that this extraordinary contribution was exacted on account of that city’s peculiar attachment to the reigning family; that it had always invariably adhered to revolution principles; and, with an unequalled spirit of loyalty and zeal for the protestant succession, distinguished itself both in the last and preceding rebellion.

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