should be enabled to raise a sum of money, by making use of the funds lately established for the payment of the civil list annuities, in order to discharge the debts contracted in the civil government. Mr. Pulteney, cofferer of the household, moved for an address, that an account should be laid before the house of all moneys paid for secret service, pensions, and bounties, from the twenty-fifth day of March, in the year one thousand seven hundred and one, and to the twenty-fifth of the same month in the present year. This address being voted, a motion was made to consider the king's message. Mr. Pulteney urged, that this consideration should be postponed until the house should have examined the papers that were the subject of the address. He expressed his surprise, that a debt amounting to above five hundred thousand pounds should be contracted in three years: he said, he did not wonder that some persons should be so eager to make good the deficiencies of the civil list, since they and their friends enjoyed such a share of that revenue; and he desired to know, whether this was all that was due, or whether they should expect another reckoning? This gentleman began to be dissatisfied with the measures of the ministry; and his sarcasms were aimed at Mr. Walpole, who undertook to answer his objections. The commons took the message into consideration, and passed a bill, enabling his majesty to raise a sum, not exceeding one million, by exchequer bills, loans, or otherwise, on the credit of the deductions of six-pence per pound, directed by an act of parliament of the seventh year of his majesty, and of the civil list revenues, at an interest not exceeding three pounds per cent. till repayment of the principal.

§ XXIII. On the twentieth day of April, a petition was presented to the house by lord Finch, in behalf of Henry St. John, late viscount Bolingbroke, praying that the execution of the law with respect to his forfeitures might be suspended, as a pardon had suspended it with respect to his life. Mr. Walpole signified to the house, by his majesty's command, that, seven years before, the petitioner had made his humble application and submission to the king, with assurances of duty, allegiance, and fidelity: that, from his behaviour since that time, his majesty was

convinced of his being a fit object of his mercy; and consented to his petitioning the house. The petition being read, Mr. Walpole declared himself fully satisfied, that the petitioner had sufficiently atoned for his past offences; and therefore deserved the favour of that house, so far as to enable him to enjoy the family inheritance that was settled upon him, which he could not do by virtue of his majesty's pardon, without an act of parliament. Lord Finch moved, that a bill might be brought in for this purpose,, and was warmly opposed by Mr. Methuen, comptroller of the household, who represented Bolingbroke as a monster of iniquity. His remonstrance was supported by lord William Paulet, and Mr. Onslow; nevertheless, the bill was prepared, passed through both houses, and received the royal assent. An act being passed for disarming the Highlanders of Scotland; another for regulating elections within the city of London; a third for reducing the interest of several bank annuities, together with some bills of a private nature, the parliament was prorogued in May, after the king had, in the warmest terms of acknowledg ment, expressed his approbation of their conduct. Then he appointed lords justices to govern the nation in his absence; and set out in June for his German dominions."

§ XXIV. The tide of political interests on the continent had begun to flow in a new channel, so as to render ineffectual the mounds which his Britannic majesty had raised by his multiplicity of negotiations. Lewis, the Spanish monarch, dying soon after his elevation to the throne, his father Philip resumed the crown which he had resigned; and gave himself up implicitly to the conduct of his queen, who was a princess of indefatigable intrigue and insatiate ambition. The Infanta, who had been married to Lewis XV. of France, was so disagreeab'e to her husband, that the whole French nation began to be apprehensive of a

f On the fifth day of December the princess of Wales was delivered of a princess, christened by the name of Louisa, and afterwards married to the king of Denmark. She died December the nineteenth, one thousand seven hundred and fifty-one.

Immediately after the session of parliament, the king revived the order of the Bath, thirty-eight in number, including the sovereign.

William Bateman was created haron of Calmore in Ireland, and viscount Bateman; and sir Robert Walpole, who had been one of the revived knights of the Bath, was-uow honoured with the order of the gaiter.

civil war, in consequence of his dying without male issue; he therefore determined, with the advice of his counsel, to send back the Infanta as the nuptials had not been consummated and she was attended to Madrid by the marquis de Montelone. The queen of Spain resented this insult offered to her daughter; and in revenge, dismissed mademoiselle de Beaujolois, one of the regent's daughters, who had been betrothed to her son Don Carlos. As the congress at Cambray had proved ineffectual, she offered to adjust her differences with the emperor, under the sole mediation of Great Britain. This was an honour which

king George declined. He was averse to any undertaking that might interrupt the harmony subsisting between him and the court of Versailles; and he had taken umbrage at the emperor's refusing to grant the investiture of Bremen. and Verden except upon terms which he did not choose to embrace. The peace between the courts of Vienna and Madrid, which he refused to mediate, was effected by a private negotiation, under the management of the duke de Ripperda, a native of the states general, who had renounced the protestant religion, and entered into the service of his catholic majesty. By two treaties, signed at Vienna in the month of April, the emperor acknowledged Philip as king of Spain and the Indies, promised that he would not molest him in the possession of those dominions that were secured to him by the treaty of Utrecht. Philip renounced all pretensions to the dominions in Italy and the Netherlands, adjudged to the emperor by the treaty of London: Charles granted the investiture of the dukedoms of Tuscany, Parma, and Placentia, to the eldest son of the queen of Spain, in default of heirs in the present possessors, as masculine fiefs of the empire. Spain became guarantee of the Austrian succession, according to the pragmatic sanction, by which the dominions of that house were settled on the emperor's heirs general, and declared to be a perpetual, indivisable, and inseparable feoffment to the primogeniture. By the commercial treaty of Vienna, the Austrian subjects were entitled to advantages in trade with Spain, which no other nation enjoyed. His catholic majesty guaranteed the Ostend East India company; and agreed to pay an annual subsidy of four millions of pias

tres to the emperor. Great sums were remitted to Vienna: the Imperial forces were augmented to a formidable number; and other powers were solicited to engage in this alliance, to which the court of Petersburgh actually acceded.

§ XXV. The king of Great Britain took the alarm. The emperor and he had for some time treated each other with manifest coolness. He had reason to fear some attempts upon his German dominions; and projected a defensive treaty with France and Prussia. This alliance, limited to the term of fifteen years, was negotiated and concluded at Hanover in the month of September. It implied a mutual guarantee of the dominions possessed by the contracting parties, their rights and privileges, those of commerce in particular, and an engagement to procure satisfaction to the protestants of Thorn, who had lately been oppressed by the catholics, contrary to the treaty of Oliva. The king having taken these precautions at Hanover, set out on his return for England; embarked at Helvoetsluys in the middle of December; and after having been exposed to the fury of a dreadful storm, was landed with great difficulty at Rye, from whence he proceeded by land to London. The parliament meeting on the twentieth day of the next month, he gave them to understand that the distressed condition of some of their protestant brethren abroad, and the negotiations and engagements contracted by some foreign powers, which seemed to have laid the foundation of new troubles and disturbances in Europe, and to threaten his subjects with the loss of several of the most advantageous branches of their trade, had obliged him to concert with other powers such measures as might give a check to the ambitious views of those who were endeavouring to render themselves formidable; and put a stop to the further progress of such dangerous designs. He told them, that the enemies. of his government were already very busy, by their instruments and emissaries in those courts whose measures seemed most to favour their purposes, in soliciting and promoting the cause of the pretender. One sees, at first sight, that the interests of Germany dictated the treaty of Hanover; hut, in order to secure the approbation of Great Britain, upon which the support of this alliance chiefly depended, it was judged necessary to insert the articles relating to comVOL. II. ૨૧

merce and the protestant religion, as if the engagement had been contracted purely for the advantage and glory of England. In a word, the ministry began now to ring the changes upon a few words that have been repeated ever since, like cabalistical sounds, by which the nation has been enchanted into a very dangerous connexion with the concerns of the continent. They harangued, they insisted upon the machinations of the disaffected, the designs of a popish pretender, the protestant interest, and the balance of power, until these expressions became absolutely terms of ridicule with every person of common sense and reflection. The people were told, that the emperor and the king of Spain, exclusive of the public treaties concluded at Vienna, had entered into private engagements, importing, that the Imperialists should join the Spaniards in recovering Gibraltar and Port Mahon by force of arms, in case the king of England should refuse to restore them amicably, according to a solemn promise he had made: that a double marriage should take place between the two infants of Spain, and the two archduchesses of Austria: and that means should be taken to place the pretender on the throne of Great Britain.

§ XXVI. When the treaties of Vienna and Hanover fell under consideration of the house of commons, Horatio Walpole, afterwards termed, in derision," the balance "master," opened the debate with a long unanimated oration, giving a detail of the affairs of Europe since the treaty of Utrecht. He enumerated the barrier treaty, the convention for executing that treaty, the defensive alliance with the emperor, the other with the most christian king and the states general, another convention, the quadruple alliance, the congress at Cambray, the treaty at Hanover, and that of Vienna. He explained the nature of each engagement. He said, the main design of the treaty of commerce concluded between the emperor and Spain, was to countenance and support the East India company established at Ostend, which interfered so essentially with the East India companies of England and Holland, and was directly contrary to several solemn treaties still in force. He enlarged upon the danger to which the balance of power would be exposed, should' the issue male of this projected marriage between the houses of Austria and