ation, and even to direct that they
should be applied to entirely different purposes; even, if need were, to
resume them. It would naturally seem to follow from this assumption,
that Parliament had a right to call on the King to make the allowance to
the prince, but it would seem to follow also that the allowance ought not
to be made independent and absolute. For, if the Prince of Wales had an
allowance absolutely independent of the will of any one, he had something
which Pulteney and his friends were contending, as it was their business
just then to contend, that the English Parliament had never consented to
give to the King. On the other hand, it was pointed out with much effect
that there never had been any express regulation in England to provide
that the Prince of Wales should be made independent of his father, and
there was clear good-sense in the contempt with which Walpole treated the
argument that the State dependency upon his father in {85} which the son
of a great family usually lives, must necessarily tend to the debasing of
the son's mind and the diminishing of his intelligence, or that the
dignity and grandeur even of a Prince of Wales could not be as well
supported by a yearly allowance as by a perpetual and independent
settlement. Some of the speakers on Walpole's side--indeed, Walpole
himself occasionally--strove to show their willingness to serve the
prince by utterances which must have caused the prince to smile a grim,
sardonic smile if he had any existing sense of humor. Please do not
imagine--this was the line of observation--that we think one hundred
thousand a year too much for his Royal Highness. Oh dear, no; nothing of
the kind; we do not think it would be half enough if only the nation had
the money to give away. "Why," exclaimed one gushing orator, "if we had
the money the only course we could take would be to offer his Royal
Highness whatever he pleased to accept, and even in that case we should
have reason to fear lest his modesty might do an injury to his generosity
by making him confine his demand within the strictest bounds of bare
necessity." "Were we," another member of the Court party declared, "to
measure the prince's allowance by the prince's merit, as we know no
bounds to the latter, we could prescribe no bounds to the former."
Therefore, as it was totally impossible that the treasury of any State
could reward this extraordinary prince according to his merit, the
speakers on