ere necessary for the public service.
Several votes of menacing sound were passed at the same sitting. It was
Monday the eighth of April. Tuesday the ninth was allowed to the
other House for reflection and repentance. It was resolved that on the
Wednesday morning the question of the Irish forfeitures should again be
taken into consideration, and that every member who was in town should
be then in his place on peril of the highest displeasure of the House.
It was moved and carried that every Privy Councillor who had been
concerned in procuring or passing any exorbitant grant for his own
benefit had been guilty of a high crime and misdemeanour. Lest the
courtiers should flatter themselves that this was meant to be a mere
abstract proposition, it was ordered that a list of the members of
the Privy Council should be laid on the table. As it was thought not
improbable that the crisis might end in an appeal to the constituent
bodies, nothing was omitted which could excite out of doors a feeling
in favour of the bill. The Speaker was directed to print and publish the
report signed by the four Commissioners, not accompanied, as in common
justice it ought to have been, by the protest of the three dissentients,
but accompanied by several extracts from the journals which were thought
likely to produce an impression favourable to the House and unfavourable
to the Court. All these resolutions passed without any division,
and without, as far as appears, any debate. There was, indeed, much
speaking, but all on one side. Seymour, Harley, Howe, Harcourt, Shower,
Musgrave, declaimed, one after another, about the obstinacy of the other
House, the alarming state of the country, the dangers which threatened
the public peace and the public credit. If, it was said, none but
Englishmen sate in the Parliament and in the Council, we might hope that
they would relent at the thought of the calamities which impend over
England. But we have to deal with men who are not Englishmen, with men
who consider this country as their own only for evil, as their property,
not as their home; who, when they have gorged themselves with our
wealth, will, without one uneasy feeling, leave us sunk in bankruptcy,
distracted by faction, exposed without defence to invasion. "A new war,"
said one of these orators, "a new war, as long, as bloody, and as
costly as the last, would do less mischief than has been done by the
introduction of that batch of Dutchmen among the bar