ess to press,
that all stores for the navy should be bought with ready money; by which
_cent. per cent._ hath been saved in that mighty article of our expense,
as will appear from an account taken at the victualling office on the
9th of August, one thousand seven hundred and twelve. And the payment of
the interest was less a burthen upon the navy, by the stores being
bought at so cheap a rate.

It might look invidious to enter into farther particulars upon this
head, but of smaller moment. What I have above related, may serve to
shew in how ill a condition the kingdom stood, with relation to its
debts, by the corruption as well as negligence of former management; and
what prudent, effectual measures have since been taken to provide for
old incumbrances, and hinder the running into new. This may be
sufficient for the information of the reader, perhaps already tired with
a subject so little entertaining as that of accounts: I shall therefore
now return to relate some of the principal matters that passed in
Parliament, during this session.

Upon the eighteenth of January the House of Lords sent down a bill to
the Commons, for fixing the precedence of the Hanover family, which
probably had been forgot in the Acts for settling the succession of the
crown. That of Henry VIII. which gives the rank to princes of the blood,
carries it no farther than to nephews, nieces, and grandchildren of the
crown, by virtue of which the Princess Sophia is a princess of the
blood, as niece to King Charles I of England, and precedes accordingly,
but this privilege doth not descend to her son the Elector, or the
electoral prince. To supply which defect, and pay a compliment to the
presumptive heirs of the crown, this bill, as appeareth by the preamble,
was recommended by Her Majesty to the House of Lords, which the Commons,
to shew their zeal for every thing that might be thought to concern the
interest or honour of that illustrious family, ordered to be read thrice,
passed _nemine contradicente_ and returned to the Lords, without any
amendment, on the very day it was sent down.

But the House seemed to have nothing more at heart than a strict inquiry
into the state of the nation, with respect to foreign alliances. Some
discourses had been published in print, about the beginning of the
session, boldly complaining of certain articles in the Barrier Treaty,
concluded about three years since by the Lord Viscount Townshend,
between Great Britain