La Hogue. He acknowledged with much concern that the
operations of the allies had been less successful by land than by sea;
but he warmly declared that, both by land and by sea, the valour of his
English subjects had been preeminently conspicuous. The distress of his
people, he said, was his own; his interest was inseparable from theirs;
it was painful to him to call on them to make sacrifices; but from
sacrifices which were necessary to the safety of the English nation and
of the Protestant religion no good Englishman and no good Protestant
would shrink. [344]

The Commons thanked the King in cordial terms for his gracious speech.
[345] But the Lords were in a bad humour. Two of their body, Marlborough
and Huntingdon, had, during the recess, when an invasion and an
insurrection were hourly expected, been sent to the Tower, and were
still under recognisances. Had a country gentleman or a merchant been
taken up and held to bail on even slighter grounds at so alarming a
crisis, the Lords would assuredly not have interfered. But they were
easily moved to anger by any thing that looked like an indignity offered
to their own order. They not only crossexamined with great severity
Aaron Smith, the Solicitor of the Treasury, whose character, to say the
truth, entitled him to little indulgence, but passed; by thirty-five
votes to twenty-eight, a resolution implying a censure on the judges of
the King's Bench, men certainly not inferior in probity, and very far
superior in legal learning, to any peer of the realm. The King thought
it prudent to soothe the wounded pride of the nobility by ordering the
recognisances to be cancelled; and with this concession the House was
satisfied, to the great vexation of the Jacobites, who had hoped that
the quarrel would be prosecuted to some fatal issue, and who, finding
themselves disappointed, vented their spleen by railing at the tameness
of the degenerate barons of England. [346]

Both Houses held long and earnest deliberations on the state of the
nation. The King, when he requested their advice, had, perhaps, not
foreseen that his words would be construed into an invitation to
scrutinise every part of the administration, and to offer suggestions
touching matters which parliaments have generally thought it expedient
to leave entirely to the Crown. Some of the discontented peers proposed
that a Committee, chosen partly by the Lords and partly by the Commons,
should be authorised to inquire