and a new
burden on the people; that the nation was loaded, not to complete but
to augment the surplus designed for the civil list; and this at a time
when the public debts were increased; when the taxes were heavily felt
in all parts of the country; when the foreign trade of Britain was
encumbered and diminished; when her manufactures were decayed, her poor
multiplied, and she was surrounded by many other national calamities.
They observed, that if the produce of the civil list revenue should not
amount to the yearly sum of eight hundred thousand pounds, the
deficiency must be made good to his majesty by the public; whereas no
provision was made, by which, if the produce of these revenues should
exceed that sum, the surplus could accrue to the benefit of the public;
that, by this precedent, not only real deficiencies were to be made
good, but also supplies were to be given for arrears standing out at the
end of the year, which should come on before the supplies could be
granted, though the supply given to make good arrears in one year would
certainly increase the surplusages in another; that the revenues of the
civil list were variable in their own nature, and even when there is a
deficiency in the produce, there might be arrears in the receipt; these
might be easily increased by the management of designing ministers, by
private directions to receivers, and by artful methods of stating
accounts. All these arguments, and other objections equally strong and
plausible, against this unconsionable and unparliamentary motion, served
only to evince the triumph of the ministry over shame and sentiment,
their contempt of public spirit, and their defiance of the national
reproach.*

* The peers that distinguished themselves in the opposition
were Beaufort, Strafford, Craven, Foley, Litchfield,
Scarsdale, Grower, Mountjoy, Plymouth, Bathurst,
Northampton, Coventry, Oxford and Mortimer, Willoughby de
Broke, Boyle, and Warrington.

{1729}

WISE CONDUCT OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT.

The king had, on the twenty-fourth day of March, given the royal assent
to five bills; and on the fourteenth day of May the same sanction was
given to thirty other bills, including an act enabling the queen to be
regent in the kingdom during his majesty's absence without taking the
oaths, and another for the relief of insolvent debtors. At the same time
two-and-thirty private bills were passed: then the king expressed his