tain had been thrown; that the state of
Hanover had been changed, without any visible cause, since the accession
of its princes to the throne of England; affluence had begun to wanton
in their towns, and gold to glitter in their cottages, without the
discovery of mines, or the increase of their commerce; and new dominions
had been purchased, of which the value was never paid from the revenues
of Hanover. The motion was hunted down by the new ministry, the patriot
lord Bathurst, and the earl of Bath, which last nobleman declared, that
he considered it as an act of cowardice and meanness, to fall passively
down the stream of popularity, to suffer his reason and integrity to be
overborne by the noise of vulgar clamours, which had been raised against
the measures of government by the low arts of exaggeration, fallacious
reasonings, and partial representations. This is the very language
which sir Robert Walpole had often used against Mr. Pulteney and
his confederates in the house of commons. The associates of the new
secretary pleaded the cause of Hanover, and insisted upon the necessity
of a land-war against France, with all the vehemence of declamation.
Their suggestions were answered; their conduct was severely stigmatized
by the earl of Chesterfield, who observed, that the assembling an army
in Flanders, without the concurrence of the states-general, or any other
power engaged by treaty, or bound by interest, to support the queen of
Hungary, was a rash and ridiculous measure; the taking sixteen thousand
Hanoverians into British pay, without consulting the parliament, seemed
highly derogatory to the rights and dignity of the great council of
the nation, and a very dangerous precedent to future times; that these
troops could not be employed against the emperor, whom they had already
recognised; that the arms and wealth of Britain alone were altogether
insufficient to raise the house of Austria to its former strength,
dominion, and influence; that the assembling an army in Flanders would
engage the nation as principals in an expensive and ruinous war, with a
power which it ought not to provoke, and could not pretend to withstand
in that manner; that while Great Britain exhausted herself almost to
ruin, in pursuance of schemes founded on engagements to the queen of
Hungary, the electorate of Hanover, though under the same engagements,
and governed by the same prince, did not appear to contribute any thing
as an ally to her ass