try.
He must have perceived that all the bulwarks of the constitution were
little better than buttresses of ice, which would infallibly thaw before
the heat of ministerial influence, when artfully concentrated; that
either a minister's professions of patriotism were insincere; or his
credit insufficient to effect any essential alteration in the unpopular
measures of government; and that, after all, the liberties of the nation
could never be so firmly established, as by the power, generosity, and
virtue of a patriot king. This inference could not fail to awake the
remembrance of that amiable prince, whom fate untimely snatched from the
eager hopes and warm affection of a whole nation, before, he had it
in his power to manifest and establish his favourite maxim, "That a
monarch's glory was inseparably connected with the happiness of his
people." [538] _[See note 4 I, at the end of this Vol.]_

{1760}

ACT FOR CONSOLIDATING ANNUITIES GRANTED IN 1759.

On the first day of February, a motion was made, and leave given, to
bring in a bill for enabling his majesty to make leases and copies of
offices, lands, and hereditaments, parcel of his duchy of Cornwall, or
annexed to the same; accordingly it passed through both houses without
opposition; and enacted that all leases and grants made, or to be made,
by his majesty, within seven years next ensuing, in or annexed to the
said duchy, under the limitations therein mentioned, should be good and
effectual in law against his majesty, his heirs, and successors, and
against all other persons that should hereafter inherit the said duchy,
either by an act of parliament, or any limitation whatsoever. This act
appears the more extraordinary as the prince of Wales, who has a sort
of right by prescription to the duchy of Cornwall, was then of age, and
might have been put in possession of it by the passing of a patent. The
house having perused an account of the produce of the fund established
for paying annuities granted in the year one thousand seven hundred and
fifty-nine, with the charge on that fund on the fifth day of January
in the succeeding year, it appeared that there had been a considerable
deficiency in the said fund on the fifth day of July preceding, and
this had been made good out of the sinking fund, by a resolution of the
seventh of February, already particularized. They therefore instructed
the committee of ways and means to consider so much of the annuity and
lotte