much of a bad cause as Lord Talbot." Hardwicke lived to have a long career of honor, and to win a secure place in English history. Lord Talbot became at once a commanding influence in the House of Lords. "Our new Lord Chancellor," the Earl of Strafford, England's nominal and ornamental representative in the negotiation for the peace of Utrecht, writes to Swift, "at present has a great party in the House." But the new Lord Chancellor did not live long enough for his fame. He was destined to die within a few short years, and to leave the wool-sack open for Lord Hardwicke. [Sidenote: 1734--The Patriots] The House of Commons has hardly ever been thrilled to interest and roused to passion by a more heated, envenomed, and, in the rhetorical sense, brilliant debate than that which took place on March 13, 1734. The subject of the debate was the motion of a country gentleman, Mr. William Bromley, member for Warwick, "that leave be given to bring in a bill for repealing the Septennial Act, and for the more frequent meeting and calling of Parliaments." The circumstances under which this motion was brought forward gave it a peculiar importance as a party movement. Before the debate began it was agreed, upon a formal motion to that effect, "that the Sergeant-at-arms attending the House should go with the mace into Westminster Hall, and into the Court of Bequests, and places adjacent, and summon the members there to attend the service of the House." The general elections were approaching; the Parliament then sitting had nearly run its course. The Patriots had been making every possible preparation for a decisive struggle against Walpole. They had been using every weapon which partisan hatred and political craft could supply or suggest. The fury roused up by the Excise Bill had not yet wholly subsided. Public opinion still throbbed and heaved like a sea the morning after a storm. {11} The Patriots had been exerting their best efforts to make the country dissatisfied with Walpole's foreign policy. The changes were incessantly rung upon the alleged depredations which the Spaniards were committing on our mercantile marine. Long before the time for the general elections had come, the Patriot candidates were stumping the country. Their progress through each county was marked by the wildest riots. The riots sometimes called for the sternest military repression. On the other hand, the Patriots themselves were denounced and discredited by all the penmen, pamphleteers, and orators who supported the Government on their own account, or were hired by Walpole and Walpole's friends to support it. So effective were some of these attacks, so damaging was the incessant imputation that in the mouths of the Patriots patriotism meant nothing but a desire for place and pay, that Pulteney and his comrades found it advisable gradually to shake off the name which had been put on them, and which they had at one time willingly adopted. They began to call