On March 6th the House of Commons met for the purpose of taking the foredoomed convention into consideration. So intense was the interest taken in the subject, so highly strung was political feeling, that more than four hundred members were in their places at eight o'clock in the morning. Seldom indeed is anxiety expressed in so emphatic and conclusive a form among members of the House of Commons. Readers may remember one day within recent years when a measure of momentous importance was to be introduced into the House of Commons, and when, long before eight in the morning, every seat in the House was occupied. On this March 6, 1739, the House resolved itself into committee, and spent the whole {171} day in hearing some of the merchants and other witnesses against the convention. The whole of the next day (Wednesday) was occupied in the reading of documents bearing on the subject, and it was not until Thursday that the debate began. The debate was more memorable for what followed it than for itself. In itself it was the familiar succession of fierce and unscrupulous attacks on the policy of peace, mixed up with equally fierce but certainly very well-deserved attacks on the character of the convention. William Pitt wound up his speech by declaring that "this convention, I think from my soul, is nothing but a stipulation for national ignominy; an illusory expedient to baffle the resentment of the nation; a truce without a suspension of hostilities on the part of Spain; on the part of England a suspension, as to Georgia, of the first law of nature, self-preservation and self-defence; a surrender of the rights and the trade of England to the mercy of plenipotentiaries, and, in this infinitely highest and sacred point, future security, not only inadequate, but directly repugnant to the resolutions of Parliament and the gracious promise from the throne. The complaints of your despairing merchants, the voice of England, have condemned it; be the guilt of it upon the head of its adviser! God forbid that this committee should share the guilt by approving it!" One point in the debate is worthy of notice. The address to the King approving of the convention was moved by Horatio Walpole, the diplomatist, brother of Sir Robert. In the course of his speech Horatio Walpole declared that the outbreak of war between England and any great continental State would be certain to be followed by a new blow struck by the Pretender and his followers. Some of the orators of Opposition spoke with immense scorn of the possibility of a Jacobite movement ever again being heard of in England. The Walpoles both generally understood pretty well what they were talking about. The prediction of Horatio Walpole came true. {172} [Sidenote: 1739--The secession]