We need not follow the orator through his account of what was done for Edward the Black Prince, and what Edward the Black Prince had done in consequence; and how Henry the Fifth had been able to conquer France because of his father's early liberality. The whole argument tended to impress upon the House of Commons the maxim that in a free country, above all others, it is absolutely necessary to have the heir-apparent of the crown bred up in a state of grandeur and independency. Despite the high-flown sentiments and the grandiose historical illustrations in which the speaker indulged, there seems to the modern intelligence an inherent meanness, a savor of downright vulgarity, through the whole of it. If you give a prince only fifty thousand a year, you can't expect anything of him. What can he know of grandeur of soul, of national honor, of constitutional rights, of political liberty? You can't get these qualities in a prince unless you pay him at least a hundred thousand a year while his {84} father is living. [Sidenote: 1737--Providing for a Prince] The argument would have told more logically if the English Parliament were going into the open market to buy the best prince they could get. There would be some show of reason in arguing that the more we pay the better article we shall have. But it is hard indeed to understand how a prince who is to be worth nothing if you give him only fifty thousand a year, will be another Black Prince or Henry the Fifth if you let him have the spending of fifty thousand a year more. Walpole led the Opposition to the motion. Much of the argument on both sides was essentially sordid, but there was a good deal also which was keen, close, and clever, and which may have even now a sort of constitutional interest. The friends of the prince knew they would have to meet the contention that Parliament had no right to interfere with the Sovereign's appropriation of the revenues allotted to him. They therefore contended, and, as it seems to us, with force and justice, that the Parliament which made the grants had a perfect right to see that the grants were appropriated to the uses for which they were intended, to follow out the grants in the course of their application, and even to direct that they should be applied to entirely different purposes; even, if need were, to resume them. It would naturally seem to follow from this assumption, that Parliament had a right to call on the King to make the allowance to the prince, but it would seem to follow also that the allowance ought not to be made independent and absolute. For, if the Prince of Wales had an allowance absolutely independent of the will of any one, he had something which Pulteney and his friends were contending, as it was their business just then to contend, that the English Parliament had never consented to give to the King. On the other hand, it was pointed out with much effect