The king’s words which announced the Chevalier’s arrival in Scotland were still vibrating in the ears of Parliament, when Mr. Lechmere rose in the House of Commons to take the preliminary steps for the condemnation of ‘the seven lords.’ In other words, he moved that the House should impeach them. The motion was grounded, not on evidence, but on common report. The speech was an able speech, with a craftily seeming fairness in it. The speaker maintained that the existing rebellion was the natural consequence of long preparation, and that those most forward in it, here, were the guilty tools of equally guilty men who were withdrawn from the public eye, or who conspired in greater personal safety, abroad. A portion of the press, at home, by denouncing the old Revolution, had knowingly made way for the new. The lenity extended to writers who encouraged treason against King George by denying the legality of the dethronement of King James, only inspired more venomous authors to write down the Hanoverian dynasty and the Protestant succession. Then, adverting to the conspirators, as Queen Anne’s Tory friends were called, Mr. Lechmere pointed out that Ormond, for whose sake Marlborough had been traduced, now avowed his treachery, by serving the Pretender, and by the preparations he was carrying on for a fresh invasion of England, and the establishment of Popery in this country. The enemy of Townshend――Bolingbroke――was then on the point of manifesting the principles which had made him the enemy of so virtuous a man, by becoming one of the ministers of the Chevalier. While the great engines were actively working from afar, the lesser engines and more ignoble tools were, said Mr. Lechmere, as actively carrying on their work ‘below stairs.’ By this phrase he implied that the juries in Westminster Hall, who acquitted men charged with sedition against the present powers, were the enemies of the reigning House. But, he added――making reference again to the Tory ministry of the last reign,――those conspirators made their master-stroke when they traitorously made England a party to her own destruction, by procuring a majority of votes in Parliament which gave sanction to a Peace, whereby France was restored to her former power of dominating over Europe, and the barriers which guarded the liberties of this and allied nations were broken down. The same influences, added the speaker, had nearly sacrificed the trade of England to the interests of France. [Sidenote: _CHARACTER OF KING GEORGE._]