Later, in the autumn, preachers took for a subject the want of respect manifested, by the mass of people, for their ‘betters,’ including all that were in authority. On Saturday, October 13th, the ‘Craftsman’ had this paragraph, showing how the pulpit was lending itself to politics as well as to morals:――‘Last Sunday a very remarkable sermon was preached at a _Great Church in the City_, against speaking evil of dignities, in which the Preacher endeavoured to show the unparalleled wickedness and Impudence of Tradesmen meddling in Politicks, and particularly of their riotous Procession to Westminster to petition against the late Excise scheme (so _evidently calculated for their good_), which he placed among the number of Deadly Sins, and recommended Passive Obedience and Non-Resistance, for which the Audience were so unkind as to laugh at him so much that he shut up his book before he had done and threatened them with a severe Chastisement.’ [Sidenote: _STORMY DEBATES._] The fear of the ‘Pretender,’ the recruiting in back parts of London for ‘foreign service,’ and the relations of England with Continental powers, kept up a troubled spirit among those who wished to live at home, at ease. One of the most remarkable debates of the session occurred in the House of Lords. The king had exercised, and wished to continue to exercise, a right (such as he supposed himself to possess) of dismissing officers from the army, without a court martial. The Duke of Marlborough (Spencer) brought in a Bill to prevent such summary expulsion, at the king’s pleasure. In the course of the debate the figure of the Pretender was brought forward. The Duke of Newcastle warmly supported the king’s ‘prerogative.’ There would be no safety, he said, unless the king held that right. ‘There is,’ he remarked, ‘at present a Pretender to the Crown of these realms, and we may conclude that there will always be plots and contrivances in this kingdom against the person in possession of the throne. While there is a Pretender, he may have his agents in the army as well as he has everywhere else.’ Officers (according to the duke) might be led away from their duty, and he held it to be unjust to the king to deprive him of the right to dismiss officers suspected of Jacobitism, or known to be disloyal, on evidence which a court martial might not think sufficient for cashiering them. The Bill was lost, and to the king was left the power of doing wrong.