The Spaniards, not to be outdone, recorded the sufferings of two of their nobles, who, captured by our British filibusters, had been compelled to devour their own noses.[119] It was alleged, too, that English pirates swarmed, and that Spaniards were publicly sold as slaves in British colonies.[120] But these allegations, though probably neither more nor less veracious than the others, had no currency in England, while the story of the suffering Jenkins ran through England like wildfire. A bombastic utterance was coined for him by some political Tadpole, and rang through the land. None cared to inquire into the right or the wrong of the imprisonments, or to investigate the other side of the question, and there were none to present it if they did. 'Britons in Spanish prisons' was a sufficient cry, and swept the nation off its feet. Walpole, always too contemptuous of popular passion, had presented to Parliament a convention with Spain, which regulated most of the points at issue between them, except that which lay nearest the heart of his people, the right of search; and his brother Horace moved, in a long and laudatory speech, an address of thanks to the Crown for this agreement. This roused the Prince's young men. Lyttelton, indeed, spoke ostentatiously as the Prince's mouthpiece. 'I know who hears me,' he said, alluding to his master's presence in the gallery, 'and for that reason I speak,'[121] Pitt and Grenville also spoke, and they are described in a contemporary account as 'three or four young gentlemen who took great personal liberties.' Another letter says that Pitt 'spoke very well, but very abusively.' However imperfectly his speech may be reported, it has much of that energy of declamatory invective which is part of the tradition connected with his name. Of this the peroration is a sufficient example. 'This convention, Sir, I think from my heart 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 right 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 on the adviser. God forbid that the Committee should share the guilt by approving it.'[122] This was undoubtedly the first speech in which Pitt made a real mark as an orator, and of this a proof remains in the fact that it is recorded that Sir R. Walpole took notes of it as it proceeded.[123]