whom we were employing. As regards the battle of Dettingen, he declared that we had no idea of fighting, but that the French had caught us in a trap. The ardour of our troops was restrained by the cowardice of the Hanoverians; we ran away in the night, leaving our dead and wounded behind us. Never would he consent to call the battle a victory, it was only a fortunate escape. Were we to continue fighting? he asked. We ourselves had nothing to gain by it, though Hanover, no doubt, would continue to receive four or five hundred thousand pounds a year from us if we did. But we should consider, even the Hanoverians should consider, that we could not carry on a long war as in the reign of Queen Anne. We were not far from a national bankruptcy, and should soon have to disband our army. What, then, if the Pretender should land at the head of a French force? This outline is given to show the singular but forcible mixture of shrewd argument, wayward extravagance, and bitter scoffs, which at this time constituted Pitt's parliamentary armament. He followed this speech up by another on December 6, of which little remains; but his vehemence brought him into collision with the Speaker. He urged contemptuously that if we must have German troops we should rather hire those of Cologne and Saxony than those of Hanover. The King was surrounded by German officers, and by one English Minister without an English heart. The little finger of one man, he declared, had lain heavier upon the nation than an administration which had continued twenty years. Murray, however, the Solicitor-General, afterwards Lord Mansfield, delivered a consummate speech against the motion, which carried so much conviction that Pitt with some of the other Cobhamites struck out the words relating to the exhausted and impoverished state of the kingdom. But the amended motion was rejected by a majority of seventy-seven. And now there occurred a significant fissure in the Opposition. Pitt and Lyttelton were inclined to support the maintenance of the British force in Flanders. But Cobham, the chief of the little party, was uncompromising: he resigned his commission 'as captain of the troop of horse grenadiers' and his seat in the Cabinet. A formula had to be framed to unite the two sections, and so George Grenville brought forward a motion praying his Majesty 'in consideration of the exhausted and impoverished state of the Kingdom not to proceed in this war without the concurrence of the Dutch.' Pitt concurred in this motion, and promised that if it were rejected he would join in opposing the continued employment of the British as well as the Hanoverian troops in Flanders.