We do not again hear Pitt's voice till 1749, when he vindicated the proposal of the Government to pay to Glasgow ten thousand pounds to reimburse the city in some degree for what the occupation of the Jacobites had cost it. This of course was an official speech and of no permanent interest.[185] He had to prove that the case of Glasgow stood by itself, and that there was no analogy between this and those of other towns which made the same claim. Two of his points are incidentally worthy of remark. The first is that it was the whole tenor of Glasgow's conduct since the Reformation which had drawn upon it the resentment of the Jacobites; the second, that if this payment were not made, and made promptly, Glasgow must be ruined. He told, too, a story which merits preservation. When there were rumours in 1688 of the coming of William III. with 30,000 men, an adherent of James II. made light of the matter; when it was said that the prince was coming with 20,000 he began to be alarmed; but when he heard that the expeditionary force numbered only 14,000 he cried, 'We are undone: an army of 30,000 men could not conquer England. But no man would come here with only 14,000 unless he were sure of finding a great many traitors among ourselves.'[186] In 1750 there is a faint echo of Pitt's voice in a discussion on the annual Mutiny Bill, at least the only echo in the recorded debates, for we learn from two letters of Pitt's to George Grenville that there had been other long and troublesome discussions in which he had had officially to bear much of the burden.[187] Colonel Townshend brought forward the case of non-commissioned officers who had been broke or reduced to the ranks without any cause assigned. Some of these, he said, were waiting at the bar as he spoke. He proposed a clause for preventing this abuse, and forbidding these punishments except under sentence of a court-martial. Pitt took the line, truly enough, that if soldiers were on every occasion to bring their complaints against their officers to the House for redress there would be an end to all discipline; and proceeded in the tone of a Paymaster-General to declare that the business of the House was to consider the requisite number of the forces and to grant money for their payment, but that the conduct of the army or complaints against one another were solely within the province of the King or those commissioned by His Majesty.[188] This need not detain us. About the same time, Lord Egmont, who now represented the Prince of Wales in the House of Commons, an able man not without incredible absurdities, brought forward a mischievous motion with regard to Dunkirk. The question which he raised was whether the French had demolished the fortifications erected during the late war, as by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle they were bound to do; but he diverged into a general attack upon the provisions of that Treaty. Pelham answered him in a speech of remarkable candour.