most proper, which this of "no search" can never be, unless Spain should be brought so low as to give us a _carte blanche_; and such a low ebb it is not our interest to bring that nation to, nor would the other Powers of Europe suffer it, should we attempt it.'[195] This is a new milestone. 'Those who endeavour to quote from my former speeches, the outpourings of my hot and fractious youth, are hereby warned off. I have sown my wild oats; henceforward I am to be regarded as a prudent and sagacious statesman.' This was the real purport of this speech, divested of the necessary circumlocutions. A statesman who has been an active politician in his youth usually has to utter some such warning and repentant note in his maturity. [Sidenote: Feb. 22, 1751.] In 1751 we find Pitt delivering another speech which marks a further distance from his unregenerate days. At this time, for reasons which we can now scarcely discern, but which originated with George II., who considered that the peace and safety of his electorate depended on a secure succession to the Empire being vested in the House of Austria, our foreign policy was concentrated on securing the election of Maria Theresa's son, a boy of ten years old, as King of the Romans, and so heir to the Empire. This strange line of action was absurd enough to be congenial to Newcastle, who soon adopted it, called it his darling child, and grudged its paternity to the King.[196] Pelham had reluctantly to follow, only deprecating expenditure as far as possible. For this we slaved and negotiated and subsidised, in the faith that should the Emperor die without a King of the Romans being ready to succeed him, a war must infallibly ensue. This hypothesis was at least doubtful; but, in any case, we expended our energies in vain. Prussia, and France as guarantor of the Treaty of Westphalia, declared the election of a minor to be contrary to the fundamental laws of the Empire, and prevailed. There is the less reason to deplore our failure, as it is not known what we should have gained by success. Austria, which was alone to profit, threw the coldest water on the project. The obvious flaw of the policy appears to have been that the receipt of subsidies so entirely conflicted with the electoral oath as to form an insuperable bar of honour preventing any elector who received them from voting for our candidate. We were in fact to bribe those who could not vote if they accepted our bribe, for an object flagrantly illegal, on behalf of a Power which scouted our assistance. We offered to bribe the Electors of Mainz, Cologne, and Saxony. To the Elector of Bavaria we agreed by treaty to pay 40,000_l._ a year, the sum to be made up by Holland and ourselves. It was this last treaty which Pitt found himself called upon to defend, and his speech was a broad defence of the whole system and principle of subsidies. 'Surely,' he cried, 'it is more prudent in us to