A new subsidiary treaty with Saxony (a strange codicil to a general peace!) had been lately concluded; the pretence, the purchase of another Electoral vote for the Archduke Joseph, whom we persisted in making a candidate for the succession of the Empire, though his father and his mother were equally averse to see him King of the Romans. As he was immediate heir to his mother’s vast dominions, the Emperor could not but foresee, that, if the estates of the House of Austria fell to his son, it might even become difficult for himself to retain the empty diadem, when the means of grandeur should be devolved on his child; and the Empress-queen, who had not ceded a jot of power to a husband whose person she loved, was not desirous of calling her son Emperor, who might be less tractable, and more impatient to reign in earnest. Yet the dread the King felt of a new war in Germany, his jealousy of his nephew of Prussia, and even the favourite impulse of acting in contradiction to him, made his Majesty eager to hurry on the election, and profuse of subsidies, which were not to be issued from his own coffers. Lord Cobham, who, having no place to forfeit, was always used by Pitt as the trumpet of their discontents, openly sounded his disapprobation of the Treaty: and old Horace Walpole, who had waded through, and transacted so many treaties, without attaining a Peerage, was at last determined to try if he could not traverse negotiations to better purpose than he had negotiated. On January 7th, the Parliament met again after the adjournment; and on the 16th, Mr. Pelham laid the Treaty before the House. The Duke of Bedford came to town on the 15th; so far from meditating opposition, that he was resolved to make use of the remains of the King’s favour, to ask a pension for the Duchess’s sister, Lady Elizabeth Waldegrave. The Duchess, who could not bear to be out of favour as well as out of power, and who always kept a reconciliation in view, had planned this suit, with at least as much prospect to tie down the Duke by an obligation to the King, from reverting to Opposition, as from kindness to her sister; and there was no doubt but the Pelhams would have pressed the King to grant so trifling a boon; for what could they wish more, when they had driven the Duke of Bedford to resign the power of serving all his friends, than to silence his murmurs, by serving the first friend of his for whom he should submit to solicit?