17th.--The Bill was read in the House of Lords. The Duke of Bedford began with showing the impracticability of the measure, from the difficulties both of maintaining a colony on the forfeited estates, and of procuring people to settle on them. Troops can be of no service to support them in winter, unless forts are built; an expense that would far exceed the views of this Bill. English would not go thither; Irish cannot be spared, for you must not weaken the Protestant interest in that island; Scotch Highlanders will not remove thither from their own fastnesses; _Germans_ indeed will migrate--but not to _worse_ countries. But, he asked, had the Ministry permitted the disloyal inhabitants to remain upon these estates for six years since the Rebellion, and did they now propose to banish them? Would they engraft cruelty upon their negligence? and that in a case which decides the inhumanity, as it would punish the oppressed, yet not derive any benefit to the public,--the only justifiable pretence for national severities: for what benefit will the public reap from the change of Lords, under whom these Highlanders are to be placed by this Bill? Indeed, he said, he feared such encouragement was given to that country, by this and some other Bills, as would, even in our time, produce a new Rebellion--Glasgow--the great Lords, have received such sums, such means of new commotions, as they could have obtained no other way--and though particular towns and persons are pretended to be relieved, money is, through their channels, circulated over the whole country, and we deprive ourselves of the advantages that might accrue even from treason, when the disaffected have contributed to despoil and impoverish their own country. He feared Rebellion would grow a national malady! Danger is even to be apprehended from the method of putting this Bill in execution: should the Commissioners not act, it is a needless, an useless Bill--if they do, what is to encourage them? power and interest? and into what hands are you going to trust those formidable enemies? Are you not taking the same method you took with Lord Lovat? Will you empower more Lord Lovats to nurse up more Rebellions? He was a single instance, and the subsidy to him a trifle in comparison: this is a plan for the most formidable power ever attempted hitherto to be established in that country.