13th.--The Lords read the Regency Bill the third time, and sent it to the Commons, who read it immediately. Mr. Pelham opened it, and moved for its being read a second time. Sir Francis Dashwood made several objections to it, and asked “What was the intent of the Duke’s being the head of the Council of Regency? a question, he said, simply of curiosity, for he did not desire he should have any power. If this Bill was calculated to pare away the prerogative, he wished the Parliament would set about it roundly, and stickle for a new Magna Charta. He observed that there was no provision made, in case the Princess should die before the determination of her Regency; and he feared her being displeased with these very strict limitations.” He attended the Bill no more, which he foresaw would pass by a great majority, after he had satisfied himself with declaring against it. He was a man of sense without eloquence, and of humour without good humour: naturally inclined to adventures, and had early in his life made a voyage to Russia, dressed like Charles the Twelfth, in hopes of making the Czarina Anne fall in love with him--an improper hero to copy, when a woman was to be captivated! Oglethorpe found more faults in the Bill; Nugent commended it extravagantly. Lord Limerick too approved it, but observed a want of provision, in case the King died during a dissolution of Parliament, or before a new-elected one had sat. The Attorney-General answered him, and the two other opponents, and declared his opinion, that a new chosen Parliament, even before a session, would answer the purposes described in the Bill: but the Solicitor-General thought that it must be the dissolved Parliament that should re-assemble. The Attorney[115] was a man of singular goodness and integrity; of the highest reputation in his profession, of the lowest in the House, where he wearied the audience by the multiplicity of his arguments; resembling the Physician who ordered a medicine to be composed of all the simples in a meadow, as there must be some of them at least that would be proper. T. Pitt and Sydenham spoke against the Bill; Dr. Lee in approbation of the Council, as a safeguard to the Regent, and treated the nomination to offices as a trifle. Henley spoke for the Bill, but agreeing with Lord Limerick’s observation. Mr. Pelham then proposed to read it a second time on the morrow. T. Pitt asked for a longer day, and to have the Bill printed, and was seconded by Sir John Cotton; but on Mr. Pelham’s opposing it, there was no division. The House sat till past seven. 14th.--The Regency Bill was read a second time, and opposed only by Mr. Delaval, in a very absurd speech, which he asked pardon for not having made the day before, which was the first of his sitting in Parliament.