On the 20th the Committee sat. Pitt ridiculed with much humour this scheme which the Ministry so greatly applauded, and yet with which the nation would not have been blessed, if by a fortuitous concurrence of circumstances Prevot had not been taken prisoner in August, and carried into Brest, if he had not been going an adventurer to America, and had not found his way from Brest hither;[54] and if, after all, he had not taken it into his head to have a regiment. He wished this Ulysses-like wanderer might be as wise! wished the Ministers would wait but till Monday, to hear the colonies! He had been told, indeed, that the immutable laws of the Medes were absurd--were the resolutions of Ministers to be more unchangeable than those of the King of Persia--of Xerxes with his multitude at his heels? He did not comprehend this modelling, rejecting, resuming, shaping, altering; he believed all this beautiful mechanism had been employed about it, but you that are to buy it, will they not let you examine and weigh it, and know the intrinsic value? Fox said, Lord Baltimore and Penn were not limited by any Act of Settlement, but could commission foreigners. The Massachusets can naturalize and then commission them. He had never wished any Ministers should be immutable; God forbid they should be so in any sense! if common sense on their side, they would be in the wrong to be immutable. But would you hear Mr. Bollan on the Act of Settlement? his whole petition was against the regiment; tended to reject the Bill, not to alter it. “Penn,” continued he, “authorizes me, Lord Baltimore authorizes me, to approve this Bill, though they did not think it decent to petition for it. I have been told that from Bollan we should hear of injustice, oppression, ingratitude--I cannot believe it, for I remember what passed in a certain assembly some time ago between two persons, one[55] not present now, the other, I believe, is--(looking about indirectly towards Charles Townshend). The person now here bad the other _take the poor American by the hand and point out his grievances. He defied him; if that would not do, he beseeched him to point out a single grievance: for his part, he did not know of one._ When that day shall come,” added Fox, “I hope that gentleman, who speaks as well as the honourable person himself over against me, will attend and confute both Mr. Bollan and his introductor.”