Pitt taxing him with it, he pretended not to have said, that it was stipulated so in the Swedish treaty, but understood so in it. The Committee, by a majority of 210 to 55, voted the money; and four days afterwards war was proclaimed with France. The same day (18th) the Militia Bill was read in the House of Lords for the second time. The Duke of Bedford, thinking the Duke of Newcastle would oppose or let it be dropped for want of time, supported it strongly. Newcastle did oppose it, but faintly, with Lord Granville and Lord Sandys, and suffered it to be committed. Lord Halifax supported it well in the Committee; Lord Temple dared the Ministers to throw it out. Lord Granville immediately attacked it warmly, but it went through without a division. On the 24th, Lord Stanhope spoke well on its behalf. Lord Granville again opposed it as absurd, unjust, and oppressive. He would not amend it, he said, for he disliked it; he would not be for it, because it was unamended. He would not be influenced by its having passed the Commons, or by its being popular--yet it was not popular, for often it had not been attended in the Commons by above fifteen persons; consequently had been voted in not a legal House. Lord Granville always strongly asserted the dignity of his own House of Parliament against the other. The Duke of Bedford argued for the Bill, and affirmed that the people had only submitted to foreign forces on the promise of a Militia Bill. The Chancellor declared against it on the impracticability,--and (those who love liberty will love him for it) on its omitting the declaration of the power of the Militia being in the Crown, which had been asserted by Lord Clarendon and Lord Southampton on the Restoration. Himself, he said, had never been reckoned a prerogative lawyer, yet he would never _let_ the prerogative be lessened with his consent. If I have here marked out Lord Hardwicke’s memory to the indignation of free men, he might pardon me:--there are always numbers ready to admire the advocates of prerogative--Laud had his adorers; Jefferies hardly escaped them. Lord Bath spoke for the Bill; the Duke of Newcastle against it; and it was rejected by 59 to 23. On the 27th, the Parliament was prorogued. Old Horace Walpole was at last declared a Peer, with Mr. Villiers and Sir Dudley Rider; but the latter being taken ill on the very day he was to have kissed hands, and dying the next, the Peerage was, with much hardship, withheld from his son.