Murray answered, that the sense of the House on the legality might be taken collaterally in the Committee--but were we engaged, or to be engaged, in a war for Hanover? The first Act of Settlement, which obliged Privy Councillors to sign their opinions, had been repealed by Lord Somers himself. That, allowing the present charge, the Act would not be infringed till the troops were reclaimed. But these arguments would disable the King from leaving a single clause in a treaty for his Electoral defence. If this treaty violated the Act of Settlement, it had been broken by all defensive treaties; had been broken by the Quadruple Alliance. That treaty engaged the contracting Powers mutually to defend _all_ the dominions of each other; and if the stipulated succours proved insufficient, they were to engage in a war. It was the same in the treaty of Hanover. But the bare conclusion of the treaty was never charged. In the year 1739 we contracted for Hessians and Danes; it was thought prudent to secure them, though we were then involved only in a war with Spain: no previous application had been made to Parliament. All subsequent subsidiary treaties had been concluded in the same way. We could not enjoy the blessing of the present Royal Family without the inconveniences. In the year 1740 a Vote of Credit had been applied in the same manner. But granting it perverted, would the misapplication spoil the treaty? Pitt, after Hume Campbell’s attack, had let these discussions intervene, as if taking time to collect his anger. He rose at last, aggravating by the most contemptuous looks, and action, and accents, the bitterest and most insulting of all speeches. Such little matter, he said, had been offered on the defensive side, that he did not know where to go. Had Hume Campbell had anything else to say, he would not have dwelt for half an hour on the treaty of Wolfenbuttle--and what had he produced? a list of Lords who signed it! How were their names to induce the House to refer these treaties to a Committee? such poor little shifts and evasions might do in a pie-poudre-court;[35] they were unworthy a great House of Parliament. Once Hume Campbell had been his great friend, and they had trod the same paths of invectives[36] together, which now the other wanted to have punished, so ready was he, by a side-wind, to level the laws, and so fond of _superiors_! Nay, he had urged that the Act of Settlement was not obligatory till the treaties were ratified! he prayed to Heaven, that doctrines, dangerous as _manifestos_, might not prevail there! The gentleman had dared to avow such doctrine--but a Court could never want one servile lawyer for any purpose. In the profligate, prerogative reign of James the First, when a _great Duke_[37] was at the head of power, even that House of Commons possessed a member who dared to call him _Stellionatus_.[38] And there did not want a _servile lawyer_ to call for punishment on the honest burgess.