Horace Walpole the younger discussed the question, whether this regulation would be an infringement of the Act of Settlement, of which, he said, nobody could be more tender, as he had lately shown, by opposing the treaties which he had thought clashed with that Act. A literal infringement he allowed it would be, but merely literal, and the benefits to be reaped by departing from the letter, he was of opinion would come within the very spirit of the Act, were undoubtedly consonant to the intention of the Legislators who framed it, and tended to secure the blessings of that very establishment to a considerable number of our fellow-subjects. That the Legislators may be, and generally are, the greatest men of their age, yet their notions and ideas must flow, and are taken up from the views of their own age; and though they build for posterity, yet they build with materials of their own time: that they attempt to prevent as far as they foresee: that any constitution, however wisely framed, if once declared unalterable, must become a grievance: wise and happy as our own is, did it not grow so by degrees? should we presume to pronounce that it received the last perfecting hand in the reign of King William? subsequent alterations showed it had not. That the great purpose of the patriots of that reign, when by the misrule of their native Kings they were reduced to place a Foreign Family on the Throne, had been to guard against the predilection of their new sovereigns in favour of ancient subjects, and to secure their posterity from being enslaved by those who were introduced to protect liberty. This country had experienced how little even English Kings could resist practising against English liberty; a race of German Princes, accustomed to arbitrary government, was still more likely to grasp at arbitrary power. That these apprehensions had dictated that clause in the Act of Settlement which prohibits any foreigner born from being so far naturalized as to be capable of any employment, civil or military; and there the words did clash with the scheme in question.