address was carried in the lords by 76 to 33, and in the commons by 176 to 72. Motions were made in both houses declaring that the employment of Hanoverian troops within the king's dominions, at Gibraltar and Minorca, without previous consent of parliament was unconstitutional. It was, the opposition maintained, a violation of the bill of rights, which declared that "the keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of parliament, is against law". On the government side it was pointed out that it was not a time of peace and that the clause did not apply to the dependencies of the kingdom. North, however, consented to a bill of indemnity which was thrown out by the lords, the opposition objecting to it on the ground that it asserted the legality of the measure, the government that it was totally unnecessary. Numerically weak as the opposition was, it maintained the fight with spirit. Motions more or less directly aimed at the war policy of the government were made in the lords by Grafton and Richmond, and in the commons by Luttrell, Fox, Burke, Oliver, Hartley, Lowther, and Sawbridge. On none of these did the minority vote stronger than 33 in the lords and 105 in the commons. Burke, in bringing in a bill on November 16 for composing the troubles in America, urged that the right way was by concessions to be followed by treaty. He would maintain the declaratory act of 1766 as necessary to the authority of parliament, and certain acts passed since 1763 as necessary to British trade; and he desired that parliament should enact that no tax should be levied on the colonies other than by their voluntary grant, and should repeal coercive acts such as that closing Boston harbour. These concessions, while greater than the government would make, would not, it was pointed out, have satisfied the Americans; they did not go to the root of American discontent, which lay in the revenue laws, and dated not from the year 1766, but reached back to 1672. After a long debate, of which we have virtually no record, for strangers were excluded from the house, the bill was lost by 210 votes to 105. [Sidenote: _THE STATE OF THE NAVY._]