The noble lords who have thus ardently asserted the rights of the emperour, who have represented in such strong language the crime of violating the German constitutions, and have commended the neutrality of the king of Prussia, as proper to be imitated by all the rest of the princes 'of the empire, have forgotten, or hoped that others Would forget, the injustice and violence by which he exalted himself to the throne, from which they appear to think it a sacrilegious attempt to endeavour to thrust him down. They forget that one of the votes was illegally suspended, and that the rest were extorted by the terrour of an army. They forget that he invited the French into the empire, and that he is guilty of all the ravages which have been committed and all the blood that has been shed, since the death of the emperour, in the defence of the Pragmatick sanction which he invaded, though ratified by the solemn consent of the imperial diet. In defence of the Pragmatick sanction, my lords, which all the princes of the empire, except his majesty, saw violated without concern, are we now required to exert our force; we are required only to perform what we promised by the most solemn treaties, which, though they have been broken by the cowardice or ambition of other powers, it will be our greatest honour to observe with exemplary fidelity. With this view, as your lordships have already been informed, the Hanoverian troops will march into the empire; nor has their march been hitherto delayed, either because there was yet no regular scheme projected, or because they were obliged to wait for the permission of the king of Prussia, or because they intended only to amuse Europe with an empty show: they were detained, my lords, in Flanders, because it was believed that they were more useful there than they would be in any other place, because they at once encouraged the states, alarmed the French, defended the Low Countries, and kept the communication open between the queen's dominions and those of her allies. Nor were these advantages, my lords, chimerical, and such as are only suggested by a warm imagination; for it is evident that by keeping their station in those countries they have changed the state of the war, that they have protected the queen of Hungary from being oppressed by a new army of French, and given her an opportunity of establishing herself in the possession of Bavaria; that the French forces, instead of being sent either to the assistance of the king of Spain against the king of Sardinia, or of the emperour, for the recovery of those dominions which he has lost by an implicit confidence in their alliance, have been necessarily drawn down to the opposite extremity of their dominions, where they are of no use either to their own country, or to their confederates. The united troops of Britain and Hanover, therefore, carried on the war, by living at ease in their quarters in Flanders, more efficaciously than if they had marched immediately into