COMMITTEE FOR TAKING THE STATE OF THE NATION INTO CONSIDERATION.
On the 2nd of February, on the order of the day being read, for the house to resolve itself into a committee to take the state of the nation into consideration, Fox moved that no more troops should be sent out of the kingdom. On the same day, the Duke of Richmond, also, made a similar motion in the house of lords. In both houses the opposition represented that war with France and Spain was inevitable; and that our means of defence were not sufficient in the whole to meet the contingency; and, therefore, it was not prudent to protract an impracticable contest. No answer was made in the commons, but in the lords the motion and the arguments adduced in support of it were denounced as amounting to a public acknowledgment of our inability to prosecute war; as inviting the house of Bourbon to attempt an invasion; and as attacking the prerogative of the crown to raise, direct, and employ the military force of the kingdom. The motions were rejected in the lords by ninety-one against thirty-four; and in the commons by two hundred and ninety-five against one hundred and sixty-five.