[339] Parl. Hist. vii. 486. The division was 88 to 56. There was a schism in the whig party at this time; yet I should suppose the ministers might have prevented this defeat, if they had been anxious to do so. It seems, however, by a letter in Coxe's Memoirs of Walpole, vol. ii. p. 123, that the government were for dropping the charge of treason against Oxford, "it being very certain that there is not sufficient evidence to convict him of that crime," but for pressing those of misdemeanour.
[340] Parl. Hist. vii. 105.
[341] Parl. Hist. vi. 972. Burnet, 560, makes some observations on the vote passed on this occasion, censuring the late ministers for advising an offensive war in Spain. "A resolution in council is only the sovereign's act, who upon hearing his counsellors deliver their opinions, forms his own resolution; a counsellor may indeed be liable to censure for what he may say at that board; but the resolution taken there has been hitherto treated with a silent respect; but by that precedent it will be hereafter subject to a parliamentary inquiry." Speaker Onslow justly remarks that these general and indefinite sentiments are liable to much exception, and that the bishop did not try them by his whig principles. The first instance where I find the responsibility of some one for every act of the Crown strongly laid down is in a speech of the Duke of Argyle, in 1739. Parl. Hist. ix. 1138. "It is true," he says, "the nature of our constitution requires that public acts should be issued out in his majesty's name; but for all that, my lords, he is not the author of them."
[342] "Lord Bolingbroke used to say that the restraining orders to the Duke of Ormond were proposed in the cabinet council, in the queen's presence, by the Earl of Oxford, who had not communicated his intention to the rest of the ministers; and that Lord Bolingbroke was on the point of giving his opinion against it, when the queen, without suffering the matter to be debated, directed these orders to be sent, and broke up the council. This story was told by the late Lord Bolingbroke to my father." Note by Lord Hardwicke on Burnet (Oxf. edit. vi. 119). The noble annotator has given us the same anecdote in the Hardwicke State Papers, ii. 482; but with this variance, that Lord Bolingbroke there ascribes the orders to the queen herself, though he conjectured them to have proceeded from Lord Oxford.
[343] Parl. Hist. vii. 292. The apprehension that parliament, having taken this step, might go on still farther to protract its own duration, was not quite idle. We find from Coxe's Memoirs of Walpole, ii. 217, that in 1720, when the first septennial House of Commons had nearly run its term, there was a project of once more prolonging its life.
[344] Parl. Hist. vii. 589.
[345] The arguments on this side are urged by Addison, in the Old Whig; and by the author of a tract, entitled "Six Questions Stated and Answered."
[346] The speeches of Walpole and others, in the Parliamentary Debates, contain the whole force of the arguments against the peerage bill. Steele in the Plebeian opposed his old friend and coadjutor, Addison, who forgot a little in party and controversy their ancient friendship.
Lord Sunderland held out, by way of inducements to the bill, that the Lords would part with scandalum magnatum, and permit the Commons to administer an oath; and that the king would give up the prerogative of pardoning after an impeachment. Coxe's Walpole, ii. 172. Mere trifles, in comparison with the innovations projected.
[347] The letters in Coxe's Memoirs of Walpole, vol. ii., abundantly show the German nationality, the impolicy and neglect of his duties, the rapacity and petty selfishness of George I. The whigs were much dissatisfied; but fear of losing their places made them his slaves. Nothing can be more demonstrable than that the king's character was the main cause of preserving jacobitism, as that of his competitor was of weakening it.