t if
an equal, or anything like an equal, liberality were shown to Frederick,
Prince of Wales, it was extremely probable that he would rush into the
field at the first opportunity and make a clean sweep of the foes of
England.

We need not follow the orator through his account of what was done for
Edward the Black Prince, and what Edward the Black Prince had done in
consequence; and how Henry the Fifth had been able to conquer France
because of his father's early liberality. The whole argument tended to
impress upon the House of Commons the maxim that in a free country, above
all others, it is absolutely necessary to have the heir-apparent of the
crown bred up in a state of grandeur and independency. Despite the
high-flown sentiments and the grandiose historical illustrations in which
the speaker indulged, there seems to the modern intelligence an inherent
meanness, a savor of downright vulgarity, through the whole of it. If
you give a prince only fifty thousand a year, you can't expect anything
of him. What can he know of grandeur of soul, of national honor, of
constitutional rights, of political liberty? You can't get these
qualities in a prince unless you pay him at least a hundred thousand a
year while his {84} father is living. [Sidenote: 1737--Providing for a
Prince] The argument would have told more logically if the English
Parliament were going into the open market to buy the best prince they
could get. There would be some show of reason in arguing that the more
we pay the better article we shall have. But it is hard indeed to
understand how a prince who is to be worth nothing if you give him only
fifty thousand a year, will be another Black Prince or Henry the Fifth if
you let him have the spending of fifty thousand a year more. Walpole led
the Opposition to the motion. Much of the argument on both sides was
essentially sordid, but there was a good deal also which was keen, close,
and clever, and which may have even now a sort of constitutional
interest. The friends of the prince knew they would have to meet the
contention that Parliament had no right to interfere with the Sovereign's
appropriation of the revenues allotted to him. They therefore contended,
and, as it seems to us, with force and justice, that the Parliament which
made the grants had a perfect right to see that the grants were
appropriated to the uses for which they were intended, to follow out the
grants in the course of their applic