Bromley, member for Warwick, "that leave be given to bring in a
bill for repealing the Septennial Act, and for the more frequent
meeting and calling of Parliaments." The circumstances under which
this motion was brought forward gave it a peculiar importance as a
party movement. Before the debate began it was agreed, upon a formal
motion to that effect, "that the Sergeant-at-arms attending the House
should go with the mace into Westminster Hall, and into the Court of
Bequests, and places adjacent, and summon the members there to attend
the service of the House."

The general elections were approaching; the Parliament then sitting had
nearly run its course. The Patriots had been making every possible
preparation for a decisive struggle against Walpole. They had been
using every weapon which partisan hatred and political craft could
supply or suggest. The fury roused up by the Excise Bill had not yet
wholly subsided. Public opinion still throbbed and heaved like a sea
the morning after a storm. {11} The Patriots had been exerting their
best efforts to make the country dissatisfied with Walpole's foreign
policy. The changes were incessantly rung upon the alleged
depredations which the Spaniards were committing on our mercantile
marine. Long before the time for the general elections had come, the
Patriot candidates were stumping the country. Their progress through
each county was marked by the wildest riots. The riots sometimes
called for the sternest military repression. On the other hand, the
Patriots themselves were denounced and discredited by all the penmen,
pamphleteers, and orators who supported the Government on their own
account, or were hired by Walpole and Walpole's friends to support it.
So effective were some of these attacks, so damaging was the incessant
imputation that in the mouths of the Patriots patriotism meant nothing
but a desire for place and pay, that Pulteney and his comrades found it
advisable gradually to shake off the name which had been put on them,
and which they had at one time willingly adopted. They began to call
themselves "the representatives of the country interest."

The final struggle of the session was to take place on the motion for
the repeal of the Septennial Act. We have already given an account of
the passing of that Act in 1716, and of the reasons which in our
opinion justified its passing. It cannot be questioned that there is
much to be said in favor of the princ