bers were in their places at eight o'clock in the
morning. Seldom indeed is anxiety expressed in so emphatic and
conclusive a form among members of the House of Commons. Readers may
remember one day within recent years when a measure of momentous
importance was to be introduced into the House of Commons, and when,
long before eight in the morning, every seat in the House was occupied.
On this March 6, 1739, the House resolved itself into committee, and
spent the whole {171} day in hearing some of the merchants and other
witnesses against the convention. The whole of the next day
(Wednesday) was occupied in the reading of documents bearing on the
subject, and it was not until Thursday that the debate began. The
debate was more memorable for what followed it than for itself. In
itself it was the familiar succession of fierce and unscrupulous
attacks on the policy of peace, mixed up with equally fierce but
certainly very well-deserved attacks on the character of the
convention. William Pitt wound up his speech by declaring that "this
convention, I think from my soul, is nothing but a stipulation for
national ignominy; an illusory expedient to baffle the resentment of
the nation; a truce without a suspension of hostilities on the part of
Spain; on the part of England a suspension, as to Georgia, of the first
law of nature, self-preservation and self-defence; a surrender of the
rights and the trade of England to the mercy of plenipotentiaries, and,
in this infinitely highest and sacred point, future security, not only
inadequate, but directly repugnant to the resolutions of Parliament and
the gracious promise from the throne. The complaints of your
despairing merchants, the voice of England, have condemned it; be the
guilt of it upon the head of its adviser! God forbid that this
committee should share the guilt by approving it!"

One point in the debate is worthy of notice. The address to the King
approving of the convention was moved by Horatio Walpole, the
diplomatist, brother of Sir Robert. In the course of his speech
Horatio Walpole declared that the outbreak of war between England and
any great continental State would be certain to be followed by a new
blow struck by the Pretender and his followers. Some of the orators of
Opposition spoke with immense scorn of the possibility of a Jacobite
movement ever again being heard of in England. The Walpoles both
generally understood pretty well what they were talking