mmission, some do not desire, and some do not
deserve it; and with regard to the remaining part, which can be no great
number, I have already stated the intention of his majesty, and
therefore cannot but conclude that the motion is needless.

Mr. PULTENEY spoke as follows:--Sir, I know not by what fatality it is,
that all the motions made by one party are reasonable and necessary, and
all that are unhappily offered by the other, are discovered either to be
needless, or of pernicious tendency. Whenever a question can be clouded
and perplexed, the opponents of the ministry are always mistaken,
confuted, and, in consequence of the confutations, defeated by the
majority of votes. When truth is too notorious to be denied, and too
obvious to be contested, the administration claim the honour of the
first discovery, and will never own that they were incited to their duty
by the remonstrances of their opponents, though they never, before those
remonstrances, had discovered the least intention of performing it.

But that the motion is allowed to be just and proper, is sufficient; the
importance of it will be easily discovered. For my part I shall always
consider that motion as important, which tends to contract the expenses
of the publick, to rescue merit from neglect, and to hinder the increase
of the dependents on the ministry.

Sir Robert WALPOLE answered:--Sir, there is no temper more opposite to
that incessant attention to the welfare of the publick, which is the
perpetual boast of those who have signalized themselves by opposing the
measures of the administration, than a lust of contradiction, and a
disposition to disturb this assembly with superfluous debates.

Whether this disposition is not discovered in the reply made to the
declaration of his majesty's intentions, and the confession of the
propriety of the motion, let the house determine. It must surely be
confessed, that it is not necessary to advise what is already
determined.

Nor is it less evident, that many of the officers whose interest is now
so warmly solicited, must be incapacitated by their age for service, and
unable to receive any benefit from the offer of new commissions. To deny
this, is to question the flux of time, or to imagine that the
constitution of a soldier is exempt from its injuries.

Mr. SANDYS explained himself to this effect:--Sir, I am far from
intending by this motion to fill the army with decrepit officers, or to
obstruct in any man