blished succession; and am, therefore, always of opinion, that
no measures can serve the common cause, the cause of liberty, or of
religion, or of general happiness, by which the royal family loses the
affections of the people. And I can with great confidence affirm, that
no attempt for many years has raised a greater heat of resentment, or
excited louder clamours of indignation, than the hire of Hanoverian
troops; nor is this discontent raised only by artful misrepresentations,
formed to inflame the passions, and perplex the understanding; it is a
settled and rational dislike, which every day contributes to confirm,
which will make all the measures of the government suspected, and may
in time, if not obviated, break out in sedition.

A jealousy of Hanover has, indeed, for a long time prevailed in the
nation. The frequent visits of our kings to their electoral dominions,
contrary to the original terms on which this crown was conferred upon
them, have inclined the people of Britain to suspect, that they have
only the second place in the affection of their sovereign; nor has
this suspicion been made less by the large accessions made to those
dominions by purchases, which the electors never appeared able to make
before their exaltation to the throne of Britain, and by some measures
which have been apparently taken only to aggrandize Hanover at the
expense of Britain.

These measures, my lords, I am very far from imputing to our sovereign
or his father; the wisdom of both is so well known, that they cannot
be imagined to have incurred, either by contempt or negligence, the
disaffection of their subjects. Those, my lords, are only to be
blamed, who concealed from them the sentiments of the nation, and for
the sake of promoting their own interest, betrayed them, by the most
detestable and pernicious flattery, into measures which could produce
no other effect than that of making their reign unquiet, and of
exasperating those who had concurred with the warmest zeal in
supporting them on the throne.

It is not without an uncommon degree of grief, that I hear it urged in
defence of this contract, that it was approved by a very numerous
council; for what can produce more sorrow in an honest and a loyal
breast, than to find that our sovereign is surrounded by counsellors,
who either do not know the desires and opinions of the people, or do
not regard them; who are either so negligent as not to examine how the
affections of the n