ficulties, but that which regards the
support of the Pragmatick sanction?

If these deliberations should be so far influenced by the arrival of
the army in the pay of Britain, as to end in a resolution to send a
sufficient number of forces into Germany, it will not be denied, that
the troops which give occasion for this debate, have really been
useful to the common cause; nor will his majesty lose the affections
of any of his subjects, by the false accounts which have been spread
of an invidious preference given to the troops of Hanover.

That every government ought to endeavour to gain the esteem and
confidence of the people, I suppose we are all equally convinced; but
I, for my part, am very far from thinking that measures ought only to
be pursued or rejected, as they are immediately favoured or disliked
by the populace. For as they cannot know either the causes or the end
of publick transactions, they can judge only from fallacious
appearances, or the information of those whose interest it may perhaps
be to lead them away from the truth. That monarch will be most
certainly and most permanently popular, who steadily pursues the good
of his people, even in opposition to their own prejudices and
clamours; who disregards calumnies, which, though they may prevail for
a day, time will sufficiently confute, and slights objections which he
knows may be answered, and answered beyond reply.

Such, my lords, are the objections which have been hitherto raised
against the troops of Hanover, of which many arise from ignorance, and
many from prejudice; and some may be supposed to be made only for the
sake of giving way to invectives, and indulging a petulant inclination
of speaking contemptuously of Hanover.

With this view, my lords, it has been asked, why the Hanoverians are
preferred to all other nations? why they have been selected from all
other troops, to fight, against France, the cause of Europe? They were
chosen, my lords, because they were most easily to be procured. Of the
other nations from whom forces have usually been hired, some were
engaged in the care of protecting, or the design of extending their
own dominions, and others had no troops levied, nor could, therefore,
furnish them with speed enough for the exigence that demanded them.

It has been asked with an air of triumph, as a question to which no
answer could be given, why an equal number of Britons was not sent,
since their valour might be esteemed at le