Book Description

Excerpt from The History of England, Vol. 2 of 4: During the Reign of George III; Designed as a Continuation of Hume and Smollett This liberty of disposing of the public money without the knowledge of the British House of Commons, was considered by some as a stretch of power which ought not to be passed over in silence, and on the 15th of February, Mr. Thomas Townsend moved "that the Earl of Harcourt was herein chargeable with a breach of privilege, and had acted in derogation of the authority of the British House of Commons; and that a committee be appointed to inquire into the same." It was stated, on the other hand, that the measure was in exact conformity to that ancient and acknowledged prerogative, by which the crown, upon any emergency, raised troops of its own will, and then applied to Parliament for the payment, or entered into treaties for the same purpose with foreign princes, and pledged the national faith for a due performance Of the articles. The motion for a committee to inquire into the matter of complaint was rejected by a majority of 224 to 106; and some other motions for laying the votes of the Irish Parliament, relative to this business, before the House, and for passing a censure on the lord-lieutenant's conduct, were negatived without a division. The treaties entered into with the Duke of Brunswick, the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, and the Count of Hanau, for hiring about 17,000 of their troops for the American service, were laid before Parliament by Lord North, who moved, on the 29th of February, to refer these compacts to the committee of supply, which occasioned a long and warm debate. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.