ONE:Parliament was prorogued on the 18th of April, and the king soon after set out for his German dominions, taking Stanhope along with him, and his mistress, the Duchess of Kendal. In appointing the Regency to administer affairs in the king's absence, the Prince of Wales was entirely passed over, to his great indignation; nor were he and the Princess allowed to hold levees, that duty being assigned to the young princesses, to the great scandal of the public, and further exposure of the discord raging in the Royal family. Even during the session the ministers had brought in a Bill to "settle and limit the Peerage in such a manner that the number of English peers should not be enlarged beyond six of the present number (178), which, upon failure of male issue, might be supplied by new creations; that, instead of the sixteen elective peers of Scotland, twenty-five should be made hereditary on the part of that kingdom; and that this number, upon failure of heirs male, should be supplied from the other members of the Scottish Peerage." Both the king and ministers flattered themselves that they should carry this Bill, and thus fetter the Prince of Wales when he came to the throne. The king was desirous to do this out of sheer jealousy and hatred of his own son, and the ministers, Sunderland in particular, out of dread of his vengeance in that case; for, if he created a dozen peers at a time, as Anne had done, he could easily swamp the Whigs and put the present ministers in peril of impeachment. But though the Whigs had been clamorous against the act of Anne, some of them now, Cowper and Townshend at their head, as vehemently denounced this measure as a gross infringement of the royal prerogative. The debate became very bitter, and many friendships were broken up by it, amongst others that of Addison and Steele, who took different sides; but the Bill was finally dropped, through the vigorous opposition offered to it by Walpole.
TWO:On such utterly unsubstantial ground did the English ministers continue this negotiation. They assured De Torcy that the Queen of England insisted on Philip's renunciation of one throne or the other, and he at length renounced that of France, everybody seeing that the sense in which he renounced it was no renunciation at all, but a pretence to get the peace effected; and thus the[4] English ministers, with their eyes open to the fraud, went on urging the Allies to come into these most delusive and unsatisfactory terms. But as the renunciation of Philip did not arrive till after midsummer, the negotiators at Utrecht continued to talk without advancing, and the armies in the field continued to look at each other without fighting.
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