committee saw in the women's sick wards many miserable objects without beds, on the floor, perishing with extreme want, and in the men's sick ward yet much worse. On giving food to these poor wretches, though it was done with the utmost caution—they being allowed at first the smallest quantities, and that of liquid nourishment—one died. The vessels of his stomach were so disordered and contracted for want of use, that they were totally incapable of performing their office, and the unhappy creature perished about the time of digestion. Upon his body a coroner's inquest sate,—a thing which, though required by law to be always done, hath, for many years, been scandalously omitted in this gaol—and the jury found that he died of want. Those who were not so far gone, on proper nourishment being given them, recovered, so that not above nine have died since the 25th of March last, the day the committee first met there, though before, a day seldom passed without a death; and, upon the advancing of the spring, not less than eight or ten usually died every twenty-four hours."
It was high time for a Howard to commence his researches into such regions.
The year 1732 was distinguished by little of importance. The opposition, led on by Pulteney, attacked the treaty of Vienna, by which the Pragmatic Sanction had been approved of, and which, they contended, might lead us into a continental war some day, or into a breach of the public faith, of which, they asserted, this ministry had perpetrated too many already. They assailed the standing army, but were answered that there was yet a pretender, and many men capable of plotting and caballing against the crown. The king was so incensed at Pulteney for his strictures on the army, that he struck his name out of the list of privy councillors, and ordered that all commissions of the peace which he held in different counties should be revoked. Amongst the most adulatory supporters of the government was lord Harvey, the "lord Fanny" of Pope. This lord Harvey was a young man of ability, but of such a miserable constitution that he was obliged to live only on asses' milk and biscuits. Once a week he indulged himself in an apple, and he took an emetic daily. He contended that the writers who attacked government ought to be put down by force, and in his own person he attempted to put this in practice; for Pulteney being suspected by him of having written a scarifying article on him in the "Craftsman," he challenged him, and both combatants were wounded. Plumer very justly contended that scribblers ought to be left to other scribblers.
On the 1st of June the king prorogued parliament, and soon after set out for Hanover, leaving the queen regent as before. During his residence in Germany the decree of the Pragmatic Sanction was ratified by the Diet, thus enabling the princess Maria Theresa to succeed to the throne of Austria. This celebrated queen, and afterwards empress, was about to be married to the duke of Lorraine, who in the preceding year had made a visit to England, and had been greatly struck by the wealth and prosperity of the country, and the kind and courteous spirit of the people. During George's sojourn in Germany this summer, he took under his protection a considerable number of the protestants of the archbishopric of Saltzburg, who, spite of the treaty of Westphalia, which guaranteed liberty of conscience to all Germany, were suffering a severe persecution. Numbers of these poor people were allowed to cross over to England, where they were supported by a grant of parliament, and sent off principally to the American colony of Georgia, founded by the benevolent general Oglethorpe.
The parliament session of 1733 opened with loud complaints that Spain had not yet made compensation for the depredations committed on our merchants during the last war, and the king was compelled to admit that the meeting of the commissioners of the two powers had been delayed, and that no satisfactory result was yet arrived at. Spain, having got the main question of peace or war settled with England and France, showed no disposition to make restitution of even seizures made before proclamation of war. She contended that the greater part of the British merchants who had suffered loss had been concerned in a smuggling trade with her colonies, and that nearly all trade to those colonies, except the supply of negroes under the Assiento, was smuggling. There was a loud demand upon Walpole to insist on plain terms for throwing open the trade to the Spanish main, and for satisfaction for past damages. But Walpole knew that such a course rendered a war hazardous. The usual trade to the Spanish colonies had been conceded in the preliminaries, but Spain did not practically allow it, and Walpole was by no means inclined to create fresh differences with that proud, poor, and unmanageable nation.
Ministers were even, in the present state of peace, at their wits' end for means of paying the ordinary demands upon them, and Walpole was about introducing measures which of themselves raised a turmoil in the public mind. The pension bill and the standing army evoked much heat of opposition, but the measures which excited the most sensation were the open breach of faith regarding the sinking fund, and a bill for extending the excise over fresh articles.
The sinking fund was established in 1717 by Stanhope and Walpole himself. During the reign of George I. that fund had been held sacred, but in this reign and since 1727, there had been several stealthy invasions of it. These having been tolerated, Walpole had become bold by impunity, and now he proposed to take half a million from it for the current expenses of the year. The opposition raised a loud and just outcry at this breach of public faith, and Sir John Barnard, member for London, who had been brought up as a member of the Society of Friends, and was regarded at once as one of the most upright men and best financiers of the age, declared that not only ought this fund never to be touched for any other than its legitimate purpose, but that those who did invade it must expect the curses of posterity; that it was a poor, short-sighted expedient to ease ourselves by loading our posterity.
Pulteney had a fine opportunity of lashing Walpole, and exclaimed, "The right honourable gentleman had once the vanity to call himself the father of the sinking fund; but if Solomon's judgment was right, he who is thus for splitting and dividing the child, can never be deemed to be the real father." Walpole, however, had a powerful argument for the landed members, and informed them that if he were not allowed to borrow from the sinking fund, he must lay on a
