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PULTENEY replied in this manner: Sir, I shall submit to you and all who hear me, whether I have treated the honourable gentleman's name with any contemptuous freedom of speech.

Pulteney advised him to go back for a while to France, and in the early part of 1734 he took the advice and went. "My part is over," he wrote to Wyndham, in words which have a certain pathetic dignity in them, "and he who remains on the stage after his part is over deserves to be hissed off."

Pulteney himself, when speaking on the general question, professed, indeed, not to assume the charges in the petitions to be true before they had been established, but he proceeded to deal with them on something very like a positive assumption that they would be established. Thereupon he struck the key-note of the whole outcry that was to be raised against the Ministry.

At the same time we may remark in passing that his opinions and prejudices were not so invincible as to blind him to real genius and eminent public services; and the admirers of Lord Chatham may fairly draw an argument in favour of his policy from Walpole's admission of its value in raising the spirit of the people; an admission which, it may be supposed, it must have gone against his grain to make in favour of a follower of Pulteney.

Sir R. sent a friend to reproach him; the moment the gentleman who had engaged for him came into the room, Oswald said, "You had like to have led me into a fine error! did you not tell me that Sir R. would have the majority?" When the debate was over, Mr. Pulteney owned that he had never heard so fine a debate on our side; and said to Sir Robert, "Well, nobody can do what you can!"

Pamphlets, made up of calumny and scurrility, filled the shops of all the booksellers; and of those pamphlets, the most galling were written under the direction of the malignant Temple. It was now the fashion to compare the two Williams, William Pulteney and William Pitt.

A few miles upward from the lower end of Eskdale lies the little capital of the district, the town of Langholm; and there, in the market-place, stands another monument to the virtues of the Malcolm family in the statue erected to the memory of Admiral Sir Pulteney Malcolm, a distinguished naval officer. Above Langholm, the country becomes more hilly and moorland.

Pulteney moved for an address on this subject; but each of these motions was rejected on a division: and the majority concurred in an address of thanks to his majesty, for the great wisdom of his conduct.

In answer to this speech, affectionate addresses were presented by both houses, without any considerable opposition. The seceding members had again resumed their seats in the house of commons; and Mr. Pulteney thought proper to vindicate the extraordinary step which they had taken.

Pulteney, it must be said, was not for any such course of action, indeed, was against it, and had given the prince good advice; and Carteret was not for it. But Lord Chesterfield and several other peers, and Lyttelton and William Pitt in the House of Commons, were eager for the fray, and their counsels prevailed.