Mr. Fox asked, “If the prolonged Parliament is not to dissolve of course as soon as the minor King comes of age?” The Attorney-General replied, “The general law of the land will then operate for its dissolution.” But Henley said, “That, as the new elect might be composed of ignorant persons, he wished the prolonged Parliament were to last six months after the commencement of the majority, that the young King might have the same benefit from that act that an older Prince would have!” Sir William Yonge approved this opinion, and said, he remembered that on the late King’s accession, instead of attending the business of the House, every body ran out of town to secure their re-elections. The Solicitor-General replied, “That as the prolonging Parliaments was neither an eligible nor popular measure, he was glad the regulation extended no further; though it was more necessary now to continue their duration for some time after a King’s death than when Parliaments did not give the Revenue.” George Townshend spoke against the Parliament’s prolonging itself, and said, “There was nothing so dangerous as to inculcate into a young King, that he owes his safety to anything unconstitutional.”
Fazakerley made a tedious calculation, which he seemed to intend for humour, of how long the Parliament might possibly continue if every one of the late Prince of Wales’s children should happen to die just at a given time. The Solicitor replied, “That, if such melancholy accidents should happen, the reasons for the continuation would increase in proportion.” Morton spoke for, Dowdswell and Sir John Cotton against the amendment; but it was voted. Lord Harley[127] then spoke prettily against the whole clause, and said, “That all the arguments that had been used would hold good upon all elections, and would tend to make any Parliament perpetual; and that such groundless apprehensions ought not to be appeased at the expense of the constitution; that the people will be cheated who will not have opportunities of changing such representatives as they dislike; and that upon the whole he observed, that Parliaments had originally been annual, then were stretched to triennial, then lengthened out to septennial, and now were going to be made perpetual.”