22d.--On the third reading of the Bill, Lord Temple made a very bad obscure speech; tried to answer Lord Granville; tried to encourage the Tories to continue the clamour; tried to excuse his invective on the Bishop of London; but succeeded in none of those points, and the repeal passed.
In Ireland, the new parties from personalities turned to matters of government. A Bill had been prepared to enable them to dispose of an overplus of the Revenue for the benefit of the kingdom; and it was specified in the preamble that it was with the King’s consent. The Opposition refused to admit this preamble: the Castle were afraid to proceed to a division, and suppressed the preamble, but sent over the Bill, depending on the English Ministry not suffering such a diminution of the prerogative. The next day, on a trifling question about some words relating to Neville Jones, the Castle stood a division, and had a majority, though but of three votes. As the parties were so equally balanced, the animosities did not flag, but proceeded to great extremities, both in the English manner of abuse, and in the Irish of duels.
27th.--Lord Temple, after having mysteriously summoned the Lords to an affair, as he told them, of great importance, moved to have the Judges asked, if Jews could purchase land, and whether it would legally descend to their children. The Chancellor, Lord Cholmondeley, Lord Granville, and the Duke of Argyle opposing the Motion, and nobody supporting it, Lord Temple gave it up.
The same day the repeal was agitated in the other House; Northey proposed to have the words in the preamble, _have taken occasion to raise clamour_, altered to _have raised clamour_. He was seconded by Prowse, Lord Egmont, and Admiral Vernon. On the other side Nugent, Sir W. Yonge, Sir Richard Lloyd, Mr. Pelham, old Horace Walpole, and Mr. Pitt, who was just come abroad again after a year of sullen illness, defended the words and the repeal, and it passed by a majority of 150 to 60.
28th.--Letters came from Ireland with an account of the first Parliamentary victory obtained there by the Opposition over the Court. Neville Jones had been voted guilty of abuse in his office[237] by 124 to 116. The strangers in the gallery of the House huzzaed; the city was crowded by the triumphant mob. Lord Kildare, the popular hero, was an hour passing to his own house at eleven at night.