On this occasion the ministers, with scarcely an exception, voted in the majority.

A protest was signed by eighteen of the minority, among whom were the bitterest Whigs and the bitterest Tories in the whole peerage.

[347] The Houses inquired, each for itself, into the causes of the public calamities.

The Commons resolved themselves into a Grand Committee to consider of the advice to be given to the King.

From the concise abstracts and fragments which have come down to us it seems that, in this Committee, which continued to sit many days, the debates wandered over a vast space.