This scene, my lords, is daily to be viewed, it is ostentatiously displayed to the sight of mankind, the minister amuses himself in publick with the splendour, and number, and dignity of his slaves; and his slaves with no more shame pay their prostrations to their master in the face of day, and boast of their resolutions to gratify and support him.  And yet, my lords, it is inquired why the people assert that there is a sole minister?

Those who deny, my lords, that there is a sole minister to whom the miscarriages of the government may justly be imputed, may easily persuade themselves to believe that there have been no miscarriages, that all the measures were necessary, and well formed, that there is neither poverty nor oppression felt in the nation, that our compliance with France was no weakness, and that our dread of the treaty of Vienna was not chimerical.

The treaty of Vienna, my lords, which has been the parent of so many terrours, consultations, embassies, and alliances is, I find, not yet to be acknowledged, what it certainly was, a mere phantom, an empty illusion, sent by the arts of the French to terrify our ministry.  His late majesty’s testimony is cited to prove that stipulations were really entered into by the two powers allied by that treaty, to destroy our trade, subvert our constitution, and set a new king upon the throne, without consent of the nation.

Such improbabilities, my lords, ought, indeed, to be proved by a high testimony, by a testimony which no man shall dare to question or contradict; for as any man is at liberty to consult his reason, it will always remonstrate to him, that it is no less absurd to impute the folly of designing impossibilities to any powers not remarkable for weak counsels, than unjust to suspect princes of intending injuries, to which they have not been incited by any provocation.

But, my lords, nowithstanding the solemnity with which his late majesty has been introduced, his testimony can prove nothing more than that he believed the treaty to be such as he represents, that he had been deceived into false apprehensions and unnecessary cautions by his own ministers, as they had been imposed upon by the agents of France.

This is all, my lords, that can be collected from the royal speech, and to infer more from it is to suppose that the king was himself a party in the designs formed against him; for if he was not himself engaged in this treaty, he could only be informed, by another, of the stipulations, and could only report what he had been told upon the credit of the informer, a man, necessarily of very little credit.  Thus, my lords, all the evidence of his late majesty vanishes into nothing more than the whisper of a spy.

But as great stress ought, doubtless, to be laid upon intelligence which the nation is believed to purchase at a very high price, let it be inquired, what proofs those have who dare to suspect the sagacity of our ministers, to put in the balance against their intelligence, and it will be discovered, my lords, that they have a testimony no less than that of the German emperour himself, who could not be mistaken with regard to the meaning of the treaty concluded at his own court, and to whom it will not be very decent to deny such a degree of veracity as may set him at least on the level with a traitor and a hireling.