The expediency of maintaining the house of Austria on the imperial throne, it is not at present necessary to assert, because it does not appear that any other family is aspiring to it.  There may, indeed, be whispers of secret designs and artful machinations, whispers, perhaps, spread only to affright the court into treaties, or the senate into grants; or designs, which, like a thousand others that every day produces, innumerable accidents may defeat; which may be discovered, not only before they are executed, but before they are fully formed, and which, therefore, are not worthy to engross much of our attention, or to exhaust the wealth of the people.

The Pragmatick sanction is nothing more than a settlement of the imperial dignity upon the eldest daughter of the late German emperour and her son; and if she has no son, upon the son of the second daughter; nor has the crown of Britain, by engaging to support that sanction, promised any thing more than to preserve this order of succession, which no power, at present, is endeavouring to interrupt; and which, therefore, at present, requires no defence.

The dispute, sir, between the king of Prussia and the queen of Hungary, is of a different kind; nor is it our duty to engage in it, either as parties or judges.  He lays claim to certain territories usurped, as he alleges, from his ancestors by the Austrian family, and asserts, by force, this claim, which is equally valid, whether the queen be emperess or not.  We have no right to limit his dominions, or obligation to examine the justice of his demands.  If he is only endeavouring to gain what has been forcibly withheld from him, what right have we to obstruct his undertaking?  And if the queen can show a better title, she is, like all other sovereigns, at liberty to maintain it; nor are we necessarily to erect ourselves into judges between sovereigns, or distributors of dominions.

The contest seems to have very little relation to the Pragmatick sanction:  if the king of Prussia succeeds, he will contribute to support it; and if the queen is able to frustrate his designs, she will be too powerful to need our assistance.

But though, sir, the Pragmatick sanction were in danger of violation, are we to stand up alone in defence of it, while other nations, equally engaged with ourselves by interest and by treaties, sit still to look upon the contest, and gather those advantages of peace which we indiscreetly throw away?  Are we able to maintain it without assistance, or are we to exhaust our country, and ruin our posterity in prosecution of a hopeless project, to spend what can never be repaid, and to fight with certainty of a defeat?

The Dutch, whose engagements and whose interests are the same as our own, have not yet made any addition to their expenses, nor augmentation of their troops; nor does a single potentate of Europe, however united by long alliances to the house of Austria, or however endangered by revolutions in the empire, appear to rouse at the approach of alarm, or think himself obliged to provoke enemies by whom he is not yet injured.