Let us not add to the miseries of famine the mortifications of insult and neglect; let our countrymen, at least, divide our care with our allies, and while we form schemes for succouring the queen of Hungary, let us endeavour to alleviate nearer distresses, and prevent or pacify domestick discontents.

If there be any man whom the sight of misery cannot move to compassion, who can hear the complaints of want without sympathy, and see the general calamity of his country without employing one hour on schemes for its relief; let not that man dare to boast of integrity, fidelity, or honour; let him not presume to recommend the preservation of our faith, or adherence to our confederates:  that wretch can have no real regard to any moral obligation, who has forgotten those first duties which nature impresses; nor can he that neglects the happiness of his country, recommend any good action for a good reason.

It should be considered, sir, that we can only be useful to our allies, and formidable to our enemies, by being unanimous and mutually confident of the good intentions of each other, and that nothing but a steady attention to the publick welfare, a constant readiness to remove grievances, and an apparent unwillingness to impose new burdens, can produce that unanimity.

As the cause is, therefore, necessarily to precede the effect, as foreign influence is the consequence of happiness at home, let us first endeavour to establish that alacrity and security that may animate the people to assert their ancient superiority to other nations, and restore that plenty which may raise them above any temptation to repine at assistance given to our allies.

No man, sir, can very solicitously watch over the welfare of his neighbour whose mind is depressed by poverty, or distracted by terrour; and when the nation shall see us anxious for the preservation of the queen of Hungary, and unconcerned about the wants of our fellow-subjects, what can be imagined, but that we have some method of exempting ourselves from the common distress, and that we regard not the publick misery when we do not feel it?

Sir Robert WALPOLE replied, to the following effect:—­Sir, it is always proper for every man to lay down some principles upon which he proposes to act, whether in publick or private; that he may not be always wavering, uncertain, and irresolute; that his adherents may know what they are to expect, and his adversaries be able to tell why they are opposed.

It is necessary, sir, even for his own sake, that he may not be always struggling with himself; that he may know his own determinations, and enforce them by the reasons which have prevailed upon him to form them; that he may not argue in the same speech to contrary purposes, and weary the attention of his hearers with contrasts and antitheses.

When a man admits the necessity of granting a supply, expatiates upon the danger that may be produced by retarding it, declares against the least delay, however speciously proposed, and enforces the arguments which have been already offered to show how much it is our duty and interest to allow it; may it not reasonably be imagined, that he intends to promote it, and is endeavouring to convince them of that necessity of which he seems himself convinced?