Such, my lords, is the present state of the German empire; nor have the affairs of the rest of Europe been less changed; the power of the house of Bourbon has been diminished on every side, its alliance has been rejected, and its influence disregarded.

The king of Sardinia has openly engaged to hinder the Spaniards from erecting a new kingdom in Italy; and though he has hitherto been somewhat embarrassed in his measures, and oppressed by the superiority of his enemies, has at least, by preventing the conjunction of the Spanish armies, preserved the Austrians from being overwhelmed.  Nor can the situation of his dominions, and the number of his forces, suffer us to doubt, that in a short time he will be able entirely to secure Italy, since he has already recovered his country, and drove back the Spaniards into the bosom of France.

The condition of the other Spanish army is such, as no enemy can wish to be aggravated by new calamities.  They are shut up in a country without provisions, or of which the inhabitants are unwilling to supply them:  on one side are neutral states, to which the law of nations bars their entrance; on another the Mediterranean sea, which can afford them only the melancholy prospect of hostile armaments, or sometimes of their own ships falling into the hands of the Britons; behind them are the troops of Austria ready to embarrass their march, intercept their convoys, and receive those whom famine and despair incite to change their masters, and to seek among foreign nations that ease and safety, of which the tyranny of their own government, and the madness of their own leaders, has deprived them.  Such is their distress, and so great their diminution, that a few months must complete their ruin, they must be destroyed without the honour of a battle, they must sink under the fatigue of hungry marches, by which no enemy is overtaken or escaped, and be at length devoured, by those diseases, which toil and penury will inevitably produce.

That the diminution of the influence of the house of Bourbon is not an empty opinion, which we easily receive, because we wish it to be true; that other nations, likewise, see the same events with the same sentiments, and prognosticate the decline of that power which has so long intimidated the universe, appears from the declaration now made by his majesty of the conduct of the Swedish court.

That nation which was lately governed by the counsels, and glutted with the bounties of France, which watched the nod of her mighty patroness, and made war at her command against the Russian empire, now begins to discover, that there are other powers more worthy of confidence and respect, more careful to observe their engagements, or more able to fulfil them.  She, therefore, requests the British monarch to extricate her from those difficulties, in which she is entangled by a blind compliance with French dictates, to restore to her the dismembered provinces, and recall that enemy which now impends over her capital, and whom the French have neither interest to appease, nor strength to resist.