In the mean time our merchants were plundered, and our sailors thrown into dungeons; our flag was insulted, and our navigation restrained, by men acting under the commission of the king of Spain; we perceived no effect of our negotiations but the expense, and our enemies not only insisted on their former claims, but prosecuted them with the utmost rigour, insolence, and cruelty.

It must, indeed, sir, be urged in favour of our minister, that he did not refuse any act of submission, or omit any method of supplication by which he might hope to soften the Spaniards; he solicited their favour at their own court, he sent commissaries into their country, he assisted them in taking possession of dominions, to which neither we nor they have proved a right; and he employed the navies of Britain to transport into Italy the prince on whom the new-erected kingdom was to be conferred.

Well might he expect that the Spaniards would be softened by so much kindness and forbearance, and that gratitude would at length induce them to spare those whom no injuries or contempt had been able to alienate from them, and to allow those a free course through the seas of America, to whom they had been indebted for an uninterrupted passage to the possession of a kingdom.

He might likewise urge, sir, that when he was obliged to make war upon them, he was so tender of their interest, that the British admiral was sent out with orders rather to destroy his own fleet than the galleons, which, in appearance, he was sent to take, and to perish by the inclemency of the climate, rather than enter the Spanish ports, terrify their colonies, or plunder their towns.

But to little purpose, sir, did our minister implore the compassion of the Spaniards, and represent the benefits by which we might claim it; for his compliance was by the subtle Spaniards attributed, not to kindness, but to fear; and it was therefore determined to reduce him to absolute slavery, by the same practices which had already sunk him to so abject a state.

They therefore treated our remonstrances with contempt, continued their insolence and their oppressions, and while our agent was cringing at their court with fresh instructions in his hand, while he was hurrying with busy looks from one grandee to another, and, perhaps, dismissed without an audience one day, and sent back in the midst of his harangue on another, the guardships of the Spaniards continued their havock, our merchants were ruined, and our sailors tortured.

At length, sir, the nation was too much inflamed to be any longer amused with idle negotiations, or trifling expedients; the streets echoed with the clamours of the populace, and this house was crowded with petitions from the merchants.  The honourable person, with all his art, found himself unable any longer to elude a determination of this affair.  Those whom he had hitherto persuaded that he had failed merely for want of abilities, began now to suspect that he had