no desire of better success; and those who had hitherto cheerfully merited their pensions by an unshaken adherence to all his measures, who had extolled his wisdom and his integrity with all the confidence of security, began now to be shaken by the universality of the censures which the open support of perfidy brought upon them.  They were afraid any longer to assert what they neither believed themselves, nor could persuade others to admit.  The most indolent were alarmed, the most obstinate convinced, and the most profligate ashamed.

What could now be done, sir, to gain a few months, to secure a short interval of quiet, in which his agents might be employed to disseminate some new falsehood, bribe to his party some new vindicators, or lull the people with the opiate of another expedient, with an account of concessions from the court of Spain, or a congress to compute the losses, and adjust the claims of our merchants?

Something was necessarily to be attempted, and orders were therefore despatched by our minister, to his slave at the court of Spain, to procure some stipulations that might have at least the appearance of a step towards the conclusion of the debate.  His agent obeyed him with his usual alacrity and address, and in time sent him, for the satisfaction of the British people, the celebrated convention.

The convention, sir, has been so lately discussed, is so particularly remembered, and so universally condemned, that it would be an unjustifiable prodigality of time to expatiate upon it.  There were but few in the last senate, and I hope there are none in this, who did not see the meanness of suffering incontestable claims to be disputed by commissaries, the injustice of the demand which was made upon the South-sea company, and the contemptuous insolence of amusing us with the shadow of a stipulation, which was to vanish into nothing, unless we purchased a ratification of it, by paying what we did not owe.

The convention, therefore, sir, was so far from pacifying, that it only exasperated the nation, and took from our minister the power of acting any longer openly in favour of the Spaniards; of whom it must be confessed, that their wisdom was overpowered by their pride, and that, for the sake of showing to all the powers of Europe the dependence in which they held the court of Britain, they took from their friends the power of serving them any longer, and made it unsafe for them to pay that submission to which they were inclined.

The Spaniards did not sufficiently distinguish between the nation and the ministry of Britain, nor suspected that their interests, inclinations, and opinions were directly opposite; and that those who were caressed, feared, and reverenced by the ministry, were by the people hated, despised, and ridiculed.

By enslaving our ministry, they weakly imagined that they had conquered our nation; nor, perhaps, sir, would they quickly have discovered their mistake, had they used their victory with greater moderation, condescended to govern their new province with less rigour, and sent us laws in any other form than that of the convention.