These are the effects, my lords, of those measures, which, for want of being completely understood, or attentively considered, have been so vehemently censured.  These measures, my lords, however injudicious, however unseasonable, have embarrassed the designs of France, and given relief to the queen of Hungary; they have animated the Dutch to action, and kindled in all the powers of Europe, who were intimidated by the French armies, new hopes and new resolutions; they have, indeed, made a general change in the state of Europe, and given a new inclination to the balance of power.  Not many months have elapsed, since every man appeared to consider the sovereign of France as the universal monarch, whose will was not to be opposed, and whose force was not to be resisted.  We now see his menaces despised and his propositions rejected; every one now appears to hope rather than to fear, though lately a general panick was spread over this part of the globe, and fear had so engrossed mankind, that scarcely any man presumed to hope.

But it is objected, my lords, that though our measures should be allowed not to have been wholly ineffectual, and our money appear not to have been squandered only to pay the troops of Hanover, yet our conduct is very far from meriting either applause or approbation; since much greater advantages might have been purchased at much less expense, and by methods much less invidious and dangerous.

The queen of Hungary might, in the opinion of these censurers, have raised an hundred thousand men with the money which we must expend in hiring only sixteen thousand, and might have destroyed those enemies whom we have hitherto not dared to attack.

Those who make this supposition the foundation of their censures, appear not to remember, that the queen of Hungary’s dominions, like those of other princes, may, by war, be in time exhausted; that the loss of inhabitants is not repaired in any country but by slow degrees; and that there is no place yet discovered where money will procure soldiers without end, or where new harvests of men rise up annually, ready to fight those quarrels in which their predecessors were swept away.  If the money had, instead of being employed in hiring auxiliaries, been remitted to the queen, it is not probable that she could, at any rate, have brought a new army together.  But it is certain, that her new troops must have been without arms and without discipline.  It might have been found, perhaps, in this general disturbance of the world, not easy to have supplied them with weapons; and it is well known how long time is required to teach raw forces the art of war, and enable them to stand before a veteran enemy.

It was, therefore, necessary to assist her rather with troops than money; and since troops were necessarily to be hired, why should we employ the forces of Hanover less willingly than those of any other nation?  To assert that they have more or less courage than others is chimerical, nor can any man suppose them either more brave or timorous than those of the neighbouring countries, without discovering the meanest prejudices, and the narrowest conceptions; without showing that he is wholly unacquainted with human nature, and that he is influenced by the tales of nurses, and the boasts of children.