I am, therefore, convinced, my lords, that they will not enter into an offensive treaty, and that they have only engaged to do what their own interest required from them, without any new stipulation, to preserve their own country from invasion by sending garrisons into the frontier towns, which they may do without any offence to France, or any interruption of their own tranquillity.

Many other treaties have been mentioned, my lords, and mentioned with great ostentation, as the effects of consummate policy, which will, I suspect, appear to be at least only defensive treaties, by which the contracting powers promise little more than to take care of themselves.

In this state of the world, my lords, when all the powers of the continent appear benumbed by a lethargy, or shackled by a panick, to what purpose should we lavish, in hiring and transporting troops, that wealth which contests of nearer importance immediately require?

It is well known to our merchants, whose ships are every day seized by privateers, that we are at war with Spain, and that our commerce is every day impaired by the depredations of an enemy, whom only our own negligence enables to resist us; but I doubt, my lords, whether it is known in Spain, that their monarch is at war with Britain, otherwise than by the riches of our nation, which are distributed among their privateers, and the prisoners who in the towns on the coast are wandering in the streets.  For I know no inconvenience which they can be supposed to feel from our hostilities, nor in what part of the world the war against them is carried on.  Before the war was declared, it is well remembered by whom, and with how great vehemence, it was every day repeated, that to end the war with honour we ought to take and hold.  What, my lords, do we hold, or what have we taken?  What has the war produced in its whole course from one year to another, but defeats, losses, and ignominy?  And how shall we regain our honour, or retrieve our wealth, by engaging in another war more dangerous but less necessary?  We ought surely to humble Spain, before we presume to attack France; and we may attack France with better prospects of success, when we have no other enemy to divert our attention, or divide our forces.

That we ought, indeed, to make any attempt upon France, I am far from being convinced, because I do not now discover, that any of the motives subsist which engaged us in the last confederacy.  The house of Austria, though overborne and distressed, was then powerful in itself, and possessed of the imperial crown.  It is now reduced almost below the hopes of recovery, and we are therefore now to restore what we were then only to support.  But what, my lords, is in my opinion much more to be considered, the nation was then unanimous in one general resolution to repress the insolence of France; no hardships were insupportable that conduced to this great end, nor any taxes grievous