One of the facts which he has thus implicitly received, and thus publickly mentioned, is the neutrality supposed to have been granted to the king of Sicily, from which he has amused himself and your lordships with deducing very destructive consequences, that perhaps need not to be allowed him, even upon supposition of the neutrality; but which need not now be disputed, because no neutrality has been granted.  Captain Martin, when he treated with the king, very cautiously declined any declarations of the intentions of the British court on that particular, and confined himself to the subject of his message, without giving any reason for hope, or despair of a neutrality.  So that if it shall be thought necessary, we are this hour at liberty to declare war against the king of Sicily, and may pursue the Spaniards with the same freedom on his coasts as on those of any other power, and prohibit any assistance from being given by him to their armies in Italy.

His lordship’s notion of the interposition of the king of Prussia in the king’s favour, is another phantom raised by calumny to terrify credulity; a phantom which will, I hope, be entirely dissipated, when I have informed the house, that the whole suspicion is without foundation, and that the king of Prussia has made no declaration of any design to support the king, or of opposing us in the performance of our treaties.  This prince, my lords, however powerful, active, or ambitious, appears to be satisfied with his acquisitions, and willing to rest in an inoffensive neutrality.

Such, my lords, and so remote from truth are the representations which the enemies of the government have with great zeal and industry scattered over the nation, and by which they have endeavoured to obviate those schemes which they would seem to favour; for by sinking the nation to a despair of attaining those ends which they declare at the same time necessary not only to our happiness, but to our preservation, what do they less than tell us, that we must be content to look unactive on the calamities that approach us, and prepare to be crushed by that ruin which we cannot prevent?

From this cold dejection, my lords, arises that despair which so many lords have expressed, of prevailing upon the Dutch to unite with us.  The determinations of that people are, indeed, always slow, and the reason of their slowness has been already given; but I am informed, that the general spirit which now reigns among them, is likely soon to overrule the particular interests of single provinces, and can produce letters by which it will appear, that had only one town opposed those measures to which their concurrence is now solicited, it had been long since overruled; for there want not among them men equally enamoured of the magnanimity and firmness of the queen of Hungary, equally zealous for the general good of mankind, equally zealous for the liberties of Europe, and equally convinced of the perfidy, the ambition, and the insolence of France, with any lord in this assembly.