The accounts, my lords, by which the ministry were determined to send the army into Flanders, arrived only fifteen days before the recess of the senate; nor was the resolution formed, as it may easily be imagined, till several days after; so that there was very little time for senatorial deliberations, nor was it, perhaps, convenient to publish at that time the whole scheme of our designs.

But let us suppose, my lords, that the senate had, a few days before they rose, been consulted, and that a vote of credit had been required to enable the crown to hire forces during the interval of the sessions, what would those by whom this motion is supported have urged against it?  Would they not with great appearance of reason have alleged the impropriety of such an application to the thin remains of a senate, from which almost all those had retired, whom their employments did not retain in the neighbourhood of the court?  Would it not have been echoed from one corner of these kingdoms to another, that the ministry had betrayed their country by a contract which they durst not lay before a full senate, and of which they would trust the examination only to those whom they had hired to approve it.  Would not this have been generally asserted, and generally believed?  Would not those who distinguished themselves as the opponents of the court, have urged, that the king ought to exert his prerogative, and trust the equity of the senate for the approbation of his measures, and the payment of the troops which he had retained for the support of the common cause, the cause for which so much zeal had been expressed, and for which it could not with justice be suspected, that any reasonable demands would be denied?  Would not the solicitation of a grant of power without limits, to be exerted wholly at the discretion of the ministry, be censured as a precedent of the utmost danger, which it was the business of every man to oppose, who had not lost all regard to the constitution of his country?

These insinuations, my lords, were foreseen and allowed by the ministry to be specious, and, therefore, they determined to avoid them by pursuing their schemes at their own hazard, without any other security than the consciousness of the rectitude of their own designs; and to trust to the equity of the senate when they should be laid before them, at a time when part of their effects might be discovered, and when, therefore, no false representations could be used to mislead their judgment.  They knew the zeal of the commons for the great cause of universal liberty; they knew that their measures had no other tendency than the promotion of that cause, and, therefore, they confidently formed those expectations which have not deceived them, that the pay of the troops would be readily granted, and ordered them, therefore, to march; though if the commons had disapproved their plan, they must have returned into their own country, or have been supported at the expense of the electorate.