If we survey the condition of foreign nations, we shall find, that the power and dominions of the family of Bourbon, a family which has never had any other designs than the extirpation of true religion, and the universal slavery of mankind, have been daily increased.  We shall find that they have increased by the declension of the house of Austria, which treaties and our interest engage us to support.

But had their acquisitions been made only by the force of arms, had they grown stronger only by victories, and more wealthy only by plunder, our ministers might, with some appearance of reason, have imputed their success to accident, and informed us, that we gained, in the mean time, a sufficient counterbalance to those advantages, by an uninterrupted commerce, and by the felicity of peace; peace, which, in every nation, has been found to produce affluence, and of which the wisest men have thought that it could scarcely be too dearly purchased.

But peace has, in this nation, by the wonderful artifices of our ministers, been the parent of poverty and misery; we have been so far from finding our commerce extended by it, that we have enjoyed it only by a contemptible patience of the most open depredations, by a long connivance at piracy, and by a continued submission to insults, which no other nation would have borne.

We have been so far from seeing any part of our taxes remitted, that we have been loaded with more rigorous exactions to support the expenses of peace, than were found necessary to defray the charges of a war against those, whose opulence and power had incited them to aspire to the dominion of the world.

How these taxes have been employed, and why our trade has been neglected, why our allies have been betrayed, and why the ancient enemies of our country have been suffered to grow powerful by our connivances, it is now time to examine; and therefore I move, that a committee be appointed to inquire into the conduct of affairs at home and abroad during the last twenty years.

Sir John st. Aubin then spoke as follows:—­Sir, I rise up to second this motion; and, as the noble lord has opened it in so full and proper a manner, and as I do not doubt but that other gentlemen are ready to support it, more practised in speaking, of greater abilities and authority than myself, I am the less anxious about the injury it may receive from the part I bear in it.  I think the proposition is so evident, that it wants no enforcement; it comes to you from the voice of the nation, which, thank God, has at last found admittance within these walls.

Innocence is of so delicate a nature, that it cannot bear suspicion, and therefore will desire inquiry; because it will always be justified by it.  Guilt, from its own consciousness, will use subterfuges, and fly to concealment; and the more righteous and authoritative the inquiry, the more it will be avoided; because the greater will be the dread of punishment.