I believe I need not very laboriously collect arguments to prove to your lordships that this scheme of selfish negligence, of supine tranquillity, is equally imprudent and ungenerous; since, if we examine the history of the last century, we shall easily discover, that if this nation had not interposed, the French had now been masters of more than half Europe; and it cannot be imagined that they would have suffered us to set them at defiance in the midst of their greatness, that they would have spared us out of tenderness, or forborne to attack us out of fear.  What the Spaniards attempted, though unsuccessfully, from a more distant part of the world, in the pride of their American affluence, would certainly have been once more endeavoured by France, with far greater advantages, and as it may be imagined, with a different event.

That it would have been endeavoured, cannot be doubted, because the endeavour would not have been hazardous; by once defeating our fleet, they might land their forces, which might be wafted over in a very short time, and by a single victory they might conquer all the island, or that part of it, at least, which is most worth the labour of conquest; and though they should be unsuccessful, they could suffer nothing but the mortification of their pride, and would be in a short time enabled to make a new attempt.

Thus, my lords, if we could preserve our liberty in the general subjection of the western part of the world, we should do it only by turning our island into a garrison, by laying aside all other employment than the study of war, and by making it our only care to watch our coasts:  a state which surely ought to be avoided at almost any expense and at any hazard.

To think that we could extend our trade or increase our riches in this state of the continent, is to forget the effects of universal empire.  The French, my lords, would then be in possession of all the trade of those provinces which they had conquered, they would be masters of all their ports and of all their shipping; and your lordships may easily conceive with what security we should venture upon the ocean, in a state of war, when all the harbours of the continent afforded shelter to our enemies.  If the French privateers from a few obscure creeks, unsupported by a fleet of war, or at least not supported by a navy equal to our own, could make such devastations in our trade as enabled their country to hold out against the confederacy of almost all the neighbouring powers; what, my lords, might not be dreaded by us, when every ship upon the ocean should be an enemy; when we should be at once overborne by the wealth and the numbers of our adversaries; when the trade of the world should be in their hands, and their navies no less numerous than their troops.

I have made this digression, my lords, I hope not wholly without necessity, to show that the advantages of preserving the equipoise of Europe are not, as they have been sometimes conceived, empty sounds, or idle notions; but that by the balance of one nation against another, both the safety of other countries and of our own is preserved; and that, therefore, it requires all our vigilance and all our resolution to establish and maintain it.