For this reason, sir, it has been necessary frequently to engage in private treaties, to obviate designs sometimes justly, and at other times, perhaps, unreasonably suspected.  It has been proper to act upon remote suppositions, and to conclude alliances which were only to be publickly owned, in consequence of measures taken by some other powers, which measures were sometimes laid aside, and the treaty, therefore, was without effect.  In some of these provisionary contracts, it is easy to conceive, that designs were formed not to the advantage of some powers, whom yet we do not treat as enemies, which were only to be made publick by the execution of them:  in others, perhaps, some concessions were made to us, in consideration of the assistance that we promised, by which the weakness of our allies may be discovered, and which we cannot disclose without making their enemies more insolent, and increasing that danger from which they apply to us for security and protection.

If to this representation of the nature of the papers, with which our offices have been filled by the negotiations of the last twenty years, any thing were necessary to be added, it may be farther alleged, that it has long been the practice of every nation on this side of the globe, to procure private intelligence of the designs and expectations of the neighbouring powers, to penetrate into the councils of princes and the closets of ministers, to discover the instructions of ambassadours, and the orders of generals, to learn the intention of fleets before they are equipped, and of armies before they are levied, and to provide not only against immediate and visible hostilities, but to obviate remote and probable dangers.

It need not be declared in this assembly, that this cannot always be done without employing men who abuse the confidence reposed in them, a practice on which I shall not at this time trouble the house with my opinion, nor interrupt the present debate, by any attempt to justify or condemn it.  This, I think, may be very reasonably alleged; that whether the employment of such persons be defensible by the reciprocal practice of nations, or not, it becomes at least those that corrupt them and pay them for their treachery, not to expose them to vengeance, to torture, or to ruin; not to betray those crimes which they have hired them to commit, or give them up to punishment, to which they have made themselves liable only by their instigation, and for their advantage.

That private compacts between nations and sovereigns ought to be kept inviolably secret, cannot be doubted by any man who considers, that secrecy is one of the conditions of those treaties, without which they had not been concluded; and, therefore, that to discover them is to violate them, to break down the securities of human society, to destroy mutual trust, and introduce into the world universal confusion.  For nothing less can be produced by a disregard of those ties which link nations in confederacies, and produce confidence and security, and which enable the weak, by union, to resist the attacks of powerful ambition.