In the same spirit they negotiated the terms of the peace.  If it were thought advisable not to take any positive security from Spain, the most obvious principles of policy dictated that the burden of the cessions ought to fall upon France; and that everything which was of grace and favor should be given to Spain.  Spain could not, on her part, have executed a capital article in the family compact, which obliged her to compensate the losses of France.  At least she could not do it in America; for she was expressly precluded by the treaty of Utrecht from ceding any territory or giving any advantage in trade to that power.  What did our ministers?  They took from Spain the territory of Florida, an object of no value except to show our dispositions to be quite equal at least towards both powers; and they enabled France to compensate Spain by the gift of Louisiana:  loading us with all the harshness, leaving the act of kindness with France, and opening thereby a door to the fulfilling of this the most consolidating article of the family compact.  Accordingly that dangerous league, thus abetted and authorized by the English ministry without an attempt to invalidate it in any way, or in any of its parts, exists to this hour; and has grown stronger and stronger every hour of its existence.

As to the second component of a good peace, compensation, I have but little trouble; the author has said nothing upon that head.  He has nothing to say.  After a war of such expense, this ought to have been a capital consideration.  But on what he has been so prudently silent, I think it is right to speak plainly.  All our new acquisitions together, at this time, scarce afford matter of revenue, either at home or abroad, sufficient to defray the expense of their establishments; not one shilling towards the reduction of our debt.  Guadaloupe or Martinico alone would have given us material aid; much in the way of duties, much in the way of trade and navigation.  A good ministry would have considered how a renewal of the Assiento might have been obtained.  We had as much right to ask it at the treaty of Paris as at the treaty of Utrecht.  We had incomparably more in our hands to purchase it.  Floods of treasure would have poured into this kingdom from such a source; and, under proper management, no small part of it would have taken a public direction, and have fructified an exhausted exchequer.

If this gentleman’s hero of finance, instead of flying from a treaty, which, though he now defends, he could not approve, and would not oppose; if he, instead of shifting into an office, which removed him from the manufacture of the treaty, had, by his credit with the then great director, acquired for us these, or any of these, objects, the possession of Guadaloupe or Martinico, or the renewal of the Assiento, he might have held his head high in his country; because he would have performed real service; ten thousand times more real service, than all the economy of which this writer is perpetually talking, or all the little tricks of finance which the expertest juggler of the treasury can practise, could amount to in a thousand years.  But the occasion is lost; the time is gone, perhaps forever.