Then the question will be, whether we are to defer putting ourselves into a posture for the common defence, either by armament, or negotiation, or both, until Spain is actually attacked,—­that is, whether our court will take a decided part for Spain, whilst Spain, on her side, is yet in a condition to act with whatever degree of vigor she may have, whilst that vigor is yet unexhausted,—­or whether we shall connect ourselves with her broken fortunes, after she shall have received material blows, and when we shall have the whole slow length of that always unwieldy and ill-constructed, and then wounded and crippled body, to drag after us, rather than to aid us.  Whilst our disposition is uncertain, Spain will not dare to put herself in such a state of defence as will make her hostility formidable or her neutrality respectable.

If the decision is such as the solution of this question (I take it to be the true question) conducts to, no time is to be lost.  But the measures, though prompt, ought not to be rash and indigested.  They ought to be well chosen, well combined, and well pursued.  The system must be general; but it must be executed, not successively, or with interruption, but all together, uno flatu, in one melting, and one mould.

For this purpose we must put Europe before us, which plainly is, just now, in all its parts, in a state of dismay, derangement, and confusion, and, very possibly amongst all its sovereigns, full of secret heartburning, distrust, and mutual accusation.  Perhaps it may labor under worse evils.  There is no vigor anywhere, except the distempered vigor and energy of France.  That country has but too much life in it, when everything around is so disposed to tameness and languor.  The very vices of the French system at home tend to give force to foreign exertions.  The generals must join the armies.  They must lead them to enterprise, or they are likely to perish by their hands.  Thus, without law or government of her own, France gives law to all the governments in Europe.

This great mass of political matter must have been always under the view of thinkers for the public, whether they act in office or not.  Amongst events, even the late calamitous events were in the book of contingency.  Of course they must have been in design, at least, provided for.  A plan which takes in as many as possible of the states concerned will rather tend to facilitate and simplify a rational scheme for preserving Spain (if that were our sole, as I think it ought to be our principal object) than to delay and perplex it.

If we should think that a provident policy (perhaps now more than provident, urgent and necessary) should lead us to act, we cannot take measures as if nothing had been done.  We must see the faults, if any, which have conducted to the present misfortunes:  not for the sake of criticism, military or political, or from the common motives of blaming persons and counsels which have not been successful, but in order, if we can, to administer some remedy to these disasters, by the adoption of plans more bottomed in principle, and built on with more discretion.  Mistakes may be lessons.