I may add, my lords, that your wisdom will easily find the difference between the degree of capacity requisite for recollecting the past, and foreknowing the future; and expect that those whose ambition incites them to endeavour after a share in the government of their country, should give better proofs of their qualifications for that high trust, than mere specimens of their memory, their rhetorick, or their malice.
Even the noble lord, who must be confessed to have shown a very extensive acquaintance with foreign affairs, and to have very accurately considered the interests and dispositions of the princes of Europe, has yet failed in the order of time, and by one errour very much invalidated his charge of misconduct in foreign affairs.
The treaty of Vienna, my lords, was not produced by the rejection of the infanta, unless a treaty that was made before it could be the consequence of it; so that there was no such opportunity thrown into our hands as the noble lord has been pleased to represent. Spain had discovered herself our enemy, and our enemy in the highest degree, before the French provoked her by that insult; and, therefore, how much soever she might be enraged against France, there was no prospect that she would favour us, nor could we have courted her alliance without the lowest degree of meanness and dishonour.
See then, my lords, this atrocious accusation founded upon false dates, upon a preposterous arrangement of occurrences; behold it vanish into smoke at the approach of truth, and let this instance convince us how easy it is to form chimerical blunders, and impute gross follies to the wisest administration; how easy it is to charge others with mistakes and how difficult to avoid them.
But we are told, my lords, that the dangers of the confederacy at Vienna were merely imaginary, that no contract was made to the disadvantage of our dominions, or of our commerce, and that if the weakness of the Spaniards and Germans had contrived such a scheme, it would soon have been discovered by them to be an airy dream, a plan impossible to be reduced to execution.
We have been amused, my lords, on this occasion with great profusion of mirth and ridicule, and have received the consolation of hearing that Britain is an island, and that an island is not to be invaded without ships. We have been informed of the nature of the king's territories, and of the natural strength of the fortress of Gibraltar; but the noble lord forgot that though Britain has no dominions on the continent, yet our sovereign has there a very extensive country, which, though we are not to make war for the sake of strengthening or enlarging it, we are, surely, to defend when we have drawn an invasion upon it.
The weakness of the Spaniards, my lords, has been also much enlarged upon, but the strength of the jacobites at home has been passed over in silence, though it is apparent how easily the pretender might have landed here, and with what warmth his cause would have been espoused, not only by those whose religion avowed and professed makes them the enemies of the present royal family, but by many whom prospects of interest, the love of novelty, and rage of disappointment, might have inclined to a change.
That no such stipulations were made by that treaty, that no injury was intended to our commerce, nor any invasion proposed in favour of the pretender, are very bold assertions, and though they could be supported by all the evidence that negatives admit of, yet will not easily be believed by your lordships, in opposition to the solemn assurances of his late majesty. It is evident, from this instance, how much prejudice prevails over argument; they are ready to condemn the right honourable gentleman to whom they give the title of sole minister, upon the suffrage of common fame, yet will not acquit him upon the testimony of the king himself.
But, my lords, the arguments alleged to prove the improbability of such a confederacy, are so weak in themselves, that they require no such illustrious evidence to overbalance them. For upon what are they founded, but upon the impossibility of executing such designs?
It is well known, my lords, how differently different parties consider the same cause, the same designs, and the same state of affairs. Every man is partial in favour of his own equity, strength, and sagacity. Who can show that the same false opinion of their own power, and of our intestine divisions, which now prompts the Spaniards to contend with us, might not then incite them to invade us, or at least to countenance the attempts of one, whom they are industriously taught to believe the greatest part of the nation is ready to receive?