The first object which the estimates force upon our observation is a numerous body of foreign troops, for the levy and payment of which a very large sum is demanded; and demanded at a time when the nation is to the last degree embarrassed and oppressed, when it is engaged in a war with a powerful empire, and almost overwhelmed with the debts that were contracted in former confederacies; when it is engaged in a war, not for the recovery of forgotten claims, or for the gratification of restless ambition, not for the consumption of exuberant wealth, or for the discharge of superfluous inhabitants; but a war, in which the most important interests are set to hazard, and by which the freedom of navigation must be either established or lost; a war which must determine the sovereignty of the ocean, the rights of commerce, and the state of our colonies; a war, in which we may, indeed, be victorious without any increase of our reputation; but in which we cannot be defeated without losing all our influence upon foreign powers, and becoming subject to the insolence of petty princes.
When foreign troops are hired, at a time like this, it is natural to expect that they have been procured by contracts uncommonly frugal; because no nation can be supposed to be lavish in a time of distress. It is natural, my lords, to expect that they should be employed in expeditions of the utmost importance; because no trifling advantage ought to incite a people overburdened with taxes, to oppress themselves with any new expense; and it may be justly supposed, that these troops were hired by the advice of the senate; because no minister can be supposed so hardened in defiance of his country, in contempt of the laws, and in disregard of the publick happiness, as to dare to introduce foreigners into the publick service, in prosecution of his own private schemes, or to rob the nation which he professes to serve, that he may increase the wealth of another.
But upon consideration of this estimate, my lords, all these expectations, however reasonable in themselves, however consistent with the declarations of the wisest statesmen, and the practice of former times, will be disappointed; for it will be found that the troops, of which we are now to ratify the provisions for their payment, are raised at an expense never known on the like occasion before, when the nation was far more able to support it; that they have yet been employed in no expedition, that they have neither fought a battle, nor besieged a town, nor undertaken any design, nor hindered any that has been formed by those against whom they are pretended to have been raised; that they have not yet drawn a sword but at a review, nor heard the report of fire-arms but upon a festival; that they have not yet seen an enemy, and that they are posted where no enemy is likely to approach them.
But this, my lords, is not the circumstance which ought, in my opinion, most strongly to affect us; troops may be raised without being employed, and money expended without effect; but such measures, though they ought to be censured and rectified, may be borne without any extraordinary degree of indignation. While our constitution remains unviolated, temporary losses may be easily repaired, and accidental misconduct speedily retrieved; but when the publick rights are infringed, when the ministry assume the power of giving away the properties of the people, it is then necessary to exert an uncommon degree of vigour and resentment; it is as necessary to stop, the encroachments of lawless power, as to oppose the torrent of a deluge; which may be, perhaps, resisted at first, but from which, the country that is once overwhelmed by it, cannot be recovered.
To raise this ardour, my lords, to excite this laudable resentment, I believe it will be only necessary to observe, that those troops were raised without the advice or the consent of the senate; that this new burden has been laid upon the nation by the despotick will of the ministers, and that the demands made for their support may be said to be a tax laid upon the people, not by the senate, but by the court.
The motives upon which the ministry have acted on this occasion are, so far as they can be discovered, and, indeed, there appears very little care to conceal them, such as no subject of this crown ever dared to proceed upon before; they are such as the act of settlement, that act to which our sovereign owes his title to this throne, ought for ever to have excluded from British councils.
I should proceed, my lords, to explain this new method of impoverishing our country, and endeavour to show the principles from which it arises, and the end which it must promote. But some sudden indisposition obliges me to contract my plan, and conclude much sooner than I intended, with moving, "that an humble address be presented to his majesty, to beseech and advise his majesty, that considering the excessive and grievous expenses, incurred by the great number of foreign troops now in the pay of Great Britain, (expenses so increased by the extraordinary manner, as we apprehend, of making the estimates relating thereunto, and which do not appear to us conducive to the end proposed,) his majesty will be graciously pleased, in compassion to his people, loaded already with such numerous and heavy taxes, such large and growing debts, and greater annual expenses than this nation, at any time, ever before sustained, to exonerate his subjects of the charge and burden of those mercenaries who were taken into our service last year, without the advice or consent of parliament."
Lord SANDWICH spoke next in support of the motion to the following effect:—My lords, though I heard the noble lord with so much pleasure, that I could not but wish he had been able to deliver his sentiments more fully upon this important affair; yet I think the motion so reasonable and just, that though he might have set it yet more beyond the danger of opposition, though he might have produced many arguments in defence of it, which, perhaps, will not occur to any other lords; yet I shall be able to justify it in such a manner, as may secure the approbation of the unprejudiced and disinterested; and, therefore, I rise up to second it with that confidence, which always arises from a consciousness of honest intentions, and of an impartial inquiry after truth.
The measures, my lords, which have given occasion to this motion, have been for some time the subject of my reflections; I have endeavoured to examine them in their full extent, to recollect the previous occurrences by which the ministry might have been influenced to engage in them, and to discover the certain and the probable consequences which they may either immediately, or more remotely produce; I have laboured to collect from those who are supposed to be most acquainted with the state of Europe, and the scheme of British policy which is at present pursued, the arguments which can be offered in favour of these new engagements; and have compared them with the conduct of former ages upon the like occasions; but the result of all my searches into history, all my conversation with politicians of every party, and all my private meditations, has been only, that I am every hour confirmed, by some new evidence, in the opinion which I had first formed; and now imagined myself to know what I at first believed, that we are entangled in a labyrinth of which no end is to be seen, and in which no certain path has yet been discovered; that we are pursuing schemes which are in no degree necessary to the prosperity of our country, by means which are apparently contrary to law, to policy, and to justice; and that we are involved in a foreign quarrel only to waste that blood, and exhaust that treasure, which might be employed in recovering the rights of commerce, and regaining the dominion of the sea.
To prosecute the war against Spain with that vigour which interest and resentment might be expected to produce, to repress that insolence by which our navigation has been confined, and to punish that rapacity by which our merchants have been plundered, and that cruelty by which our fellow-subjects have been enslaved, tortured, and murdered, had been an attempt in which every honest man would readily have concurred, and to which all those who had sense to discern their own interest, or virtue to promote the publick happiness, would cheerfully have contributed, however loaded with taxes, oppressed with a standing army, and plundered by the vultures of a court: nor is the ancient spirit of the British nation so much depressed, but that when Spain had been subdued, when our rights had been publickly acknowledged, our losses repaired, and our colonies secured; when our ships had again sailed in security, and our flag awed the ocean of America, we might then have extended our views to foreign countries, might have assumed, once more, the guardianship of the liberties of Europe, have given law to the powers of the continent, and superintended the happiness of mankind. But in the present situation of our affairs, when we have made war for years without advantage, while our most important rights are yet subject to the chance of battle, why we should engage in the defence of other princes more than our stipulations require, I am not able to discover; nor can I conceive what motive can incite us, after having suffered so much from a weak enemy to irritate a stronger.