But this ministry, my lords, have only furnished a new instance of the credulity of mankind, of the delusion of outward appearances, and of the folly of hoping with too great ardour for any event, and of trusting any man with too great confidence. No sooner were they possessed of the power to which their ambition had so long aspired, and of the salaries which had with so much eagerness been coveted by their avarice, than they forgot the complaints of the merchants, the value of commerce, the honour of the British flag, the danger of our American territories, and the great importance of the war with Spain, and contented themselves with ordering convoys for our merchants, instead of destroying the enemy by whom they are molested.
The fleets which are floating from one coast to another in the Mediterranean, and which sometimes strike terrour into the harmless inhabitants of an open coast, or threaten, but only threaten, destruction to an unfortified town, I am very far from considering as armaments fitted out against the Spaniards, who neither feel nor fear any great injury from them: their trade may be, indeed, somewhat impeded; but that inconvenience is amply compensated by their depredations upon our merchants: their navies may be confined to their own ports, or to those of France; but these navies are not very necessary to them, since they are not sufficiently powerful to oppose us on the ocean; and therefore they who are thus confined, suffer less than those who confine them. We have, indeed, the empty pleasure of seeing ourselves lords of the sea, and of shaking the coasts with volleys of our cannon; but we purchase the triumph at a very high price, and shall find ourselves in time weakened by a useless ostentation of superiority.
The only parts of the Spanish dominions in which they can receive any hurt from our forces, are those countries which they possess in America, and from which they receive the gold and silver which inflame their pride, and incite them to insult nations more powerful than themselves. By seizing any part of those wealthy regions, we shall stop the fountain of their treasure, reduce them to immediate penury, and compel them to solicit peace upon any conditions that we shall condescend to offer them.
The necessity of invading these countries, my lords, was perfectly understood, and very distinctly explained, when the forces destined for that expedition were delayed, and when the attempt at Carthagena miscarried; nothing was more pathetical than the complaints of the patriots, who spared no labour to inform either the senate or the nation of the advantages which success would have procured. But what measures have been taken to repair our losses, or to regain our honour; or what new schemes have been formed for making an attack more forcible upon some weaker part?
Every one can remember, that the miscarriage of that enterprise was imputed, not to its difficulty, nor to the courage of the Spaniards, nor to the strength of their works, but to the unskilfulness of our officers, and the impropriety of the season; and it was, therefore, without doubt thought not impossible to attack the Spanish colonies with success; but why then, my lords, have they hitherto suffered the Spaniards to discipline their troops, and strengthen their works at. leisure, that at length they may securely set us at defiance, and plunder our merchants without fear of vengeance?
Thus, my lords, has our real interest been neglected in pursuit not of any other scheme of equal advantage, but of the empty title of the arbiters of Europe; we have suffered our trade to be destroyed, and our country impoverished for the sake of holding the balance of power; that variable balance, in which folly and ambition are perpetually changing the weights, and which neither policy nor strength could yet preserve steady for a single year.
In the prosecution of this idle scheme, we are about to violate all the maxims of wisdom, and perhaps of justice; we are about to destroy the end by the means which we make use of to promote it, to endanger our country more by attempting to hinder the changes which are projected in Europe, than their accomplishment will endanger it, and to deliver up ourselves to France before she makes any demand of submission from us.
If any excuse could be made for expeditions so likely to end in ruin, it must be that justice required them; and that if we suffer, we at least suffer in support of right, and in an honest endeavour to promote the execution of the great laws of moral equity; that if we fail of success, we shall always have the consolation of having meant well, and of having deserved those victories which we could not gain.
But, upon an impartial survey of the cause in which we are going to engage, and on which we are about to hazard our own happiness, and that of our posterity, I can discover no such apparent justice on the side of the queen of Hungary, as ought to incite distant nations to espouse her quarrel, to raise armies in her favour, to consider her cause as that of human nature, and to prosecute those that invade her territories, as the enemies of general society.
The Pragmatick sanction, my lords, by which she claims all the hereditary dominions of her family, cannot change the nature of right and wrong, nor invalidate any claim before subsisting, unless by the consent of the prince by whom it was made. The elector of Bavaria may, therefore, urge in his own defence, that by the elder sister he has a clear and indisputable right, a right from which he never receded, as he never concurred in the Pragmatiok sanction; he may, therefore, charge this illustrious princess, for whom so many troops are raised, and for whom so much blood is about to be shed, with usurpation, with detention of the dominions of other potentates, and with an obstinate assertion of a false title.