On this occasion I cannot but animadvert, I hope with the same pardon from the house, as has been obtained by the honourable gentleman whom I am now following, upon an expression in frequent use among the followers of a court, whenever their measures are censured with spirit and with justice. The papers which they cannot confute, and which they have not yet been able to obtain the power of suppressing, are asserted to border upon treason; and the authors are threatened with punishments, when they have nothing to fear from a reply.
Treason is happily denned by our laws, and, therefore, every man may know when he is about to commit it, and avoid the danger of punishment, by avoiding the act which will expose him to it; but with regard to the borders of treason, I believe no man will yet pretend to say how far they extend, or how soon, or with how little intention he may tread upon them. Unhappy would be the man who should be punished for bordering upon guilt, of which those fatal borders are to be dilated at pleasure by his judges. The law has hitherto supposed every man, who is not guilty, to be innocent; but now we find that there is a kind of medium, in which a man may be in danger without guilt, and that in order to security, a new degree of caution is become necessary; for not only crimes, but the borders of crimes are to be avoided.
What improvements may be made upon this new system, how far the borders of treason may reach, or what pains and penalties are designed for the borderers, no degree of human sagacity can enable us to foresee. Perhaps the borders of royalty may become sacred, as well as the borders of treason criminal; and as every placeman, pensioner, and minister, may be said to border on the court, a kind of sanctity may be communicated to his character, and he that lampoons or opposes him, may border upon treason.
To dismiss this expression with the contempt which it deserves, yet not without the reflections which it naturally excites, I shall only observe, that all extension of the power of the crown must be dangerous to us; and that whoever endeavours to find out new modes of guilt, is to be looked on, not as a good subject, but a bad citizen.
Having thus shown, that the censure produced against this pamphlet is unintelligible and indeterminate, I shall venture to mention some of the assertions which have heated the gentleman into so much fury. Assertions which I cannot be supposed to favour, since I wish they might be false, and which I only produce in this place to give some, whom their stations make acquainted with publick affairs, an opportunity of confuting them.
It is asserted, that the French appear to have treated all our armaments with contempt, and to have pursued all their schemes with the same confidence as if they had no other enemy to fear than the forces of Austria; this is, indeed, no pleasing observation, nor can it be supposed to give satisfaction to any Briton, to find the reputation of our councils and of our arms so much diminished, to find the nation which lately gave laws to Europe, scarcely admitted to friendship, or thought worthy of opposition in enmity, to hear that those troops, which, in the days of our former monarchs, shook the thrones of the continent, are passed by, without fear, and without regard, by armies marching against their allies, those allies in whose cause they formerly fought in the field. But the truth of the assertion is too plain to all the nations of the world; and those whose interest it may be to conceal from their countrymen what is known to all the continent, may rage, indeed, and threaten, but they cannot deny it; for what enterprise have we hitherto either prevented or retarded? What could we have done on one side, or suffered on the other, if we had been struck out from existence, which has not been suffered, or not done, though our armies have been reviewed on the continent, and, to make yet a better show, lengthened out by a line of sixteen thousand of the troops of Hanover.
It is asserted in the same treatise, that the troops of Hanover cannot act against the king, and that, therefore, they are an useless burden to the state; that they compose an army of which no other effect will be found but that they eat, and eat at the expense of Britain. This assertion is, indeed, somewhat more contestable than the former, but is at least credible; since, if we may be permitted on this, as on other occasions, to judge of the future from the past, we may conclude, that those who have let pass such opportunities as their enemies have in the height of contempt and security presented to them, will hardly ever repair the effects of their conduct, by their bravery or activity in another campaign; but that they will take the pay of Britain, and, while they fatten in plenty, and unaccustomed affluence, look with great tranquillity upon the distresses of Austria, and, in their indolence of gluttony, stand idle spectators of that deluge, by which, if it be suffered to roll on without opposition, their own halcyon territories must at last be swallowed up.
The last assertion which I shall extract from this formidable pamphlet, is more worthy of attention than the former, but, perhaps, may be suspected to border more nearly upon treason: I shall, however, venture to quote, and, what is still more dangerous, to defend it.
It is proposed that, instead of squandering, in this time of danger, the expenses of the publick upon troops of which it is at best doubtful, whether they will be of any use to the queen of Hungary, whether they can legally engage against the king, and whether they would be of any great use, though they were set free from any other restraints than regard to their own safety; instead of amusing our ally with an empty show of assistance, of mocking her calamities with unefficacious friendship, and of exposing ourselves to the ridicule of our enemies, by idle armaments without hostility, by armies only to be reviewed, and fleets only to be victualled, we should remit the sums required for the payment of the Hanoverians to the queen of Hungary, by whom we know that it will be applied to the great purposes for which the senate granted it, the establishment of the liberties of Europe, and the repression of the house of Bourbon.
This proposal, however contrary to the opinion of the ministers, I take the liberty of recommending to the consideration of the house, as, in my opinion, the most effectual method of preserving the remains of the greatness of the house of Austria. It is well known, that these troops are hired at a rate which they never expected before, that levy-money is paid for forces levied before the commencement of the bargain, that they are paid for acting a long time before they began to march, and that, since they appeared to consider themselves as engaged in the quarrel, their march has been their whole performance, a march not against the enemy, but from him; a march, in which there was nothing to fear, nor any thing to encounter; and, therefore, I think it cannot be denied, that the publick treasure might have been better employed.