on that head. He has
nothing to say. After a war of such expense, this ought to have been a
capital consideration. But on what he has been so prudently silent, I
think it is right to speak plainly. All our new acquisitions together,
at this time, scarce afford matter of revenue, either at home or abroad,
sufficient to defray the expense of their establishments; not one
shilling towards the reduction of our debt. Guadaloupe or Martinico
alone would have given us material aid; much in the way of duties, much
in the way of trade and navigation. A good ministry would have
considered how a renewal of the _Assiento_ might have been obtained. We
had as much right to ask it at the treaty of Paris as at the treaty of
Utrecht. We had incomparably more in our hands to purchase it. Floods of
treasure would have poured into this kingdom from such a source; and,
under proper management, no small part of it would have taken a public
direction, and have fructified an exhausted exchequer.

If this gentleman's hero of finance, instead of flying from a treaty,
which, though he now defends, he could not approve, and would not
oppose; if he, instead of shifting into an office, which removed him
from the manufacture of the treaty, had, by his credit with the then
great director, acquired for us these, or any of these, objects, the
possession of Guadaloupe or Martinico, or the renewal of the _Assiento_,
he might have held his head high in his country; because he would have
performed real service; ten thousand times more real service, than all
the economy of which this writer is perpetually talking, or all the
little tricks of finance which the expertest juggler of the treasury can
practise, could amount to in a thousand years. But the occasion is lost;
the time is gone, perhaps forever.

As to the third requisite, _alliance_, there too the author is silent.
What strength of that kind did they acquire? They got no one new ally;
they stript the enemy of not a single old one. They disgusted (how
justly, or unjustly, matters not) every ally we had; and from that time
to this we stand friendless in Europe. But of this naked condition of
their country I know some people are not ashamed. They have their system
of politics; our ancestors grew great by another. In this manner these
virtuous men concluded the peace; and their practice is only consonant
to their theory.

Many things more might be observed on this curious head of our author's
speculat