ich keeps danger at a distance, by seeming to despise it. Their fear
betrays to the first glance of the eye, its true cause, and its real
object. Foreign powers, confident in the knowledge of their character,
have not scrupled to violate the most solemn treaties; and, in defiance
of them, to make conquests in the midst of a general peace, and in the
heart of Europe. Such was the conquest of Corsica, by the professed
enemies of the freedom of mankind, in defiance of those who were
formerly its professed defenders. We have had just claims upon the same
powers: rights which ought to have been sacred to them as well as to us,
as they had their origin in our lenity and generosity towards France and
Spain in the day of their great humiliation. Such I call the ransom of
Manilla, and the demand on France for the East India prisoners. But
these powers put a just confidence in their resource of the _double
cabinet_. These demands (one of them at least) are hastening fast
towards an acquittal by prescription. Oblivion begins to spread her
cobwebs over all our spirited remonstrances. Some of the most valuable
branches of our trade are also on the point of perishing from the same
cause. I do not mean those branches which bear without the hand of the
vine-dresser; I mean those which the policy of treaties had formerly
secured to us; I mean to mark and distinguish the trade of Portugal, the
loss of which, and the power of the cabal, have one and the same era.

If by any chance, the ministers who stand before the curtain possess or
affect any spirit, it makes little or no impression. Foreign courts and
ministers, who were among the first to discover and to profit by this
invention of the _double cabinet_, attend very little to their
remonstrances. They know that those shadows of ministers have nothing to
do in the ultimate disposal of things. Jealousies and animosities are
sedulously nourished in the outward administration, and have been even
considered as a _causa sine qua non_ in its constitution: thence foreign
courts have a certainty, that nothing can be done by common counsel in
this nation. If one of those ministers officially takes up a business
with spirit, it serves only the better to signalize the meanness of the
rest, and the discord of them all. His colleagues in office are in haste
to shake him off, and to disclaim the whole of his proceedings. Of this
nature was that astonishing transaction, in which Lord Rochford, our
amb