n unacquainted with the state of publick
accounts, and that an army was so little known to this kingdom, that the
true expense of it might easily be concealed.

Nor is this, sir, the only fallacy of this argument; for it supposes,
likewise, that the nation is no less wealthy than in the time when that
computation was offered, with which this is so triumphantly compared.
For every man knows that publick as well as private expenses are to be
proportioned to the revenue by which they are supplied, and that the
charges which are easily supported at one time, may threaten ruin at
another.

But unhappily, sir, it is evident, that, since the days of that
sovereign, the nation has been exhausted by a long and wasteful war, and
since, by a peace equally destructive, it is embarrassed with an
enormous debt, and entangled in treaties, of which the support may call
every day for new expenses; it has suffered since that time a thousand
losses, but gained no advantage, and yet the expenses of that time are
mentioned as an example to be compared with those which are proposed in
this.

The difference of the condition of the British nation at those two
periods of time, sir, is not less than that of the strength of the same
man in the vigour of youth and the frigidity of old age, in the flush of
health and the languor of disease, of the same man newly risen from rest
and plenty, and debilitated with hunger and fatigue.

To make such a comparison, sir, betrays, at least, a very criminal
insensibility, of the publick misery, if it may not be charged with
greater malignity. I know not whether those who shall hear of this
debate, may not impute such reflections rather to cruelty than
negligence, and imagine that those who squander the treasure of the
nation take pleasure in reproaching that poverty which their counsels
produce, and indulge their own vanity by contemplating the calamities
from which they are themselves secure, and to which they are indebted
for opportunities of increasing their own fortunes, and gratifying their
ambition. It is evident, that an estimate which requires less than that
which has been mentioned, may yet exact more than the nation can now
raise, without feeling too great inconveniencies to be compensated by
the advantages which can be expected from our new forces. Nor is it
sufficient that it is lower than those of former times; for, as it ought
to be the care of the government to preserve the ease and happine