ed; and they have
therefore endeavoured to persuade us, that they are only discouraging us
from an insuperable labour, and advising us to desist from measures
which we cannot live to accomplish.

But when they found, sir, that their exaggerations produced merriment
instead of terrour, that their opponents were determined to try their
strength against impossibility, that they were resolved to launch out
into this boundless ocean of inquiry; an ocean of which they have been
boldly told, that it has neither shore nor bottom, and that whoever
ventures into it must be tost about for life; when they discovered that
this was not able to shake our resolution, or move us to any other
disposition, they thought it proper to explain away their assertion of
impossibility, by making a kind of distinction between things
impossible, and things which cannot be performed; and finding it
necessary to enlarge their plea, they have now asserted, that this
inquiry is both impossible and inexpedient.

Its impossibility, sir, has been already sufficiently discussed, and
shown to mean only a difficulty which the unskilfulness of our ministers
has produced; for transactions can only produce difficulties to the
inquirer, when they are confused; and confusion can only be the effect
of ignorance or neglect.

Artifice is, indeed, one more source of perplexity: it is the interest
of that man whose cause is bad to speak unintelligibly in the defence of
it, and of him whose actions cannot bear to be examined, to hide them in
disorder, to engage his pursuers in a labyrinth, that they may not trace
his steps and discover his retreat; and what intricacies may be produced
by fraud cooperating with subtilty, it is not possible to tell.

I do not, however, believe, that all the art of wickedness can elude the
inquiries of a British senate, quickened by zeal for the publick
happiness. The sagacity of our predecessors has often detected crimes
concealed with more policy than can be ascribed to those whose conduct
is now to be examined, and dragged the authors of national calamities to
punishment from their darkest retreats. The expediency, therefore, of
this motion, is now to be considered, and surely it will not require
long reflection to prove that it is proper, when the nation is oppressed
with calamities, to inquire by what misconduct they were brought upon
it; when immense sums have been raised by the most oppressive methods of
exaction, to ask why th