fesses to
serve, that he may increase the wealth of another.

But upon consideration of this estimate, my lords, all these
expectations, however reasonable in themselves, however consistent
with the declarations of the wisest statesmen, and the practice of
former times, will be disappointed; for it will be found that the
troops, of which we are now to ratify the provisions for their
payment, are raised at an expense never known on the like occasion
before, when the nation was far more able to support it; that they
have yet been employed in no expedition, that they have neither fought
a battle, nor besieged a town, nor undertaken any design, nor hindered
any that has been formed by those against whom they are pretended to
have been raised; that they have not yet drawn a sword but at a
review, nor heard the report of fire-arms but upon a festival; that
they have not yet seen an enemy, and that they are posted where no
enemy is likely to approach them.

But this, my lords, is not the circumstance which ought, in my
opinion, most strongly to affect us; troops may be raised without
being employed, and money expended without effect; but such measures,
though they ought to be censured and rectified, may be borne without
any extraordinary degree of indignation. While our constitution
remains unviolated, temporary losses may be easily repaired, and
accidental misconduct speedily retrieved; but when the publick rights
are infringed, when the ministry assume the power of giving away the
properties of the people, it is then necessary to exert an uncommon
degree of vigour and resentment; it is as necessary to stop, the
encroachments of lawless power, as to oppose the torrent of a deluge;
which may be, perhaps, resisted at first, but from which, the country
that is once overwhelmed by it, cannot be recovered.

To raise this ardour, my lords, to excite this laudable resentment, I
believe it will be only necessary to observe, that those troops were
raised without the advice or the consent of the senate; that this new
burden has been laid upon the nation by the despotick will of the
ministers, and that the demands made for their support may be said to
be a tax laid upon the people, not by the senate, but by the court.

The motives upon which the ministry have acted on this occasion are,
so far as they can be discovered, and, indeed, there appears very
little care to conceal them, such as no subject of this crown ever
dared to proce