defence of other princes more than our stipulations require, I am not
able to discover; nor can I conceive what motive can incite us, after
having suffered so much from a weak enemy to irritate a stronger.

To the measures which are now pursued, were there no other arguments
to be alleged against them, I should think it, my lords, a sufficient
objection that they are unnecessary, and that this is not a time for
political experiments, or for wanton expenses. I should think, that
the present distresses of the publick ought to restrain your lordships
from approving any steps by which our burdens may be made more heavy,
burdens under which we are already sinking, and which a peace of more
than twenty years has not contributed to lighten.

But that they are unnecessary, my lords, is the weakest allegation
that can be offered; for they are such as tend not only to obstruct
the advancement of more advantageous designs, but to bring upon us the
heaviest calamities; they will not only hinder us from increasing our
strength, but will sink us to the greatest degree of weakness; they
will not only impoverish us for the present, which may be sometimes
the effect of useful and beneficial designs, but may depress us below
a possibility of recovery, and reduce us to receive laws from some
foreign power.

This is, indeed, a dreadful prospect; but what other can arise to us
from a war with France, with the most wealthy empire of the universe,
of which we were sufficiently shown the strength in the late war, by
the resistance which all the surrounding nations found it able to make
against their united efforts, and which the debts that they then
contracted, and the towns that were then destroyed, will not easily
suffer them to forget. Of this empire, my lords, thus powerful, thus
formidable, neither the dominions are contracted, nor the trade
impaired, nor the inhabitants diminished. The French armies are no
less numerous than under their late mighty monarch, their territories
are increased by new acquisitions, their trade has long been promoted
by the destruction of ours, and their wealth has been, by consequence,
increased. They have not, my lords, like this unhappy nation, been
exhausted by temporary expedients and useless armaments; they have not
harassed their merchants to aggrandize the court, nor thrown away the
opportunities which this interval of quiet has afforded them, in the
struggles of faction; they have not been multiplyin