of their directors, than that of regulating the discipline of
their regiments, and teaching the use of arms and the science of war;
yet, as I believe the courage of Britons such as may often supply the
want of skill, I cannot but conclude, that they are at least as
formidable as the troops of other countries, especially when I
remember, that they enter the field incited and supported by the
reputation of their country.

Why then, my lords, is the nation condemned to support, at once, a
double burden; to pay at home an army which can be of no use, and to
hire auxiliaries, perhaps, equally unactive; to make war, if any war
be intended, at an unnecessary expense, and to pay, at once, a fleet
which only floats upon the ocean, an army which only awes the villages
from which it is supported, and a body of mercenaries, of which no man
can yet conjecture with what design they have been retained.

That they are intended for the support of the queen of Hungary has
been, indeed, asserted; and this contract has been produced as an
instance of the zeal of our ministers for the assertion of the
Pragmatick sanction, the preservation of the liberties of Europe, and
the suppression of the ambitious enterprises of the house of Bourbon;
but surely, my lords, had the assistance of that illustrious princess
been their sole or principal intention, had they in reality dedicated
the sum which is to be received by the troops of Hanover, to the
sacred cause of publick faith and universal liberty, they might have
found methods of promoting it much more efficaciously at no greater
expense. Had they remitted that money to the queen, she would have
been enabled to call nations to her standard, to fill the plains of
Germany with the hardy inhabitants of the mountains and the deserts,
and have deluged the empire of France with multitudes equally daring
and rapacious, who would have descended upon a fruitful country like
vultures on their prey, and have laid those provinces in ruin which
now smile at the devastation of neighbouring countries, secure in the
protection of their mighty monarch.

By this method of carrying on the war, we might have secured our ally
from danger which I cannot but think imminent and formidable, though
it seems, at present, not to be feared. By so large an addition to her
troops, she would have been enabled to frustrate those designs, which
her success may incline the king of Prussia to form against her; for
with whatever