ich it presumed to invade; and the troops which were
sent to its assistance are languishing at the feet of mountains which
they will never pass.

These are the effects, my lords, of those measures, which, for want of
being completely understood, or attentively considered, have been so
vehemently censured. These measures, my lords, however injudicious,
however unseasonable, have embarrassed the designs of France, and
given relief to the queen of Hungary; they have animated the Dutch to
action, and kindled in all the powers of Europe, who were intimidated
by the French armies, new hopes and new resolutions; they have,
indeed, made a general change in the state of Europe, and given a new
inclination to the balance of power. Not many months have elapsed,
since every man appeared to consider the sovereign of France as the
universal monarch, whose will was not to be opposed, and whose force
was not to be resisted. We now see his menaces despised and his
propositions rejected; every one now appears to hope rather than to
fear, though lately a general panick was spread over this part of the
globe, and fear had so engrossed mankind, that scarcely any man
presumed to hope.

But it is objected, my lords, that though our measures should be
allowed not to have been wholly ineffectual, and our money appear not
to have been squandered only to pay the troops of Hanover, yet our
conduct is very far from meriting either applause or approbation;
since much greater advantages might have been purchased at much less
expense, and by methods much less invidious and dangerous.

The queen of Hungary might, in the opinion of these censurers, have
raised an hundred thousand men with the money which we must expend in
hiring only sixteen thousand, and might have destroyed those enemies
whom we have hitherto not dared to attack.

Those who make this supposition the foundation of their censures,
appear not to remember, that the queen of Hungary's dominions, like
those of other princes, may, by war, be in time exhausted; that the
loss of inhabitants is not repaired in any country but by slow
degrees; and that there is no place yet discovered where money will
procure soldiers without end, or where new harvests of men rise up
annually, ready to fight those quarrels in which their predecessors
were swept away. If the money had, instead of being employed in hiring
auxiliaries, been remitted to the queen, it is not probable that she
could, at any rate,