its neighbour.

It is visible, likewise, to any man who considers the situation of
Britain, that there is no nation by which our trade can in time of war
be so much obstructed as by France, of which the coasts are opposite
to ours, and which can send out small vessels, and seize our merchants
in the mouths of our harbours, or in the Channel of which we boast the
sovereignty: and all those who have heard or read of the last war, in
which we gained so much honour, and so little advantage, know that the
privateers of France injured us more than its navies or its armies;
and that a thousand victories on the continent, where we were only
contending for the rights of others, were a very small recompense for
the obstruction of our commerce; nor can he feel much tenderness for
mankind, who would purchase by the ruin and distress of a thousand
families, industrious and innocent, the momentary festivity of a
triumph, or the idle glare of an illumination.

Yet, my lords, this nation, however zealous for its commerce, is about
to engage in a war, in a war with the only state by which our commerce
can be impaired; it is about to support new armies on the continent
without allies, and without treasure.

That we are without treasure, and that our trade, by which only our
funds can be supplied, has lately been very much diminished, is too
easy to prove in opposition to the specious display which the noble
lord, who spoke last, has been pleased to make of the exuberance of
our wealth.

If the abundance of our riches be such as it has been represented, why
are no measures formed for the payment of the publick debts? of which
no man will say, that they are not in themselves a calamity, and the
source of many calamities yet greater; of which it cannot be denied,
that they multiply dependence by which our constitution may sometimes
be endangered. Why are those debts not only unpaid, but increased by
annual additions to such a height, that the payment of them must soon
become desperate, and the publick sink under the burden?

That our trade, my lords, and by consequence our wealth, is of late
diminished, may be proved beyond controversy, even to those whose
interest it is not to believe it, and upon whom, therefore, it cannot
be expected, that arguments will have a great effect. The produce of
the customs was the last year less by half a million than the mean
revenue; and as our customs must always bear a certain proportion to
trade,