cal than the complaints of the
patriots, who spared no labour to inform either the senate or the
nation of the advantages which success would have procured. But what
measures have been taken to repair our losses, or to regain our
honour; or what new schemes have been formed for making an attack more
forcible upon some weaker part?

Every one can remember, that the miscarriage of that enterprise was
imputed, not to its difficulty, nor to the courage of the Spaniards,
nor to the strength of their works, but to the unskilfulness of our
officers, and the impropriety of the season; and it was, therefore,
without doubt thought not impossible to attack the Spanish colonies
with success; but why then, my lords, have they hitherto suffered the
Spaniards to discipline their troops, and strengthen their works at.
leisure, that at length they may securely set us at defiance, and
plunder our merchants without fear of vengeance?

Thus, my lords, has our real interest been neglected in pursuit not of
any other scheme of equal advantage, but of the empty title of the
arbiters of Europe; we have suffered our trade to be destroyed, and
our country impoverished for the sake of holding the _balance of
power_; that variable balance, in which folly and ambition are
perpetually changing the weights, and which neither policy nor
strength could yet preserve steady for a single year.

In the prosecution of this idle scheme, we are about to violate all
the maxims of wisdom, and perhaps of justice; we are about to destroy
the end by the means which we make use of to promote it, to endanger
our country more by attempting to hinder the changes which are
projected in Europe, than their accomplishment will endanger it, and
to deliver up ourselves to France before she makes any demand of
submission from us.

If any excuse could be made for expeditions so likely to end in ruin,
it must be that justice required them; and that if we suffer, we at
least suffer in support of right, and in an honest endeavour to
promote the execution of the great laws of moral equity; that if we
fail of success, we shall always have the consolation of having meant
well, and of having deserved those victories which we could not gain.

But, upon an impartial survey of the cause in which we are going to
engage, and on which we are about to hazard our own happiness, and
that of our posterity, I can discover no such apparent justice on the
side of the queen of Hungary, as o