ation may be best preserved, or so rash as to
pursue those schemes by which they hope to gratify the king at
whatever hazard, and who for the sake of flattering him for a day,
will risk the safety of his government, and the repose of his life.

It has, with regard to these troops, been asked by the noble lord who
spoke last, what is the intent of this motion but to disband them?
What else, indeed, can be intended by it, and what intention can be
more worthy of this august assembly? By a steady pursuit of this
intention, my lords, we shall regain the esteem of the nation, which
this daring invasion of our privileges may be easily supposed to have
impaired. We shall give our sovereign an opportunity, by a gracious
condescension to our desires, to recover those affections of which the
pernicious advice of flatterers has deprived him; we shall obviate a
precedent which threatens destruction to our liberties, and shall set
the nation free from an universal alarm. Nor in our present state is
it to be mentioned as a trifling consideration, that we shall hinder
the wealth of the nation from being ravished from our merchants, our
farmers, and our manufacturers, to be squandered upon foreigners, and
foreigners from whom we can hope for no advantage.

But it may be asked, my lords, how the great cause of liberty is to be
supported, how the house of Austria is to be preserved from ruin, and
how the ambition of France is to be repressed? How all this is to be
effected, my lords, I am very far from conceiving myself qualified to
determine; but surely it will be very little hindered by the
dismission of troops, whose allegiance obliges them not to fight
against the emperour, and of whom, therefore, it does not easily
appear how they can be very useful allies to the queen of Hungary.

But whatever service is expected from them, it may surely, my lords,
be performed by the same number of British troops; and that number may
be sent to supply their place, without either delay or difficulty; I
will venture to say, without any hazard. If it be objected, as it has
often been, that by sending out our troops, we shall leave our country
naked to invasion, I hope I may be allowed to ask, who will invade us?
The French are well known to be the only people whom we can suspect of
any such design. They have no fleet on this side of their kingdom, and
their ships in the Mediterranean are blocked up in the harbour by the
navies of Britain. We shall