ng has lately happened to
incline them to forsake.

When they were solicited to become, like us, the guarantees of
Hanover, they made no scruple of returning, with whatever
unpoliteness, an absolute refusal; nor could they be prevailed upon to
grant, what we appear to think that we were honoured in being admitted
to bestow. When they were called upon to fulfil their stipulation, and
support the Pragmatick sanction, they evaded their own contract, till
all assistance would have been too late, had not a lucky discovery of
the French perfidy separated the king of Prussia from them; and what
reason, my lords, can be given, why they should now do what they
refused, when it might have been much more safely and more easily
effected? Did they suffer the queen of Hungary to be oppressed, only
to show their own power and affluence by relieving her? or can it be
imagined, that pity has prevailed over policy or cowardice? They, who
in contempt of their own treaties refused to engage in a cause while
it was yet doubtful, will certainly think themselves justified in
abandoning it when it is lost, and will urge, that no treaty can
oblige them to act like madmen, or to undertake impossibilities.

I am, therefore, convinced, my lords, that they will not enter into an
offensive treaty, and that they have only engaged to do what their own
interest required from them, without any new stipulation, to preserve
their own country from invasion by sending garrisons into the frontier
towns, which they may do without any offence to France, or any
interruption of their own tranquillity.

Many other treaties have been mentioned, my lords, and mentioned with
great ostentation, as the effects of consummate policy, which will, I
suspect, appear to be at least only defensive treaties, by which the
contracting powers promise little more than to take care of
themselves.

In this state of the world, my lords, when all the powers of the
continent appear benumbed by a lethargy, or shackled by a panick, to
what purpose should we lavish, in hiring and transporting troops, that
wealth which contests of nearer importance immediately require?

It is well known to our merchants, whose ships are every day seized by
privateers, that we are at war with Spain, and that our commerce is
every day impaired by the depredations of an enemy, whom only our own
negligence enables to resist us; but I doubt, my lords, whether it is
known in Spain, that their monarch is a