t war with Britain, otherwise
than by the riches of our nation, which are distributed among their
privateers, and the prisoners who in the towns on the coast are
wandering in the streets. For I know no inconvenience which they can
be supposed to feel from our hostilities, nor in what part of the
world the war against them is carried on. Before the war was declared,
it is well remembered by whom, and with how great vehemence, it was
every day repeated, that to end the war with honour we ought to _take
and hold_. What, my lords, do we _hold_, or what have we _taken_? What
has the war produced in its whole course from one year to another, but
defeats, losses, and ignominy? And how shall we regain our honour, or
retrieve our wealth, by engaging in another war more dangerous but
less necessary? We ought surely to humble Spain, before we presume to
attack France; and we may attack France with better prospects of
success, when we have no other enemy to divert our attention, or
divide our forces.

That we ought, indeed, to make any attempt upon France, I am far from
being convinced, because I do not now discover, that any of the
motives subsist which engaged us in the last confederacy. The house of
Austria, though overborne and distressed, was then powerful in itself,
and possessed of the imperial crown. It is now reduced almost below
the hopes of recovery, and we are therefore now to restore what we
were then only to support. But what, my lords, is in my opinion much
more to be considered, the nation was then unanimous in one general
resolution to repress the insolence of France; no hardships were
insupportable that conduced to this great end, nor any taxes grievous
that were applied to the support of the war. The account of a victory
was esteemed as an equivalent to excises and to publick debts; and the
possessions of us and our posterity were cheerfully mortgaged to
purchase a triumph over the common enemy. But, my lords, the
disposition of the nation with regard to the present war is very
different. They discover no danger threatening them, they are neither
invaded in their possessions by the armies, nor interrupted in their
commerce by the fleets of France; and therefore they are not able to
find out why they must be sacrificed to an enemy, by whom they have
been long pursued with the most implacable hatred, for the sake of
attacking a power from which they have hitherto felt no injury, and
which they believe cannot be pr