espair of attaining those ends which they declare at
the same time necessary not only to our happiness, but to our
preservation, what do they less than tell us, that we must be content
to look unactive on the calamities that approach us, and prepare to be
crushed by that ruin which we cannot prevent?

From this cold dejection, my lords, arises that despair which so many
lords have expressed, of prevailing upon the Dutch to unite with us.
The determinations of that people are, indeed, always slow, and the
reason of their slowness has been already given; but I am informed,
that the general spirit which now reigns among them, is likely soon to
overrule the particular interests of single provinces, and can produce
letters by which it will appear, that had only one town opposed those
measures to which their concurrence is now solicited, it had been long
since overruled; for there want not among them men equally enamoured
of the magnanimity and firmness of the queen of Hungary, equally
zealous for the general good of mankind, equally zealous for the
liberties of Europe, and equally convinced of the perfidy, the
ambition, and the insolence of France, with any lord in this assembly.

These men, my lords, have long endeavoured to rouse their country from
the sloth of avarice, and the slumber of tranquillity, to a generous
and extensive regard for the universal happiness of mankind; and are
now labouring in the general assembly to communicate that ardour with
which they are themselves inflamed, and to excite that zeal for
publick faith, of which their superiour knowledge shows them the
necessity.

It has been, indeed, insinuated, that all their consultations tend
only to place garrisons in those towns from which the queen of Hungary
has withdrawn her forces; but this supposition, my lords, as it is
without any support from facts, is, likewise, without probability. For
to garrison the barrier towns requires no previous debates nor
deliberations; since it never was opposed even by those by whom the
assistance of the queen of Hungary has been most retarded. Nor have
even the deputies of Dort, whose obstinacy has been most remarkable,
denied the necessity of securing the confines of their country, by
possessing with their own troops those places which the Austrians are
obliged to forsake. Their present disputes, my lords, must be,
therefore, on some other question; and what question can be now before
them which can produce any dif