e balance of one nation against
another, both the safety of other countries and of our own is
preserved; and that, therefore, it requires all our vigilance and all
our resolution to establish and maintain it.

That there may come a time in which this scheme will be no longer
practicable, when a coalition of dominions may be inevitable, and when
one power will be necessarily exalted above the rest, is, indeed, not
absolutely impossible, and, therefore, not to be peremptorily denied.
But it is not to be inferred, that our care is vain at present,
because, perhaps, it may some time be vain hereafter; or that we ought
now to sink into slavery without a struggle, because the time may
come, when our strongest efforts will be ineffectual.

It has, indeed, been almost asserted, that the fatal hour is now
arrived, and that it is to no purpose that we endeavour to raise any
farther opposition to the universal monarchy projected by France. We
are told, that the nation is exhausted and dispirited; that we have
neither influence, nor riches, nor courage remaining; that we shall be
left to stand alone against the united house of Bourbon; that the
Austrians cannot, and that the Dutch will not, assist us; that the
king of Sardinia will desert his alliance; that the king of Prussia
has declared against us; and, therefore, that by engaging in the
support of the Pragmatick sanction, we are about to draw upon
ourselves that ruin which every other power has foreseen and shunned.

I am far from denying, my lords, that the power of France is great and
dangerous; but can draw no consequence from that position, but that
this force is to be opposed before it is still greater, and this
danger to be obviated while it is yet surmountable, and surmountable I
still believe it by unanimity and courage.

If our wealth, my lords, is diminished, it is time to confine the
commerce of that nation by which we have been driven out of the
markets of the continent, by destroying their shipping, and
intercepting their merchants. If our courage is depressed, it is
depressed not by any change in the nature of the inhabitants of this
island, but by a long course of inglorious compliance with the
demands, and of mean submission to the insults, of other nations, to
which it is necessary to put an end by vigorous resolutions.

If our allies are timorous and wavering, it is necessary to encourage
them by vigorous measures; for as fear, so courage, is produced by