Its impossibility, sir, has been already sufficiently discussed, and
shown to mean only a difficulty which the unskilfulness of our ministers
has produced; for transactions can only produce difficulties to the
inquirer, when they are confused; and confusion can only be the effect
of ignorance or neglect.
Artifice is, indeed, one more source of perplexity: it is the interest
of that man whose cause is bad to speak unintelligibly in the defence of
it, and of him whose actions cannot bear to be examined, to hide them in
disorder, to engage his pursuers in a labyrinth, that they may not trace
his steps and discover his retreat; and what intricacies may be produced
by fraud cooperating with subtilty, it is not possible to tell.
I do not, however, believe, that all the art of wickedness can elude the
inquiries of a British senate, quickened by zeal for the publick
happiness. The sagacity of our predecessors has often detected crimes
concealed with more policy than can be ascribed to those whose conduct
is now to be examined, and dragged the authors of national calamities to
punishment from their darkest retreats. The expediency, therefore, of
this motion, is now to be considered, and surely it will not require
long reflection to prove that it is proper, when the nation is oppressed
with calamities, to inquire by what misconduct they were brought upon
it; when immense sums have been raised by the most oppressive methods of
exaction, to ask why they were demanded, and how they were expended;
when penal laws have been partially executed, to examine by what
authority they were suspended, and by what they were enforced; and when
the senate has for twenty years implicitly obeyed the direction of one
man, when it has been known throughout the nation, before any question
was proposed, how it would be decided, to search out the motive of that
regular compliance, and to examine whether the minister was reverenced
for his wisdom and virtue, or feared for his power, or courted for the
publick money; whether he owed his prevalence to the confidence or
corruption of his followers?
It cannot surely be thought inexpedient, to inquire into the reasons for
which our merchants were for many years suffered to be plundered, or for
which a war, solicited by the general voice of the whole nation, was
delayed; into the reasons for which our fleets were fitted out only to
coast upon the ocean, and connive at the departure of squadrons and the
transportation of armies, to suffer our allies to be invaded, and our
traders ruined and enslaved.
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