Mr. PHILLIPS spoke in substance as follows:--Sir, I am so far from
believing that there is danger of exposing the spies of the government
to the resentment of foreign princes, by complying with this motion,
that I suspect the opposition to be produced chiefly from a
consciousness, that no spies will be discovered to have been employed,
and that the secret service for which such large sums have been
required, will appear to have been rather for the service of domestick
than of foreign traitors, and to have been performed rather in this
house than in foreign courts.
Secret service has been long a term of great use to the ministers of
this nation; a term of art to which such uncommon efficacy has been
hitherto annexed, that the people have been influenced by it to pay
taxes, without expecting to be informed how they were applied, having
been content with being told, when they inquired after their properties,
that they were exhausted and dissipated in secret service.
Secret service I conceive to have originally implied transactions, of
which the agents were secret, though the effects were visible. When
MARLBOROUGH defeated the French, when he counteracted all their
stratagems, obviated all their designs, and deceived all their
expectations, he charged the nation with large sums for secret service,
which were, indeed, cheerfully allowed, because the importance and
reality of the service were apparent from its effects.
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