leisure, that at length they may securely set us at defiance, and
plunder our merchants without fear of vengeance?
Thus, my lords, has our real interest been neglected in pursuit not of
any other scheme of equal advantage, but of the empty title of the
arbiters of Europe; we have suffered our trade to be destroyed, and
our country impoverished for the sake of holding the _balance of
power_; that variable balance, in which folly and ambition are
perpetually changing the weights, and which neither policy nor
strength could yet preserve steady for a single year.
In the prosecution of this idle scheme, we are about to violate all
the maxims of wisdom, and perhaps of justice; we are about to destroy
the end by the means which we make use of to promote it, to endanger
our country more by attempting to hinder the changes which are
projected in Europe, than their accomplishment will endanger it, and
to deliver up ourselves to France before she makes any demand of
submission from us.
If any excuse could be made for expeditions so likely to end in ruin,
it must be that justice required them; and that if we suffer, we at
least suffer in support of right, and in an honest endeavour to
promote the execution of the great laws of moral equity; that if we
fail of success, we shall always have the consolation of having meant
well, and of having deserved those victories which we could not gain.
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