But, upon an impartial survey of the cause in which we are going to
engage, and on which we are about to hazard our own happiness, and
that of our posterity, I can discover no such apparent justice on the
side of the queen of Hungary, as ought to incite distant nations to
espouse her quarrel, to raise armies in her favour, to consider her
cause as that of human nature, and to prosecute those that invade her
territories, as the enemies of general society.
The Pragmatick sanction, my lords, by which she claims all the
hereditary dominions of her family, cannot change the nature of right
and wrong, nor invalidate any claim before subsisting, unless by the
consent of the prince by whom it was made. The elector of Bavaria may,
therefore, urge in his own defence, that by the elder sister he has a
clear and indisputable right, a right from which he never receded, as
he never concurred in the Pragmatiok sanction; he may, therefore,
charge this illustrious princess, for whom so many troops are raised,
and for whom so much blood is about to be shed, with usurpation, with
detention of the dominions of other potentates, and with an obstinate
assertion of a false title.
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