que ferro.

If so, what is it we can do to hurt her?--it will be all an
_imposition_, all _fallacious_. Why, the result must be,--

Occidit, occidit
Spes omnis, et fortuna nostri
Nominis.

The only way which the author's principles leave for our escape, is to
reverse our condition into that of France, and to take her losing cards
into our hands. But though his principles drive him to it, his politics
will not suffer him to walk on this ground. Talking at our ease and of
other countries, we may bear to be diverted with such speculations; but
in England we shall never be taught to look upon the annihilation of our
trade, the ruin of our credit, the defeat of our armies, and the loss of
our ultramarine dominions (whatever the author may think of them), to be
the high road to prosperity and greatness.

The reader does not, I hope, imagine that I mean seriously to set about
the refutation of these uningenious paradoxes and reveries without
imagination. I state them only that we may discern a little in the
questions of war and peace, the most weighty of all questions, what is
the wisdom of those men who are held out to us as the only hope of an
expiring nation. The present ministry is indeed of a strange character:
at once indolent and distracted. But if a ministerial system should be
formed, actuated by such maxims as are avowed in this piece, the vices
of the present ministry would become their virtues; their indolence
would be the greatest of all public benefits, and a distraction that
entirely defeated every one of their schemes would be our only security
from destruction.

To have stated these reasonings is enough, I presume, to do their
business. But they are accompanied with facts and records, which may
seem of a little more weight. I trust, however, that the facts of this
author will be as far from bearing the touchstone, as his arguments. On
a little inquiry, they will be found as great an imposition as the
successes they are meant to depreciate; for they are all either false
or fallaciously applied; or not in the least to the purpose for which
they are produced.

First the author, in order to support his favorite paradox, that our
possession of the French colonies was of no detriment to France, has
thought proper to inform us, that[42] "they put themselves into the
hands of the English." He uses the same assertion, in nearly the same
words, in another place;[43] "her colonies had pu