would only retard
our counsels, and divert our thoughts from more important
considerations; considerations which his majesty has recommended to us,
and which cannot be more strongly pressed upon us than by the noble lord
who opposed the motion; for he most powerfully incites to unanimity and
attention, who most strongly represents the danger of our situation.

Of the good effects of publick consultations, I need not observe, my
lords, that they arise from the joint endeavour of many understandings
cooperating to the same end; from the reasonings and observations of
many individuals of different studies, inclinations, and experience, all
directed to the illustration of the same question, which is, therefore,
so accurately discussed, so variously illustrated, and so amply
displayed, that a more comprehensive view is obtained of its relations
and consequences, than can be hoped from the wisdom or knowledge of any
single man.

But this advantage, my lords, can only be expected from union and
concurrence; for when the different members of a national council enter
with different designs, and exert their abilities not so much to promote
any general purposes, as to obviate the measures, and confute the
arguments of each other, the publick is deprived of all the benefit that
might be expected from the collective wisdom of assemblies, whatever may
be the capacity of those who compose them. The senate thus divided and
disturbed, will, perhaps, conclude with less prudence than any single
member, as any man may more easily discover truth without assistance,
than when others of equal abilities are employed in perplexing his
inquiries, and interrupting the operations of his mind.

Thus, my lords, it might be safer for a nation, even in time of terrour
and disorder, to be deprived of the counsels of this house, than to
confide in the determinations of an assembly not uniform in its views,
nor connected in its interests; an assembly from which little can be
hoped by those who observe that it cannot, without a tedious debate,
prolonged with all the heat of opposition, despatch the first and most
cursory part of publick business,--an address to his majesty.

It has been for a long time a practice too frequent, to confound past
with present questions, to perplex every debate by an endless
multiplication of objects, and to obstruct our determinations by
substituting one inquiry in the place of another.

The only question, my lords, no