ur generals, our ambassadors, and our admirals,
have, in reality, the same orders.

Nothing, my lords, is more dangerous than to weaken the publick faith.
When a nation can be no longer trusted, it loses all its influence,
because none can fear its menaces, or depend on its alliance. A nation
no longer trusted, must stand alone and unsupported; and it is certain
that the nation which is justly suspected of holding with its open
enemies a secret intercourse to the prejudice of its allies, can be no
longer trusted.

This suspicion, my lords, this hateful, this reproachful character, is
now fixed upon the court of Britain; nor does it take its rise only from
the forbearance of our admiral, but has received new confirmation from
the behaviour of our ambassador, who denied the treaty of neutrality,
when the French minister declared it to the Dutch. Such now, my lords,
is the reputation of the British court, a reputation produced by the
most flagrant and notorious instances of cowardice and falsehood, which
cannot but make all our endeavours ineffectual, and discourage all those
powers whose conjunction we might have promoted, from entering into any
other engagements than such as we may purchase for stated subsidies. For
who, upon any other motive than immediate interest, would form an
alliance with a power which, upon the first appearance of danger, gives
up a confederate, to purchase, not a large extent of territory, not a
new field of commerce, not a port or a citadel, but an abject
neutrality!

But however mean may be a supplication for peace, or however infamous
the desertion of an ally, I wish, my lords, that the liberty of invading
the queen of Hungary's dominions without opposition, had been the most
culpable concession of our illustrious ministers, of whom it is
reasonable to believe, that they have stipulated with the Spaniards,
that they shall be repaid the expense of the war by the plunder of our
merchants.

That our commerce has been unnecessarily exposed to the ravages of
privateers, from which a very small degree of caution might have
preserved it; that three hundred trading ships have been taken, and that
three thousand British sailors are now in captivity, is a consideration
too melancholy to be long dwelt upon, and a truth too certain to be
suppressed or denied.

How such havock could have been made, had not our ships of war concluded
a treaty of neutrality with the Spaniards, and left the war to be
c