w proposed to your
lordships, to perceive any necessity of a previous inquiry into the
conduct of the war, the transaction of our negotiations, or the state of
the kingdom, in order to our compliance with this motion, by which we
shall be far from sheltering any crime from punishment, or any doubtful
conduct from inquiry; shall be far from obstructing the course of
national justice, or approving what we do not understand.

The chief tendency of his majesty's speech is to ask our advice on this
extraordinary conjuncture of affairs; a conduct undoubtedly worthy of a
British monarch, and which we ought not to requite with disrespect; but
what less can be inferred from an alteration of our established forms of
address, by an omission of any part of the speech? For what will be
imagined by his majesty, by the nation, and by the whole world, but that
we did not approve what we did not answer?

The duke of ARGYLE spoke to the following purpose:--My lords, it is with
great reason that the present time has been represented to us from the
throne as a time of uncommon danger and disturbance, a time in which the
barriers of kingdoms are broken down, in contempt of every law of heaven
and of earth, and in which ambition, rapine, and oppression, seem to be
let loose upon mankind; a time in which some nations send out armies and
invade the territories of their neighbours, in opposition to the most
solemn treaties, of which others, with equal perfidy, silently suffer,
or secretly favour the violation.

At a time like this, when treaties are considered only as momentary
expedients, and alliances confer no security, it is evident that the
preservation of our rights, our interest, and our commerce, must depend
only on our natural strength; and that instead of cultivating the
friendship of foreign powers, which we must purchase upon
disadvantageous conditions, and which will be withdrawn from us whenever
we shall need it; we ought, therefore, to collect our own force, and
show the world how little we stand in need of assistance, and how little
we have to fear from the most powerful of our enemies.

Our country, my lords, seems designed by nature to subsist without any
dependence on other nations, and by a steady and resolute improvement of
these advantages with which providence has blessed it, may bid defiance
to mankind; it might become, by the extension of our commerce, the
general centre at which the wealth of the whole earth might b