evances, inveterate and
customary, is not to be attempted; times when the utmost care is barely
sufficient to avert extreme calamities, and prevent a total dissolution;
and in which the consideration of lighter evils must not be suffered to
interrupt more important counsels, or divert that attention which the
preservation of the state necessarily demands.

Such, my lords, is the present time, even by the confession of those who
have opposed the motion, and of whom, therefore, it may be reasonably
demanded, why they waste these important hours in debates upon forms and
words?

For that only forms and words have produced the debate, must be
apparent, even to themselves, when the fervour of controversy shall have
slackened; when that vehemence, with which the most moderate are
sometimes transported, and that acrimony, which candour itself cannot
always forbear, shall give way to reflection and to reason. That the
danger is pressing, and that pressing dangers require expedition and
unanimity, they willingly grant; and what more is asserted in the
address?

That any lord should be unwilling to concur in the customary expressions
of thankfulness and duty to his majesty, or in acknowledgments of that
regard for this assembly with which he asks our assistance and advice, I
am unwilling to suspect; nor can I imagine that any part of the
opposition to this proposal can be produced by unwillingness to comply
with his majesty's demands, and to promise that advice and assistance,
which it is our duty, both to our sovereign, our country, and ourselves,
to offer.

That those, my lords, who have expressed in terms so full of indignation
their resentment of the imaginary neglect of the queen of Hungary's
interest, have declared the house of Austria the only bulwark of Europe,
and expressed their dread of the encroachments of France with emotions
which nothing but real passion can produce, should be unwilling to
assert their resolution of adhering to the Pragmatick sanction, and of
defending the liberties of the empire, cannot be supposed.

And yet, my lords, what other reasons of their conduct can be assigned
either by the emperour, or the people, or the allies of Britain; those
allies whose claim they so warmly assert, and whose merits they so
loudly extol? Will it not be imagined in foreign courts, that the
measures now recommended by the emperour, are thought not consistent
with the interest of the nation? Will it not be readil