red by his majesty to deliberate, to be such, that nothing ought to
repress our endeavours but impossibility of success.

Such is the knowledge and experience of those noble lords, that the
hopes which I had formed of seeing the destructive attempts of the
French once more defeated, and power restored again to that equipoise
which is necessary to the continuance of tranquillity and happiness,
have received new strength from their concurrence, and I shall now hear
with less solicitude the threats of France.

That the French, my lords, are not invincible, the noble duke who spoke
last has often experienced; nor is there any reason for imagining that
they are now more formidable than when we encountered them in the fields
of Blenheim and Ramillies. Nothing is requisite but a firm union among
those princes who are immediately in danger from their encroachments, to
reduce them to withdraw their forces from the countries of their
neighbours, and quit, for the defence of their own territories, their
schemes of bestowing empires, and dividing dominions.

That such an union is now cultivated, we have been informed by his
majesty, whose endeavours will probably be successful, however they may
at first be thwarted and obstructed; because the near approach of danger
will rouse those whom avarice has stupified, or negligence intoxicated;
thus truth and reason will become every day more powerful, and sophistry
and artifice be in time certainly detected.

When, therefore, my lords, we are engaged in consultations which may
affect the liberties of a great part of mankind, and by which our
posterity to many ages may be made happy or miserable; when the daily
progress of the enemies of justice and of freedom ought to awaken us to
vigilance and expedition, and there are yet just hopes that diligence
and firmness may preserve us from ruin, let us not waste our time in
unnecessary debates, and keep the nations of Europe in suspense by the
discussion of a question, the decision of which may be delayed for
years, without any manifest inconvenience. Let us not embarrass his
majesty by an unusual form of address, at a time when he his negotiating
alliances, and forming plans for the rescue of the empire.

Nothing, my lords, is more remote from the real end of addresses, than a
representation of them as made only to the minister; for if there be any
commerce between a prince and his subjects, in which he is the immediate
agent, if his person