find no excuses, and of which no other causes can be
assigned than cowardice or treachery. From the suspicion of one, the
past actions of the admiral who commands our fleet in those seas will
secure him, but I know not whether there are now any that will attempt
to clear the minister's character from the imputation of the other.

All the insolence of the Spaniards, a nation by no means formidable, is
the consequence of the reunion of the houses of Bourbon; a reunion which
could not easily have been accomplished, but by the instrumental
offices of our ministry, whom, therefore, the nation has a right to
charge with the diminution of its honour, and the decay of its trade.

Nor has our trade, my lords, been only contracted and obstructed by the
piracies of Spain, but has been suffered to languish and decline at
home, either by criminal negligence, or by their complaisance for
France, which has given rise to our other calamities. The state of our
woollen manufactures is well known, and those whose indolence or love of
pleasure keeps them strangers to the other misfortunes of their country,
must yet have been acquainted with this, by the daily accounts of riots
and insurrections, raised by those who, having been employed in that
manufacture, can provide for their families by no other business, and
are made desperate by the want of bread.

We are told, my lords, by all parties, and told with truth, that our
manufactures decline, because the French have engrossed most of the
foreign markets; and it is not denied even by those whose interest it
might be to' deny it, that the cloth which they ruin us by vending, is
made of our own wool, which they are suffered to procure either by the
folly of an unskilful, or the connivance of a treacherous
administration.

If our own manufactures, my lords, had been carefully promoted, if the
whole influence of our government had been made to cooperate with the
industry of our traders, there had always been such a demand for our
wool, that they could not have afforded to purchase it at a price
equivalent to the danger of exporting it: and if any means were now
steadily practised to prevent the exportation, our trade must
consequently revive, because cloth is one of the necessaries of life
which other nations must have from Britain, when France can no longer
supply them.

But, my lords, notwithstanding the decay of trade, our expenses have
never been contracted; we have squandered millio