e better proofs of their qualifications for that high trust,
than mere specimens of their memory, their rhetorick, or their malice.

Even the noble lord, who must be confessed to have shown a very
extensive acquaintance with foreign affairs, and to have very accurately
considered the interests and dispositions of the princes of Europe, has
yet failed in the order of time, and by one errour very much invalidated
his charge of misconduct in foreign affairs.

The treaty of Vienna, my lords, was not produced by the rejection of the
infanta, unless a treaty that was made before it could be the
consequence of it; so that there was no such opportunity thrown into our
hands as the noble lord has been pleased to represent. Spain had
discovered herself our enemy, and our enemy in the highest degree,
before the French provoked her by that insult; and, therefore, how much
soever she might be enraged against France, there was no prospect that
she would favour us, nor could we have courted her alliance without the
lowest degree of meanness and dishonour.

See then, my lords, this atrocious accusation founded upon false dates,
upon a preposterous arrangement of occurrences; behold it vanish into
smoke at the approach of truth, and let this instance convince us how
easy it is to form chimerical blunders, and impute gross follies to the
wisest administration; how easy it is to charge others with mistakes and
how difficult to avoid them.

But we are told, my lords, that the dangers of the confederacy at Vienna
were merely imaginary, that no contract was made to the disadvantage of
our dominions, or of our commerce, and that if the weakness of the
Spaniards and Germans had contrived such a scheme, it would soon have
been discovered by them to be an airy dream, a plan impossible to be
reduced to execution.

We have been amused, my lords, on this occasion with great profusion of
mirth and ridicule, and have received the consolation of hearing that
Britain is an island, and that an island is not to be invaded without
ships. We have been informed of the nature of the king's territories,
and of the natural strength of the fortress of Gibraltar; but the noble
lord forgot that though Britain has no dominions on the continent, yet
our sovereign has there a very extensive country, which, though we are
not to make war for the sake of strengthening or enlarging it, we are,
surely, to defend when we have drawn an invasion upon it.

The weakness