I find, not yet to
be acknowledged, what it certainly was, a mere phantom, an empty
illusion, sent by the arts of the French to terrify our ministry. His
late majesty's testimony is cited to prove that stipulations were really
entered into by the two powers allied by that treaty, to destroy our
trade, subvert our constitution, and set a new king upon the throne,
without consent of the nation.

Such improbabilities, my lords, ought, indeed, to be proved by a high
testimony, by a testimony which no man shall dare to question or
contradict; for as any man is at liberty to consult his reason, it will
always remonstrate to him, that it is no less absurd to impute the folly
of designing impossibilities to any powers not remarkable for weak
counsels, than unjust to suspect princes of intending injuries, to which
they have not been incited by any provocation.

But, my lords, nowithstanding the solemnity with which his late majesty
has been introduced, his testimony can prove nothing more than that he
believed the treaty to be such as he represents, that he had been
deceived into false apprehensions and unnecessary cautions by his own
ministers, as they had been imposed upon by the agents of France.

This is all, my lords, that can be collected from the royal speech, and
to infer more from it is to suppose that the king was himself a party in
the designs formed against him; for if he was not himself engaged in
this treaty, he could only be informed, by another, of the stipulations,
and could only report what he had been told upon the credit of the
informer, a man, necessarily of very little credit. Thus, my lords, all
the evidence of his late majesty vanishes into nothing more than the
whisper of a spy.

But as great stress ought, doubtless, to be laid upon intelligence which
the nation is believed to purchase at a very high price, let it be
inquired, what proofs those have who dare to suspect the sagacity of our
ministers, to put in the balance against their intelligence, and it will
be discovered, my lords, that they have a testimony no less than that of
the German emperour himself, who could not be mistaken with regard to
the meaning of the treaty concluded at his own court, and to whom it
will not be very decent to deny such a degree of veracity as may set him
at least on the level with a traitor and a hireling.

If the treaty of Vienna was an imposture, most of our misfortunes are
evidently produced by the weakness of