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they judged most clear, and by which they hoped to be conducted to
honour and to safety?

Policy, my lords, is very different from prescience; the utmost that can
be attained is probability, and that, for the most part, in a low
degree. It is observed, that no man is wise but as you take into
consideration the weakness of another; a maxim more eminently true of
political wisdom, which consists, very often, only in discovering
designs which could never be known but by the folly or treachery of
those to whom they are trusted. If our enemies were wise enough to keep
their own secrets, neither our ministers nor our patriots would be able
to know or prevent their designs, nor would it be any reproach to their
sagacity, that they did not know what nobody would tell them.

If therefore, my lords, the princes, whose interest is contrary to our
own, have been at any time served by honest and wise men, there was a
time when our ministers could act only by conjecture, and might be
mistaken without a crime.

If it was always in our power to penetrate into the intentions of our
enemies, they must necessarily have the same means of making themselves
acquainted with our projects, and yet when any of them are discovered we
think it just to impute it to the negligence of the minister.

Thus, my lords, every man is inclined to judge with prejudice and
partiality. When we suffer by the prudence of our enemies, we charge our
ministers with want of vigilance, without considering, that very often
nothing is necessary to elude the most penetrating sagacity, but
obstinate silence.

If we inquire into the transactions of past times, shall we find any
man, however renowned for his abilities, not sometimes imposed upon by
falsehoods, and sometimes betrayed by his own reasonings into measures
destructive of the purposes which he endeavoured to promote? There is no
man of whose penetration higher ideas have been justly formed, or who
gave more frequent proofs of an uncommon penetration into futurity than
Cromwell; and yet succeeding times have sufficiently discovered the
weakness of aggrandizing France by depressing Spain, and we wonder now
how so much policy could fall into so gross an errour, as not rather to
suffer power to remain in the distant enemy, than transfer it to another
equally divided from us by interest, and far more formidable by the
situation of his dominions.

Cromwell, my lords, suffered himself to be hurried away by th