the common cause, we may once more stand at the
head of a protestant confederacy; of a confederacy that may contract the
views and repress the ambition of the house of Bourbon, and alter their
schemes of universal monarchy into expedients for the defence of their
dominions.

But in transacting these affairs, let us not engage in any intricate
treaties, nor amuse ourselves with displaying our abilities for
negotiation; negotiation, that fatal art which we have learned as yet
very imperfectly, and which we have never attempted to practise but to
our own loss. While we have been entangled in tedious disquisitions, and
retarded by artful delays, while our commissaries have been debating
about what was only denied to produce controversies, and inquiring after
that which has been hid from them only to divert their attention from
other questions, how many opportunities have been lost, and how often
might we have secured by war, what was, at a much greater expense, lost
by treaties.

Treaties, sir, are the artillery of our enemies, to which we have
nothing to oppose; they are weapons of which we know not the use, and
which we can only escape by not coming within their reach. I know not by
what fatality it is, that to treat and to be cheated, are, with regard
to Britons, words of the same signification; nor do I intend, by this
observation, to asperse the characters of particular persons, for
treaties, by whomsoever carried on, have ended always with the same
success.

It is time, therefore, to know, at length, our weakness and our
strength, and to resolve no longer to put ourselves voluntarily into the
power of our enemies: our troops have been always our ablest
negotiators, and to them it has been, for the most part, necessary at
last to refer our cause.

Let us, then, always preserve our martial character, and neglect the
praise of political cunning; a quality which, I believe, we shall never
attain, and which, if we could obtain, would add nothing to our honour.
Let it be the practice of the Britons to declare their resolutions
without reserve, and adhere to them in opposition to danger; let them be
ambitious of no other elogies than those which may be gained by honesty
and courage, nor will they then ever find their allies diffident, or
their enemies contemptuous.

By recovering and asserting this character, we may become once more the
arbiters of Europe, and be courted by all the protestant powers as their
protector