y examine all the
transactions which he has hitherto overlooked, that he repair those
errours which are yet retrievable, and reduce his trade into method;
that he doom those servants, by whom he has been robbed or deceived, to
the punishment which they deserve, and recover from them that wealth
which they have accumulated by rapacity and fraud.

By this method only can the credit of the trader or the nation be
repaired, and this is the method which the motion recommends; a motion
with which, therefore, every man may be expected to comply, who desires
that his country should once more recover its influence and power, who
wishes to see Britain again courted and feared, and her monarch
considered as the arbiter of the world, the protector of the true
religion, and the defender of the liberties of mankind.

Mr. PHILLIPS spoke in substance as follows:--Sir, I am so far from
believing that there is danger of exposing the spies of the government
to the resentment of foreign princes, by complying with this motion,
that I suspect the opposition to be produced chiefly from a
consciousness, that no spies will be discovered to have been employed,
and that the secret service for which such large sums have been
required, will appear to have been rather for the service of domestick
than of foreign traitors, and to have been performed rather in this
house than in foreign courts.

Secret service has been long a term of great use to the ministers of
this nation; a term of art to which such uncommon efficacy has been
hitherto annexed, that the people have been influenced by it to pay
taxes, without expecting to be informed how they were applied, having
been content with being told, when they inquired after their properties,
that they were exhausted and dissipated in secret service.

Secret service I conceive to have originally implied transactions, of
which the agents were secret, though the effects were visible. When
MARLBOROUGH defeated the French, when he counteracted all their
stratagems, obviated all their designs, and deceived all their
expectations, he charged the nation with large sums for secret service,
which were, indeed, cheerfully allowed, because the importance and
reality of the service were apparent from its effects. But what
advantages can our ministers boast of having obtained in twenty years by
the means of their intelligence? Or by whom have they, within that
period, not been deceived by false appearances? When we