edient, with an account of
concessions from the court of Spain, or a congress to compute the
losses, and adjust the claims of our merchants?

Something was necessarily to be attempted, and orders were therefore
despatched by our minister, to his slave at the court of Spain, to
procure some stipulations that might have at least the appearance of a
step towards the conclusion of the debate. His agent obeyed him with his
usual alacrity and address, and in time sent him, for the satisfaction
of the British people, the celebrated convention.

The convention, sir, has been so lately discussed, is so particularly
remembered, and so universally condemned, that it would be an
unjustifiable prodigality of time to expatiate upon it. There were but
few in the last senate, and I hope there are none in this, who did not
see the meanness of suffering incontestable claims to be disputed by
commissaries, the injustice of the demand which was made upon the
South-sea company, and the contemptuous insolence of amusing us with the
shadow of a stipulation, which was to vanish into nothing, unless we
purchased a ratification of it, by paying what we did not owe.

The convention, therefore, sir, was so far from pacifying, that it only
exasperated the nation, and took from our minister the power of acting
any longer openly in favour of the Spaniards; of whom it must be
confessed, that their wisdom was overpowered by their pride, and that,
for the sake of showing to all the powers of Europe the dependence in
which they held the court of Britain, they took from their friends the
power of serving them any longer, and made it unsafe for them to pay
that submission to which they were inclined.

The Spaniards did not sufficiently distinguish between the nation and
the ministry of Britain, nor suspected that their interests,
inclinations, and opinions were directly opposite; and that those who
were caressed, feared, and reverenced by the ministry, were by the
people hated, despised, and ridiculed.

By enslaving our ministry, they weakly imagined that they had conquered
our nation; nor, perhaps, sir, would they quickly have discovered their
mistake, had they used their victory with greater moderation,
condescended to govern their new province with less rigour, and sent us
laws in any other form than that of the convention.

But the security which success excites, produced in them the same
effects as it has often done in others, and destroyed, in