know the
reasons by which I have often demonstrated to you the groundlessness
of your apprehensions. If those are not enough, I will now reveal an
advantage arising from the greatness of your dominion, which I think
has never yet suggested itself to you, which I never mentioned in my
previous speeches, and which has so bold a sound that I should scarce
adventure it now, were it not for the unnatural depression which I see
around me. You perhaps think that your empire extends only over your
allies; I will declare to you the truth. The visible field of action has
two parts, land and sea. In the whole of one of these you are completely
supreme, not merely as far as you use it at present, but also to what
further extent you may think fit: in fine, your naval resources are
such that your vessels may go where they please, without the King or any
other nation on earth being able to stop them. So that although you
may think it a great privation to lose the use of your land and houses,
still you must see that this power is something widely different; and
instead of fretting on their account, you should really regard them in
the light of the gardens and other accessories that embellish a great
fortune, and as, in comparison, of little moment. You should know too
that liberty preserved by your efforts will easily recover for us what
we have lost, while, the knee once bowed, even what you have will pass
from you. Your fathers receiving these possessions not from others, but
from themselves, did not let slip what their labour had acquired, but
delivered them safe to you; and in this respect at least you must prove
yourselves their equals, remembering that to lose what one has got is
more disgraceful than to be balked in getting, and you must confront
your enemies not merely with spirit but with disdain. Confidence indeed
a blissful ignorance can impart, ay, even to a coward's breast, but
disdain is the privilege of those who, like us, have been assured
by reflection of their superiority to their adversary. And where the
chances are the same, knowledge fortifies courage by the contempt which
is its consequence, its trust being placed, not in hope, which is
the prop of the desperate, but in a judgment grounded upon existing
resources, whose anticipations are more to be depended upon.

"Again, your country has a right to your services in sustaining the
glories of her position. These are a common source of pride to you all,
and you can