I go to what is but
just fallen behind living memory, and immediately touches our own
country. Let the portion of our history from the year 1689 to 1713 be
brought before us. We shall find that in all that period of twenty-four
years there were hardly five that could be called a season of peace; and
the interval between the two wars was in reality nothing more than a
very active preparation for renovated hostility. During that period,
every one of the propositions of peace came from the enemy: the first,
when they were accepted, at the Peace of Ryswick; the second, where they
were rejected, at the Congress at Gertruydenberg; the last, when the war
ended by the Treaty of Utrecht. Even then, a very great part of the
nation, and that which contained by far the most intelligent statesmen,
was against the conclusion of the war. I do not enter into the merits of
that question as between the parties. I only state the existence of that
opinion as a fact, from whence you may draw such an inference as you
think properly arises from it.

It is for us at present to recollect what we have been, and to consider
what, if we please, we may be still. At the period of those wars our
principal strength was found in the resolution of the people, and that
in the resolution of a part only of the then whole, which bore no
proportion to our existing magnitude. England and Scotland were not
united at the beginning of that mighty struggle. When, in the course of
the contest, they were conjoined, it was in a raw, an ill-cemented, an
unproductive, union. For the whole duration of the war, and long after,
the names and other outward and visible signs of approximation rather
augmented than diminished our insular feuds. They were rather the causes
of new discontents and new troubles than promoters of cordiality and
affection. The now single and potent Great Britain was then not only two
countries, but, from the party heats in both, and the divisions formed
in each of them, each of the old kingdoms within itself, in effect, was
made up of two hostile nations. Ireland, now so large a source of the
common opulence and power, and which, wisely managed, might be made much
more beneficial and much more effective, was then the heaviest of the
burdens. An army, not much less than forty thousand men, was drawn from
the general effort, to keep that kingdom in a poor, unfruitful, and
resourceless subjection.

Such was the state of the empire. The state of our