low; and then we must be content with such conditions, as our allies, out of their great concern for our safety and interest, will please to choose. They have no farther occasion for fighting, they have gained their point, and they now tell us it is our war; so that, in common justice, it ought to be our peace.

All we can propose by the desperate steps of pawning our land or malt tax, or erecting a general excise, is only to raise a fund of interest for running us annually four millions farther in debt, without any prospect of ending the war so well as we can do at present. And when we have sunk the only unengaged revenues we had left, our incumbrances must of necessity remain perpetual.

We have hitherto lived upon expedients, which, in time, will certainly destroy any constitution, whether civil or natural; and there was no country in christendom had less occasion for them than ours. We have dieted a healthy body into a consumption, by plying it with physick instead of food. Art will help us no longer, and if we cannot recover by letting the remains of nature work, we must inevitably die.

What arts have been used to possess the people with a strong delusion, that Britain must infallibly be ruined, without the recovery of Spain to the house of Austria! making the safety of a great and powerful kingdom, as ours was then, to depend upon an event, which, after a war of miraculous successes,

' which every year brought such accession to their wealth and power-or, which every year brought them such accession of wealth and power.'

proves impracticable. As if princes and great minis ters could find no way of settling the publick tranquillity, without changing the possessions of kingdoms, and forcing sovereigns upon a people against their inclinations. Is there no security for the island of Britain, unless a king of Spain be dethroned by the hands of his grandfather? Has the enemy no cautionary towns and seaports to give us for securing trade? Can he not deliver us possession of such places as would put him in a worse condition, whenever he should perfidiously renew the war? The present king of France has but few years to live by the course of nature, and doubtless would desire to end his days in peace. Grand fathers, in private families, are not observed to have great influence on their grandsons; and I believe they have much less among princes: however, when the authority of a parent is gone, is it likely that Philip will be directed by a brother, against his own interest, and that of his subjects? Have not those two realms their separate maxims of policy, which must operate in the times of peace? These, at least, are probabilities, and cheaper by six millions a year than recovering Spain, or continuing the war, both which seem absolutely impossible.

But the common question is, if we must now surrender Spain, what have we been fighting for all this while? The answer is ready: we have been fighting for the ruin of the publick interest, and the advancement of a private. We have been fighting to raise the wealth and grandeur of a particular family; to enrich usurers and stockjobbers, and to cultivate the pernicious designs of a faction, by destroying the

landed

landed interest. The nation begins now to think these blessings are not worth fighting for any longer, and therefore desires a peace...

But the advocates on the other side cry out, that we might have had a better peace, than is now in agitation, above two years ago. Supposing this to, be true, I do assert, that by parity of reason we must. expect one just so much the worse about two years hence. If those in power could then have given us a better peace, more is their infamy and guilt that. they did it not. Why did they insist upon conditions, which they were certain would never be granted? We allow, it was in their power to have put a good end to the war, and left the nation in some hope of recovering itself. And this is what we charge them with, as answerable to God, their country, and posterity; that the bleeding condition of their fellow-subjects, was a feather in the balance with their private ends.

When we offer to lament the heavy debts and poverty of the nation, it is pleasant to hear some men answer all that can be said, by crying up the power of England, the courage of England, the inexhaustible riches of England. I have heard a man * very sanguine upon this subject, with a good employment for life, and a hundred thousand pounds in the funds, bidding us take courage, and warranting, that all would go well. This is the style of men at ease, who lay heavy burdens upon others, which they would not touch with one of their fingers. I have known some people such ill computers, as to imagine the many millions in stocks

*The lord Halifax.

VOL. III.

D D

and

and annuities are so much real wealth in the nation; whereas every farthing of it is entirely lost to us, scattered in Holland, Germany, and Spain; and the landed men, who now pay the interest, must at last pay the principal.

Fourthly, those who are against any peace without Spain, have, I doubt, been ill informed as to the low condition of France, and the mighty consequences of our successes. As to the first, it must be confessed, that after the battle of Ramillies, the French were so discouraged with their frequent losses, and so impatient for a peace, that their king was resolved to comply upon any reasonable terms. But, when his subjects were informed of our exorbitant demands, they grew jealous of his honour, and were unanimous to assist him in continuing the war at any hazard, rather than submit. This fully restored his authority; and the supplies he has received from the Spanish West-Indies, which in all are computed since the war to amount to four hundred millions of livres, and all in specie, have enabled him to pay his troops. Besides, the money is spent in his own country; and he has since waged war in the most thrifty manner, by acting on the defensive : compounding with us every campaign for a town, which costs us fifty times more than it is worth, either as to the value or the consequences. Then he is at no charge for a fleet, farther than providing privateers, wherewith his subjects carry on a piratical war at their own expense, and he shares in the profit; which has been very considerable to France, and of infinite disadvantage to us, not only by the perpetual losses we have suffered, to an immense value, but by the general discouragement of trade, on which

we

we so much depend. All this considered, with the circumstances of that government, where the prince is master of the lives and fortunes of so mighty a kingdom, shows that monarch not to be so sunk in his affairs as we have we have imagined, and have long flattered ourselves with the hopes of *.

Those who are against any peace without Spain, seem likewise to have been mistaken in judging our victories, and other successes, to have been of greater consequence than they really were.

When our armies take a town in Flanders, the Dutch are immediately put into possession, and we at home make bonfires. I have sometimes pitied the deluded people, to see them squandering away their fuel to so little purpose. For example: what is it to us that Bouchain is taken, about which the warlike politicians of the coffeehouse make such a clutter? What though the garrison surrendered prisoners of war, and in sight of the enemy? we are not now in a condition to be fed with points of honour. What advantage have we, but that of spending three or four millions more to get another town for the States, which may open them a new country for contributions, and increase the perquisites of the general?

In that war of ten years under the late king, when our commanders and soldiers were raw and unexperienced, in comparison of what they are at present, we lost battles and towns, as well as we gained them of late, since those gentlemen have

Here is another instance of a sentence finished by a preposition; it would be better arranged thus- and with the hopes of which we have so long flattered ourselves.'