peated, as well as unexpected success in arms, has put us and our posterity in a worse condition, not only than any of our allies, but even our conquered enemies themselves.

The part we have acted in the conduct of this whole war, with reference to our allies abroad, and to a prevailing faction at home, is what I shall now particularly examine; where, I presume, it will appear by plain matters of fact, that no nation was ever so long or so scandalously abused, by the folly, the temerity, the corruption, and the ambition of its domestick enemies; or treated with so much insolence, injustice, and ingratitude by its foreign friends.

This will be manifest by proving the three following points:

First, that against all manner of prudence or common reason, we engaged in this war as principals, when we ought to have acted only as auxilia

ries.

Secondly, that we spent all our vigour in pursuing that part of the war, which could least answer the end we proposed by beginning it; and made no efforts at all, where we could have most weakened the common enemy, and at the same time enriched ourselves.

Lastly, that we suffered each of our allies to break every article in those treaties and agreements by which they were bound, and to lay the burden upon us.

Upon the first of these points, that we ought to have entered into this war only as auxiliaries, let any man reflect upon our condition at that time: just come out of the most tedious, expensive, and

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unsuccessful war, that ever England had been engaged in; sinking under heavy debts, of a nature and degree never heard of by us or our ancestors;" the bulk of the gentry and people, heartily tired of the war, and glad of a peace, although it brought no other advantage but itself; no sudden prospect of lessening our taxes, which were grown as necessary to pay our debts, as to raise armies; a sort of artificial wealth of funds and stocks, in the hands of those, who, for ten years before, had been plundering the publick; many corruptions in every branch of our governments that needed reformation. Under these difficulties, from which, twenty years peace and the wisest management could hardly recover us, we declare war against France, fortified by the accession and alliance of those powers, I mentioned before, and which, in the former war, had been parties in our confederacy. It is very obvious, what a change must be made in the balance, by such weights taken out of our scale, and put into theirs; since it was manifest, by ten years experience, that France, without those additions of strength, was able to maintain itself against us. So that human probability ran with mighty odds on the other side; and in this case, nothing, under the most extreme necessity, should force any state to engage in a war. We had already acknowleged Philip for king of Spain; neither does the queen's declaration of war take notice of the duke of Anjou's succession to that monarchy, as a subject of quarrel, but the French king's governing it as if it were his own; his seizing Cadiz, Milan, and the Spanish Low-countries, with the indignity of proclaiming the Pretender. In all which, we charge that prince

with nothing directly relating to us, excepting the last; and this, although indeed a great affront, might easily have been redressed without a war; for the French court declared they did not acknowlege the pretender, but only gave him the title of king, which was allowed to Augustus by his enemy of Sweden, who had driven him out of Poland, and forced him to acknowlege Stanislaus.

It is true indeed, the danger of the Dutch, by so ill a neighbourhood in Flanders, might affect us very much in the consequences of it; and the loss of Spain to the house of Austria, if it should be governed by French influence, and French politicks, might, in time, be very pernicious to our trade. It would therefore have been prudent, as well as generous and charitable, to help our neighbour; and so we might have done without injuring ourselves; for, by an old treaty with Holland, we were bound to assist that republick with ten thousand men, whenever they were attacked by the French; whose troops, upon the king of Spain's death, taking possession of Flanders in right of Philip, and securing the Dutch garrisons till they would acknowledge him, the States-general, by memorials from their envoy here, demanded only the ten thousand men we were obliged to give them by virtue of that treaty. And I make no doubt, but the Dutch would have exerted themselves so vigorously, as to be able, with that assistance alone, to defend their frontiers; or, if they had been forced to a peace, the Spaniards, who abhor dismembering their monarchy, would never have suffered the French to possess themselves of Flanders. At that time they had none of those endearments to each other, which this war has created ;

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and whatever hatred and jealousy were natural between the two nations, would then have appeared. So that there was no sort of necessity for us to proceed farther, although we had been in a better condition. But our politicians at that time had other views; and a new war must be undertaken, upon the advice of those, who, with their partizans and adherents, were to be sole gainers by it. A grand alliance was therefore made between the Emperor, England, and the States-general; by which, if the injuries complained of from France were not remedied in two months, the parties concerned were obliged mutually to assist each other with their whole strength.

Thus we became principal in a war in conjunction with two allies, whose share in the quarrel was beyond all proportion greater than ours. However I can see no reason, from the words of the grand alliance, by which we were obliged to make those prodigious expenses we have since been at. By what I have always heard and read, I take the whole strength of the nation, as understood in that treaty, to be the utmost that a prince can raise annually from his subjects. If he be forced to mortgage and borrow, whether at home or abroad, it is not properly speaking his own strength, or that of the nation, but the entire substance of particular persons, which, not being able to raise out of the annual income of his kingdom, he takes upon security, and can only pay the interest. And by this method, one part of the nation is pawned to the other, with hardly a possibility left of being ever redeemed.

Surely it would have been enough for us to have suspended the payment of our debts, contracted in

the

the former war; and to have continued our land and malt tax, with those others which have since been mortgaged these, with some additions, would have made up such a sum, as with prudent management might, I suppose, have maintained a hundred thousand men by sea and land; a reasonable quota in all conscience for that ally, who apprehended least danger, and expected least advantage. Nor can we imagine that either of the confederates, when the war began, would have been so unreasonable as to refuse joining with us upon such a foot, and expect that we should every year go between three and four millions in debt, (which hath been our case) because the French could hardly have contrived any offers of a peace so ruinous to us, as such a war. Posterity will be at a loss to conceive, what kind of spirit could possess their ancestors, who, after ten years suffering, by the unexampled politicks of a nation maintaining a war by annually pawning itself; and during a short peace, while they were looking back with horrour on the heavy load of debts they had contracted, universally condemning those pernicious counsels which had occasioned them; racking their invention for some remedies or expedients to mend their shattered condition; I say, that these very people, without giving themselves time to breathe, should again enter into a more dangerous, chargeable, and extensive war, for the same, or perhaps a greater period of time, and without any apparent necessity. It is obvious in a private fortune, that whoever annually runs out, and continues the same expenses, must every year mortgage a greater quantity of land than he did before; and as the debt doubles and trebles

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