in old debts, and reviving our right to the ransom of Manilla.

The Manilla ranfom has, I think, been moft mentioned by the inferiour bellowers of fedition. Thofe who lead the faction know that it cannot be remembered much to their advantage. The followers of Lord Rockingham remember that his ministry began and ended without obtaining it; the adherents to Grenville would be told, that he could never be taught to understand our claim. The law of nations made little of his knowledge. Let him not, however, be depreciated in his grave. If he was fometimes wrong, he was often right.

Of reimbursement the talk has been more confident, though not more reasonable. The expences of war have been often desired, have been sometimes required, but were never paid; or never, but when refiftance was hopeless, and there remained no choice between fubmiffion and deftruction.

Of our late equipments I know not from whom the charge can be very properly expected. The king of Spain difavows the violence which provoked us to arm, and for the mifchiefs which he did not do, why fhould he pay? Buccarelli, though he had learned all the arts of an Eaft-Indian governor, could hardly have collected at Buenos Ayres a fum fufficient to fatisfy our demands. If he be honest, he is hardly rich; and if he be difpofed to rob, he has the miffortune of being placed where robbers have been before him.

The king of Spain indeed delayed to comply with our proposals, and our armament was made neceffary by unfatisfactory anfwers and dilatory de

bates.

bates. The delay certainly increased our expences, and it is not unlikely that the increase of our expences put an end to the delay.

But this is the inevitable procefs of human affairs. Negociation requires time. What is not apparent to intuition must be found by inquiry. Claims that have remained doubtful for ages cannot be fettled in a day. Reciprocal complaints are not easily adjusted but by reciprocal compliance. The Spaniards thinking themselves entitled to the island, and injured by Captain Hunt, in their turn demanded fatisfaction, which was refufed; and where is the wonder if their conceffions were delayed! They may tell us, that an independent nation is to be influenced not by command, but by perfuafion; that if we expect our propofals to be received without deliberation, we affume that fovereignty which they do not grant us; and that if we arm while they are deliberating, we muft indulge our martial ardour at our own charge.

The English miniftry asked all that was reasonable, and enforced all that they asked. Our national honour is advanced, and our intereft, if any interest we have, is fufficiently fecured. There can be none amongst us to whom this tranfaction does not seem happily concluded, but those who having fixed their hopes on publick calamities, fat like vultures waiting for a day of carnage. Having worn out all the arts of domeftick fedition, having wearied violence, and exhaufted falfehood, they yet flattered them-felves with fome affiftance from the pride or malice of Spain; and when they could no longer make the people complain of grievances which they did not

feel,

feel, they had the comfort yet of knowing that real evils were poffible, and their refolution is well known of charging all evil on their governors.

The reconciliation was therefore confidered as the lofs of their laft anchor; and received not only with the fretfulness of difappointment but the rage of defperation. When they found that all were happy in spite of their machinations, and the soft effulgence of peace fhone out upon the nation, they felt no motion but that of fullen envy; they could not, like Milton's prince of hell, abftract themselves a moment from their evil; as they have not the wit of Satan, they have not his virtue; they tried once again what could be done by fophiftry without art, and confidence without credit. They reprefented their fovereign as difhonoured, and their country as betrayed, or, in their fiercer paroxyfms of fury, reviled their fovereign as betraying it.

Their pretences I have here endeavoured to expose, by showing that more than has been yielded was not to be expected, that more perhaps was not to be defired, and that if all had been refused, there had scarcely been an adequate reason for a war.

There was perhaps never much danger of war or of refufal, but what danger there was, proceeded from the faction. Foreign nations, unacquainted with the infolence of common councils, and unaccustomed to the howl of plebeian patriotifm, when they heard of rabbles and riots, of petitions and remonftrances, of discontent in Surrey, Derbyshire, and Yorkshire, when they faw the chain of fubordination broken, and the legiflature threatened and defied, naturally imagined

8

that

that fuch a government had little leifure for Falkland's Iland; they fuppofed that the English when they returned ejected from Port Egmont, would find Wilkes invested with the protectorate; or fee the Mayor of London, what the French have formerly feen their mayors of the palace, the commander of the army and tutor of the king; that they would be called to tell their tale before the Common Council; and that the world was to expect war or peace from a vote of the fubfcribers to the Bill of Rights.

But our enemies have now loft their hopes, and our friends I hope are recovered from their fears. To fancy that our government can be fubverted by the rabble, whom its lenity has pampered into impudence, is to fear that a city may be drowned by the overflowing of its kennels. The diftemper which cowardice or malice thought either decay of the vitals, or refolution of the nerves, appears at laft to have been nothing more than a political phthiriafis, a difeafe too loathfome for a plainer name; but the effect of negligence rather than of weakness, and of which the fhame is greater than the danger.

Among the disturbers of our quiet are fome animals of greater bulk, whom their power of roaring perfuaded us to think formidable, but we now perceive that found and force do not always go together. The noife of a favage proves nothing but his hunger.

After all our broils, foreign and domestick, we may at laft hope to remain a while in quiet, amused with the view of our own fuccefs. We have gained political strength by the increase of our reputation; we have gained real ftrength by the reparation of our

navy; we have fhewn Europe that ten years of war have not yet exhausted us; and we have enforced our fettlement on an island on which twenty years ago we durft not venture to look.

These are the gratifications only of honeft minds; but there is a time in which hope comes to all. From the present happiness of the Public, the patriots themselves may derive advantage. To be harmlefs though by impotence obtains fome degree of kindness; no man hates a worm as he hates a viper; they were once dreaded enough to be detested, as ferpents that could bite; they have now shewn that they can only hifs, and may therefore quietly flink into holes, and change their flough unmolefted and forgotten.