第80章 LETTER 8(22)

I say at home and abroad:because it is not less true,that they have sacrificed the wealth of their country to the forming and maintaining a party at home,than that they have done so to the forming and maintaining,beyond all pretences of necessity,alliances abroad.These general assertions may be easily justified without having recourse to private anecdotes,as your lordship will find when you consider the whole series of our conduct in the two wars;in that which preceded,and that which succeeded immediately the beginning of the present century,but above all in the last of them.In the administrations that preceded the revolution,trade had flourished,and our nation had grown opulent:but the general interest of Europe had been too much neglected by us;and slavery,under the umbrage of prerogative,had been well-nigh established among us.

In those that have followed,taxes upon taxes,and debts upon debts,have been perpetually accumulated,till a small number of families have grown into immense wealth,and national beggary has been brought upon us;under the specious pretence of supporting a common cause against France,reducing her exorbitant power,and poising that of Europe more equally in the public balance:laudable designs no doubt,as far as they were real,but such as,being converted into mere pretences,have been productive of much evil;some of which we feel and have long felt,and some will extend its consequences to our latest posterity.The reign of prerogative was short:and the evils and the dangers,to which we were exposed by it,ended with it.But the reign of false and squandering policy has lasted long,it lasts still,and will finally complete our ruin.Beggary has been the consequence of slavery in some countries:slavery will be probably the consequence of beggary in ours;and if it is so,we know at whose door to lay it.If we had finished the war in one thousand seven hundred and six,we should have reconciled,like a wise people,our foreign and our domestic interests as nearly as possible:we should have secured the former sufficiently,and not have sacrificed the later as entirely as we did by the prosecution of the war afterwards.You will not be able to see without astonishment,how the charge of the war increased yearly upon us from the beginning of it;nor how immense a sum we paid in the course of it to supply the deficiencies of our confederates.Your astonishment,and indignation too,will increase when you come to compare the progress that was made from the year one thousand seven hundred and six exclusively,with the expense of more than thirty millions,I do not exaggerate though I write upon memory,that this progress cost us to the year one thousand seven hundred and eleven inclusively Upon this view your lordship will be persuaded that it was high time to take the resolution of making peace,when the queen thought fit to change her ministry towards the end of the year one thousand seven hundred and ten.It was high time indeed to save our country from absolute insolvency and bankruptcy,by putting an end to a scheme of conduct,which the prejudices of a party,the whimsy of some particular men,the private interest of more,and the ambition and avarice of our allies,who had been invited as it were to a scramble by the preliminaries of one thousand seven hundred and nine,alone maintained.The persons,therefore,who came into power at this time,hearkened,and they did well to hearken,to the first overtures that were made them.The disposition of their enemies invited them to do so,but that of their friends,and that of a party at home who had nursed,and been nursed by the war,might have deterred them from it;for the difficulties and dangers to which they must be exposed in carrying forward this great work,could escape none of them.In a letter to a friend,it may be allowed me to say,that they did not escape me:and that I foresaw,as contingent but not improbable events,a good part of what has happened to me since.Though it was a duty,therefore,that we owed to our country,to deliver her from the necessity of bearing any longer so unequal a part in so unnecessary a war,yet Was there some degree of merit in performing it.I think so strongly in this manner,I am so incorrigible,my lord,that if I could be placed in the same circumstances again,I would take the same resolution,and act the same part.Age and experience might enable me to act with more ability,and greater skill;but all I have suffered since the death of the queen should not hinder me from acting.Notwithstanding this,I shall not be surprised if you think that the peace of Utrecht was not answerable to the success of the war,nor to the efforts made in it.I think so myself,and have always owned,even when it was making and made,that I thought so.