pleasure, and sell their friendship on their own terms. By these
measures have the Dutch been delivered from their terrours, and
encouraged to deliberate freely upon the state of Europe, and prepare
for the support of the Pragmatick sanction. But the common cause has
been most evidently advanced by gaining the king of Prussia, by whose
defection the balance of the war was turned, and at least thirty
thousand men taken away from the scale of France.

This, my lords, was a change only to be effected by a patient
expectation of opportunities, and a politick improvement of casual
advantages, and by contriving methods of reconciling the interest of
Prussia with the friendship of the queen of Hungary; for princes, like
other men, are inclined to prefer their own interest to all other
motives, and to follow that scheme which shall promise most gain.

That all this, my lords, has been effected, cannot be denied; nor can
it be said to have been effected by any other causes than the conduct
of Britain: had this nation looked either with cowardly despair, or
negligent inactivity, on the rising power of France and the troubles
of the continent; had the distribution of empire been left to chance,
our thoughts confined wholly to commerce, and our prospects not
extended beyond our own island, the liberties of Europe had been at an
end, the French had established themselves in the secure possession of
universal monarchy, would henceforth have set mankind at defiance, and
wantoned without fear in oppression and insolence.

These, my lords, are consequences of the measures pursued by his
majesty, of which neither the reality nor the importance can be
questioned, and, therefore, they may doubtless be approved without
hesitation. For surely, my lords, the addition of the Hanoverian