is impossible to be performed.

Impossibility is a formidable sound to ignorance and cowardice; but
experience has often discovered, that it is only a sound uttered by
those who have nothing else to say; and courage readily surmounts those
obstacles that sink the lazy and timorous into despair.

That there are, indeed, impossibilities in nature, cannot be denied.
There may be schemes formed which no wise man will attempt to execute,
because he will know that they cannot succeed; but, surely, the
examination of arithmetical deductions, or the consideration of treaties
and conferences, cannot be admitted into the number of impossible
designs; unless, as it may sometimes happen, the treaties and
calculations are unintelligible.

The only difficulty that can arise, must be produced by the confusion
and perplexity of our publick transactions, the inconsistency of our
treaties, and the fallaciousness of our estimates; but I hope no man
will urge these as arguments against the motion. An inquiry ought to be
promoted, that confusion may be reduced to order, and that the
distribution of the publick money may be regulated. If the examination
be difficult, it ought to be speedily performed, because those
difficulties are daily increasing; if it be impossible, it ought to be
attempted, that those methods of forming calculations may be changed,
which make them impossible to be examined.

Mr. FOWKES replied in the manner following:--Sir, to treat with contempt
those arguments which cannot readily be answered, is the common practice
of disputants; but as it is contrary to that candour and ingenuity which
is inseparable from zeal for justice and love of truth, it always raises