done without employing men who abuse the confidence reposed in them, a
practice on which I shall not at this time trouble the house with my
opinion, nor interrupt the present debate, by any attempt to justify or
condemn it. This, I think, may be very reasonably alleged; that whether
the employment of such persons be defensible by the reciprocal practice
of nations, or not, it becomes at least those that corrupt them and pay
them for their treachery, not to expose them to vengeance, to torture,
or to ruin; not to betray those crimes which they have hired them to
commit, or give them up to punishment, to which they have made
themselves liable only by their instigation, and for their advantage.

That private compacts between nations and sovereigns ought to be kept
inviolably secret, cannot be doubted by any man who considers, that
secrecy is one of the conditions of those treaties, without which they
had not been concluded; and, therefore, that to discover them is to
violate them, to break down the securities of human society, to destroy
mutual trust, and introduce into the world universal confusion. For
nothing less can be produced by a disregard of those ties which link
nations in confederacies, and produce confidence and security, and which
enable the weak, by union, to resist the attacks of powerful ambition.

How much it would injure the honour of our sovereign to be charged with
the dissolution of concord, and the subversion of the general bulwarks
of publick faith, it is superfluous to explain. To know the condition to
which a compliance with this motion would reduce the British nation, we
need only turn our eyes downwards upon the hourly scenes of common life;
we need only attend to the occurrences which crowd perpetually upon our
view, and consider the calamitous state of that man, of whom it is
generally known that he cannot be trusted, and that secrets communicated
to him are in reality scattered among mankind.