tanquam suos; viles, ut alienos.* All the world knows that the factious vote of the House of Commons in the beginning of the last Parliament, with the professed humour of the nation, made the Queen of Hungary inflexible in her terms, and prevented that agreement with Prussia which would immediately have restored the general tranquillity of Europe.
In the third place, we are such true combatants that, when once engaged, we lose all concern for ourselves and our posterity, and consider only how we may best annoy the enemy. To mortgage our revenues at so deep a rate in wars where we are only accessories was surely the most fatal delusion that a nation, who had any pretension to politics and prudence, has ever yet been guilty of. That remedy of funding—if it be a remedy and not rather a poison—ought, in all reason, to be reserved to the last extremity, and no evil but the greatest and most urgent should ever induce us to embrace so dangerous an expedient.
These excesses to which we have been carried are prejudicial, and may perhaps in time become still more prejudicial another way, by begetting, as is usual, the opposite extreme, and rendering us totally careless and supine with regard to the fate of Europe. The Athenians, from the most bustling, intriguing, warlike people of Greece, finding their error in thrusting themselves into every quarrel, abandoned all attention to foreign affairs, and in no contest ever took party on either side, except by their flatteries and complaisance to the victor.
Enormous monarchies are probably destructive to human nature—in their progress, in their continuance,25 and even in their downfall, which never can be very distant from their {p78} establishment. The military genius which aggrandized the monarchy soon leaves the court, the capital, and the centre of such a government; while the wars are carried on at a great distance, and interest so small a part of the state. The ancient nobility, whose affections attach them to their sovereign, live all