In the mean time our merchants were plundered, and our sailors thrown into dungeons; our flag was insulted, and our navigation restrained, by men acting under the commission of the king of Spain; we perceived no effect of our negotiations but the expense, and our enemies not only insisted on their former claims, but prosecuted them with the utmost rigour, insolence, and cruelty.
It must, indeed, sir, be urged in favour of our minister, that he did not refuse any act of submission, or omit any method of supplication by which he might hope to soften the Spaniards; he solicited their favour at their own court, he sent commissaries into their country, he assisted them in taking possession of dominions, to which neither we nor they have proved a right; and he employed the navies of Britain to transport into Italy the prince on whom the new-erected kingdom was to be conferred.
Well might he expect that the Spaniards would be softened by so much kindness and forbearance, and that gratitude would at length induce them to spare those whom no injuries or contempt had been able to alienate from them, and to allow those a free course through the seas of America, to whom they had been indebted for an uninterrupted passage to the possession of a kingdom.
He might likewise urge, sir, that when he was obliged to make war upon them, he was so tender of their interest, that the British admiral was sent out with orders rather to destroy his own fleet than the galleons, which, in appearance, he was sent to take, and to perish by the inclemency of the climate, rather than enter the Spanish ports, terrify their colonies, or plunder their towns.
But to little purpose, sir, did our minister implore the compassion of the Spaniards, and represent the benefits by which we might claim it; for his compliance was by the subtle Spaniards attributed, not to kindness, but to fear; and it was therefore determined to reduce him to absolute slavery, by the same practices which had already sunk him to so abject a state.
They therefore treated our remonstrances with contempt, continued their insolence and their oppressions, and while our agent was cringing at their court with fresh instructions in his hand, while he was hurrying with busy looks from one grandee to another, and, perhaps, dismissed without an audience one day, and sent back in the midst of his harangue on another, the guardships of the Spaniards continued their havock, our merchants were ruined, and our sailors tortured.
At length, sir, the nation was too much inflamed to be any longer amused with idle negotiations, or trifling expedients; the streets echoed with the clamours of the populace, and this house was crowded with petitions from the merchants. The honourable person, with all his art, found himself unable any longer to elude a determination of this affair. Those whom he had hitherto persuaded that he had failed merely for want of abilities, began now to suspect that he had no desire of better success; and those who had hitherto cheerfully merited their pensions by an unshaken adherence to all his measures, who had extolled his wisdom and his integrity with all the confidence of security, began now to be shaken by the universality of the censures which the open support of perfidy brought upon them. They were afraid any longer to assert what they neither believed themselves, nor could persuade others to admit. The most indolent were alarmed, the most obstinate convinced, and the most profligate ashamed.
What could now be done, sir, to gain a few months, to secure a short interval of quiet, in which his agents might be employed to disseminate some new falsehood, bribe to his party some new vindicators, or lull the people with the opiate of another expedient, with an account of concessions from the court of Spain, or a congress to compute the losses, and adjust the claims of our merchants?
Something was necessarily to be attempted, and orders were therefore despatched by our minister, to his slave at the court of Spain, to procure some stipulations that might have at least the appearance of a step towards the conclusion of the debate. His agent obeyed him with his usual alacrity and address, and in time sent him, for the satisfaction of the British people, the celebrated convention.
The convention, sir, has been so lately discussed, is so particularly remembered, and so universally condemned, that it would be an unjustifiable prodigality of time to expatiate upon it. There were but few in the last senate, and I hope there are none in this, who did not see the meanness of suffering incontestable claims to be disputed by commissaries, the injustice of the demand which was made upon the South-sea company, and the contemptuous insolence of amusing us with the shadow of a stipulation, which was to vanish into nothing, unless we purchased a ratification of it, by paying what we did not owe.
The convention, therefore, sir, was so far from pacifying, that it only exasperated the nation, and took from our minister the power of acting any longer openly in favour of the Spaniards; of whom it must be confessed, that their wisdom was overpowered by their pride, and that, for the sake of showing to all the powers of Europe the dependence in which they held the court of Britain, they took from their friends the power of serving them any longer, and made it unsafe for them to pay that submission to which they were inclined.
The Spaniards did not sufficiently distinguish between the nation and the ministry of Britain, nor suspected that their interests, inclinations, and opinions were directly opposite; and that those who were caressed, feared, and reverenced by the ministry, were by the people hated, despised, and ridiculed.
By enslaving our ministry, they weakly imagined that they had conquered our nation; nor, perhaps, sir, would they quickly have discovered their mistake, had they used their victory with greater moderation, condescended to govern their new province with less rigour, and sent us laws in any other form than that of the convention.
But the security which success excites, produced in them the same effects as it has often done in others, and destroyed, in some degree, the advantages of the conquest by which it was inspired. The last proof of their contempt of our sovereign and our nation, was too flagrant to be palliated, and too publick not to be resented. The cries of the nation were redoubled, the solicitations of the merchants renewed, the absurdity of our past conduct exposed, the meanness of our forbearance reproached, and the necessity of more vigorous measures evidently proved.
The friends of Spain discovered, sir, at length, that war was necessarily to be proclaimed, and that it would be no longer their interest to act in open opposition to justice and reason, to the policy of all ages, and remonstrances of the whole nation.
The minister, therefore, after long delays, after having run round the circle of all his artifices, and endeavouring to intimidate the nation by false representations of the power of our enemies, and the danger of an invasion from them, at length suffered war to be proclaimed, though not till he had taken all precautions that might disappoint us of success.
He knew that the state of the Spanish dominions exposed them in a particular manner to sudden incursions by small parties, and that in former wars against them, our chief advantage had been gained by the boldness and subtilty of private adventurers, who by hovering over their coasts in small vessels, without raising the alarms which the sight of a royal navy necessarily produces, had discovered opportunities of landing unexpectedly, and entering their towns by surprise, of plundering their wealthy ships, or enriching themselves by ransoms and compositions; he knew what inconsiderable bodies of men, incited by private advantage, selected with care for particular expeditions, instructed by secret intelligence, and concealed by the smallness of their numbers, had found means to march up into the country, through ways which would never have been attempted by regular forces, and have brought upon the Spaniards more terrour and distress than could have been produced by a powerful army, however carefully disciplined or however skilfuly commanded.