still great, and almost all charges, both ordinary and extraordinary, borne by projects! What poverty can be greater? What necessity so great? What perfect English heart is not almost dissolved into sorrow for the truth?
For the oppression of the subject, which, as I remember, is the next particular I proposed, it needs no demonstration. The whole kingdom is a proof. And for the exhausting of our treasures, that oppression speaks it. What waste of our provisions, what consumption of our ships, what destruction of our men, have been,—witness the journey to Algiers![1] Witness that with Mansfield! Witness that to Cadiz! Witness the next! Witness that to Rhée! Witness the last! (And I pray God we may never have more such witnesses.) Witness likewise the Palatinate! Witness Denmark! Witness the Turks! Witness the Dunkirkers! Witness all! What losses we have sustained! How we are impaired in munition, in ships, in men! It has no contradiction! We were never so much weakened, nor had less hope how to be restored!
These, Mr. Speaker, are our dangers; these are they do threaten us, and are like that Trojan horse brought in cunningly to surprise us! For in these do lurk the strongest of our enemies ready to issue on us; and if we do not now the more speedily expel them, these will be the sign and invitation to the others. They will prepare
- ↑ An expedition in which more than thirty English ships were destroyed and their crews made slaves.
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