Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 | Page 2

is united--who knows the
consequence of a war? Sir, Spain knows the consequence of a war in
America; whoever gains, it must prove fatal to her; she knows it, and
must therefore avoid it; but she knows England does not dare to make it;
and what is a delay, which is all this magnified convention is
sometimes called, to produce? Can it produce such conjunctures as
those you lost, while you were giving kingdoms to Spain, and all to
bring her back again to that great branch of the House of Bourbon
which is now thrown out to you with so much terror? If this union be
formidable, are we to delay only till it becomes more formidable, by
being carried farther into execution, and more strongly cemented? But
be it what it will, is this any longer a nation, or what is an English
Parliament, if, with more ships in your harbours than in all the navies
of Europe, with above two millions of people in your American
colonies, you will bear to hear of the expediency of receiving from
Spain an insecure, unsatisfactory, dishonourable convention? Sir, I call
it no more than it has been proved in this debate; it carries fallacy, or
downright subjection, in almost every line. It has been laid open and
exposed in so many strong and glaring lights, that I can pretend to add
nothing to the conviction and indignation it has raised.
Sir, as to the great national objection--the searching your ships--that
favourite word, as it was called, is not omitted, indeed, in the preamble
to the convention, but it stands there as the reproach, of the whole--as
the strongest evidence of the fatal submission that follows. On the part
of Spain, an usurpation, an inhuman tyranny, claimed and exercised
over the American seas; on the part of England, an undoubted right, by
treaties, and from God and nature, declared and asserted in the
resolutions of Parliament, are referred to the discussion of
plenipotentiaries, upon one and the same equal foot. Sir, I say this
undoubted right is to be discussed and to be regulated. And if to
regulate be to prescribe rules (as in all construction it is), this right is,
by the express words of this convention, to be given up and sacrificed;
for it must cease to be anything from the moment it is submitted to
limits.
The Court of Spain has plainly told you (as appears by papers upon the

table) you shall steer a due course; you shall navigate by a line to and
from your plantations in America; if you draw near to her coasts
(though from the circumstances of that navigation you are under an
unavoidable necessity of doing it) you shall be seized and confiscated.
If, then, upon these terms only she has consented to refer, what
becomes at once of all the security we are flattered with in consequence
of this reference? Plenipotentiaries are to regulate finally the respective
pretensions of the two crowns with regard to trade and navigation in
America; but does a man in Spain reason that these pretensions must be
regulated to the satisfaction and honour of England? No, Sir, they
conclude, and with reason, from the high spirit of their administration,
from the superiority with which they have so long treated you, that this
reference must end, as it has begun, to their honour and advantage.
But gentlemen say, the treaties subsisting are to be the measure of this
regulation. Sir, as to treaties, I will take part of the words of Sir
William Temple, quoted by the honourable gentleman near me; 'It is
vain to negotiate and make treaties, if there is not dignity and vigour to
enforce the observance of them'; for under the misconstruction and
misrepresentation of these very treaties subsisting, this intolerable
grievance has arisen; it has been growing upon you, treaty after treaty,
through twenty years of negotiation, and even under the discussion of
commissaries, to whom it was referred. You have heard from Captain
Vaughan, at your bar,[1] at what time these injuries and indignities
were continued. As a kind of explanatory comment upon the
convention Spain has thought fit to grant you, as another insolent
protest, under the validity and force of which she has suffered this
convention to be proceeded upon, 'We'll treat with you, but we'll search
and take your ships; we'll sign a convention, but we'll keep your
subjects prisoners, prisoners in Old Spain; the West Indies are remote;
Europe shall be witness how we use you.'
Sir, as to the inference of an admission of our right not to be searched,
drawn from a reparation made for ships unduly seized and confiscated,
I think that argument is very inconclusive. The right claimed by Spain
to search our ships