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The ministry were too well acquainted with negotiation to fill their heads with such idle expectations. The question of right was inexplicable and endless. They left it, as it stood. To be restored to actual possession was easily practicable. This restoration they required and obtained.

But they should, say their opponents, have insisted upon more; they should have exacted not only, reparation of our honour, but repayment of our expense. Nor are they all satisfied with the recovery of the costs and damages of the present contest; they are for taking this opportunity of calling in old debts, and reviving our right to the ransome of Manilla.

The Manilla ransome has, I think, been most mentioned by the inferiour bellowers of sedition. Those who lead the faction know that it cannot be remembered much to their advantage. The followers of lord Rockingham remember, that his ministry began and ended without obtaining it; the adherents to Grenville would be told, that he could never be taught to understand our claim. The law of nations made little of his knowledge. Let him not, however, be depreciated in his grave. If he was sometimes wrong, he was often right. [1]

Of reimbursement the talk has been more confident, though not more reasonable. The expenses of war have been often desired, have been sometimes required, but were never paid; or never, but when resistance was hopeless, and there remained no choice between submission and destruction.

Of our late equipments, I know not from whom the charge can be very properly expected. The king of Spain disavows the violence which provoked us to arm, and for the mischiefs, which he did not do, why should he pay? Buccarelli, though he had learned all the arts of an East Indian governour, could hardly have collected, at Buenos Ayres, a sum sufficient to satisfy our demands. If he be honest, he is hardly rich; and if he be disposed to rob, he has the misfortune of being placed, where robbers have been before him.

The king of Spain, indeed, delayed to comply with our proposals, and our armament was made necessary by unsatisfactory answers and dilatory debates. The delay certainly increased our expenses, and, it is not unlikely, that the increase of our expenses put an end to the delay.

But this is the inevitable process of human affairs. Negotiation requires time, What is not apparent to intuition must be found by inquiry. Claims that have remained doubtful for ages cannot be settled in a day. Reciprocal complaints are not easily adjusted, but by reciprocal compliance. The Spaniards, thinking themselves entitled to the island, and injured by captain Hunt, in their turn demanded satisfaction, which was refused; and where is the wonder, if their concessions were delayed! They may tell us, that an independent nation is to be influenced not by command, but by persuasion; that, if we expect our proposals to be received without deliberation, we assume that sovereignty which they do not grant us; and that if we arm, while they are deliberating, we must indulge our martial ardour at our own charge.

The English ministry asked all that was reasonable, and enforced all that they asked. Our national honour is advanced, and our interest, if any interest we have, is sufficiently secured. There can be none amongst us, to whom this transaction does not seem happily concluded, but those who, having fixed their hopes on publick calamities, sat, like vultures, waiting for a day of carnage. Having worn out all the arts of domestick sedition, having wearied violence, and exhausted falsehood, they yet flattered themselves with some assistance from the pride or malice of Spain; and when they could no longer make the people complain of grievances, which they did not feel, they had the comfort yet of knowing, that real evils were possible, and their resolution is well known of charging all evil on their governours.

The reconciliation was, therefore, considered as the loss of their last anchor; and received not only with the fretfulness of disappointment, but the rage of desperation. When they found that all were happy, in spite of their machinations, and the soft effulgence of peace shone out upon the nation, they felt no motion but that of sullen envy; they could not, like Milton’s prince of hell, abstract themselves a moment from their evil; as they have not the wit of Satan, they have not his virtue; they tried, once again, what could be done by sophistry without art, and confidence without credit. They represented their sovereign as dishonoured, and their country as betrayed, or, in their fiercer paroxysms of fury, reviled their sovereign as betraying it.