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Or if some slight injuries have been offered; if some of our petty traders have been stopped, our possessions threatened; our effects confiscated; our flag insulted; or our ears cropped, have we lain sluggish and unactive? Have not our fleets been seen in triumph at Spithead? Did not Hosier visit the Bastimentos, and is not Haddock now stationed at Port Mahon?
But as there is scarce any ground for a comparison between society and the mere material body, this without the mind being a dead unactive thing, much less can the comparison be carried to any length.
What association of ideas would ever operate, were that principle here totally unactive. When the interests of one country interfere with those of another, we estimate the merits of a statesman by the good or ill, which results to his own country from his measures and councils, without regard to the prejudice which he brings on its enemies and rivals.
All persons of consequence interested themselves in the success of some of the contending parties; and the legates in Britain, suspended in expectation of the issue of such mighty quarrels, remained unactive till it could be determined for what master they were to conquer. On the side of the Roman government these seem to have been some of the causes which so long protracted the fate of Britain.
Where birth is respected, unactive, spiritless minds remain in haughty indolence, and dream of nothing but pedigrees and genealogies: the generous and ambitious seek honour and authority, and reputation and favour. Where riches are the chief idol, corruption, venality, rapine prevail: arts, manufactures, commerce, agriculture flourish.
For this reason, they were either hindered from engaging in their voyage by the loss of those men who were detained unactive in the ships of war, or deprived of their crews upon the high seas, or suffered to proceed only to become a prey to the Spaniards.
This, my lords, is the present use of our troops in Flanders; the French are kept in continual terrour, and are obliged to detach to that frontier those troops which, had they not been thus diverted, would have been employed in the empire; and, surely, an army is not unactive which withholds a double number from prosecuting their design.
The states of Holland, having carried on their trade without opposition, and almost without competition, not only during the unactive reign of James the first, but during the commotions of England, had arrived to that height of naval power, and that affluence of wealth, that, with the arrogance which a long-continued prosperity naturally produces, they began to invent new claims, and to treat other nations with insolence, which nothing can defend, but superiority of force.
Are not our ships to pass a single league beyond their limits, in the honour or preservation of their country? Are they to lie unactive within the sound of the battle, and wait for their enemies on this side the cape?
Were we daily to be in the House of Feasting and the soberest Mirth, our Spirits wou'd grow by degrees so frothy and light, that we shou'd not easily bring them to settle again on any thing that was worthy our care: Without something now and then to raise them a little, they wou'd be dull and unactive, but all Relaxation wou'd make them too airy, and of no sort of Use.
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