Policy, my lords, is very different from prescience; the utmost that can be attained is probability, and that, for the most part, in a low degree. It is observed, that no man is wise but as you take into consideration the weakness of another; a maxim more eminently true of political wisdom, which consists, very often, only in discovering designs which could never be known but by the folly or treachery of those to whom they are trusted. If our enemies were wise enough to keep their own secrets, neither our ministers nor our patriots would be able to know or prevent their designs, nor would it be any reproach to their sagacity, that they did not know what nobody would tell them. If therefore, my lords, the princes, whose interest is contrary to our own, have been at any time served by honest and wise men, there was a time when our ministers could act only by conjecture, and might be mistaken without a crime. If it was always in our power to penetrate into the intentions of our enemies, they must necessarily have the same means of making themselves acquainted with our projects, and yet when any of them are discovered we think it just to impute it to the negligence of the minister. Thus, my lords, every man is inclined to judge with prejudice and partiality. When we suffer by the prudence of our enemies, we charge our ministers with want of vigilance, without considering, that very often nothing is necessary to elude the most penetrating sagacity, but obstinate silence. If we inquire into the transactions of past times, shall we find any man, however renowned for his abilities, not sometimes imposed upon by falsehoods, and sometimes betrayed by his own reasonings into measures destructive of the purposes which he endeavoured to promote? There is no man of whose penetration higher ideas have been justly formed, or who gave more frequent proofs of an uncommon penetration into futurity than Cromwell; and yet succeeding times have sufficiently discovered the weakness of aggrandizing France by depressing Spain, and we wonder now how so much policy could fall into so gross an errour, as not rather to suffer power to remain in the distant enemy, than transfer it to another equally divided from us by interest, and far more formidable by the situation of his dominions. Cromwell, my lords, suffered himself to be hurried away by the near prospect of present advantages, and the apprehension of present dangers; and every other man has been, in the same manner, sometimes deluded into a preference of a smaller present advantage, to a greater which was more remote. Let it not be urged, my lords, that politicks are advanced since the time of Cromwell, and that errours which might then be committed by the wisest administration, are now gross and reproachful; we are to remember that every part of policy has been equally improved, and that if more methods of discovery have been struck out, there have been likewise more arts invented of eluding it.