When trade is at stake, it is your last entrenchment; you must defend it, or perish... Sir, Spain knows the consequence of a war in America; whoever gains, it must prove fatal to her... is this any longer a nation? Is this any longer 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?

Denouncing the Spanish Convention of Prado in the House of Commons (6 March, 1739).