whose improvidence, prodigality, and insolence first reduced us to a condition in which we forfeited the co-operation of all our friends; then abandoned us in a day of unexampled peril; and have since calumniated our government and ourselves for not exerting those means of which their, mis-.. conduct had bereft us? Is not the nation competent to save itself under the guidance of honest men? If it be not, rogues cannot save it. Let us hear no more then of these heads of houses, who are desirous of erecting a novel dynasty in the administration of our affairs, on the ruins of the royal prerogatives, and in defiance of public opinion-privatas spes agitantes, sine publica cura. Let us have no more to do with those bloated yet voracious families, who, as national stewards, have -followed too much the devices and desires of their

own hearts. The day, alas! is come, when the public estaté cannot, without certain ruin, be confided to the discretion of the defenders of crying Cabuses and malversations.

But, Sir, I will not part from them with these expressions of my indignation. They shall yet feel the scorpion sting of Truth; they shall not hope to occupy a tenable position, while the sad remembrance of their errors rises up in judg ment against them, and empowers me to rebuke their misconduct. Admitting, therefore, that

all I have urged in favour of ministers is false; nay, allowing (and this is an unexampled concession) that Mr. Addington has left undone those things which he ought to have done; and done those things which he ought not to have dɔne; I will now prove to the satisfaction of every honest, loyal, and patriot mind, that the Grenvilles, Windhams, and their adherents, are the last men in the Empire, who ought to be entrusted with the management of our affairs.

The only touchstone by which mankind can judge of the characters and ability of public men, is, a knowledge of their previous actions: this, therefore, is the instrument I shall employ, and I begin with Lord Grenville. What are his claims to our esteem and confidence? What, has this nobleman done for his country? Can any man state one act of his administration that marks the profound, the vigorous, and the enlightened statesman? I challenge his adherents to produce the proof. I am aware that the noble Lord himself believes, and would fain persuade his country, that he is the ablest minister it ever possessed; but with deference to his opinion, I have a right, as a wary observer of his political life, to exercise my own judgment. By the diplomatic corps resident here, his Lordship was not generally esteemed; his manners were

repulsive, and by no means suited to that dignified urbanity due to the representatives of sovereigns, or calculated to conciliate their good opinion. From their communications, there fore, he had little to expect, and little, in fact, he gained, beyond the accustomed routine of diplomatic duty. Are the bluster and subsequent humiliation respecting Oczakow, evidences, of enlarged views, consistency,, and vigorous conduet? Subsequent events have, indeed, given some colour to his claim of consistency; for, he suffered himself on that occasion to be jilted by the accredited envoy of a faction, as he afterwards exposed his sovereign to insult, by passing over without notice, a burlesque representation of the British empire, in the guise of plenipotentiaries, at the bar of the National Convention. In his treaties of alliance during the late war, we discover an inconsiderate disposi tion to lavish the public treasures, by purchasing, at any rate, foreign co-operation. The bill of indemnity prevents me from animadverting with the severity it deserves, on the hundreds of thousands sent out of the country as subsidies to those allies, without the consent of Parliament. Was there any mark of dignity, common sense, or wise policy, in sending an ambassador to

Paris with credentials but without instructions, and in compelling him to profess absolute ignorance of the object of his mission? I hesitate not to declare that that ill-judged and impolitic measure, degraded our country in the eyes of all Europe, more than even our passive forbearance at the insults of France before the war of 1793. It gave a fatal and irrecoverable blow to continental confidence; it shook the opinion which had been till then entertained of our good faith; it made the cabinets of Europe dubious and distrustful of our policy; and it led to that alienation of interest, which ultimately left the present Ministers to terminate the contest, without one ally. Had Lord Minto been at that time our ambassador at Vienna, no one would have felt surprised if he had believed the whole of that mission to have been a forgery of the French; he might with just cause have shut himself up for several days, blushed for his country, and wept over her fall from the high station she had till then moved in*. But the

*Though he should, as a statesman, have been prepared, yet he tells us the Preliminaries in 1801, took him so much by surprise, that he believed them to have been a forgery of the French. See his affecting and pathetic speech in the House of Lords, far surpassing his celebrated oration on the fate of the poor Brahmin Nundcomar.

impression which this dextrous stroke of policy wrought on the minds of the people, will never be forgotten by them. After the mission had failed (and we have been since told, its advisers meant it should fail) we were informed, that its sole object was to enable the ministers to raise supplies, by tricking our honest, patient, and good-natured countrymen. In private life, such a transaction would have been stigmatized by an epithet, which (I suppose from his abhorrence of the character) is not to be found in Dr. Johnson's dictionary; but the transaction itself will always serve as a memento in case the noble Lord should, unhappily for the nation, return into office, for the people to lay their hands on their pockets whenever his Lordship sends another Ambassador abroad. Thus much of his Lordship's capacity as a Minister. As an orator, on which so much stress has been lately laid, his partizans are lost in raptures and encomiums. Their judgment may be correct; but as this is a mere matter of taste and opinion, and not of fact, I do not presume to dispute with them on a point which I am far from considering as a necessary qualification in a statesman; unless it answers Rabelais' description of Pantagruel, who covered his whole army with