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terference would not be acceptable, they meanly acquiesced in them, and even congratulated the hero on the successes of his fraud and ambition. There was not a single power in Europe, which manifested the least inclination to repel his age gressions; there was not one which did not consider our continuation of the contest, as an idle and wicked waste of blood and treasure. Did it then behove the ministers of this country to pour out the life blood of the empire upon a struggle without motive, without a friend, perhaps, without a well-wisher? Were we to wage eternal war with France for the sake of making the Continent recover its senses? No! Sir, the truth must be no longer concealed. The want of continental alliance and co-operation must not be ascribed to the "wavering, temporizing policy" of the present ministers, but to the vi gour, diplomatic ability, and wisdom of their predecessors; to those frequent sallies of official surliness; to that misguided selfishness, the former of which they habitually displayed, and the latter they had not the dexterity to conceal. To their incongruous, temporizing, indecisive policy, the nation is indebted for that predicament of distress in which Mr. Addington found its affairs, when he was called to adminis

ter them to their inconsistencies, this dignified country, which had hitherto moved with conspicuous glory at the head of the civilized world, was found by Mr. Addington, not only without one ally, but with many of her former friends in arms against her-to their pernicious. counsels must be attributed that state of despondency, from which the present minister relieved her, in despite of all their blunders and dilapidations. It was not Mr. Addington, therefore, who lost us all our allies; he was the man who extricated us, by the Treaty of Amiens, from the toils which his predecessors had thrown around us. The conservative principle of safety, was his guide, and the event has fully proved, that while it corresponded with the wishes of the people, it was wise, provident, and beneficial. If, Sir, you are proud to number yourself among the few who boast of their opposition to the Treaty of Amiens, because it ratified the encroachments of France, I am proud of being numbered with the many "safe politicians" who believe, that aggrandizement obtained by such a pernicious foreign and internal policy as that country submits to, is so far from being an evidence of real power, that it is a proof of weakness: and unless you and your firm can shew that it is in the

power of art to tie a withered bundle of twigs to a sapless trunk and make them prosper; you must admit, that it is equally impossible for France to reduce into one homogeneous order, the number of states, with different languages, customs, views, thoughts, and hopes, which now revolve in the circle of her consuming domination. The peace gave her a nominal power, which, after the lapse of many years, might have become real, by an uniform observance of the rules of wisdom, justice, and moderation. But even then, it could not have been formidable to Great Britain, as long as we continued to be industrious, frugal, and high-minded. For, with all her supposed advantages, her increase of strength and population, it will be found on the slightest survey, that her original and acquired dominions in every part of the globe, do not amount to one half of the population of the British empire, nor to a fiftieth part of its power and resources, including the peculiar advantages of its local geography, its commercial spirit, and tremendous navy, which enable it to maintain unbroken, either in peace or war, the opulence, and accustomed relations of the whole to each other, and the mother country. Ships, we all know, may be easily built, but sailors to

man them, are not so easily obtained; yet they are as necessary to the former, as the water that sets them afloat. However, your gazetteer received his instructions, and accordingly with the unblushing effrontery of a veteran liar, he announced to his readers*, by way of illustrating your direful forebodings in the House, "that the French Government had given orders for raising its navy to two hundred and twenty-five ships of the line, a proportionate number of fri gates, and about ten thousand gun-boats, to be manned by 400,000 sailors, 8000 of whom were British; that eighteen ships of the line had been launched since the signature of the preliminar ries, at the three harbours of Brest, Rochefort, and Toulon t; that France and her allies, in consequence of the treaty, had obtained from us a supply of seamen, sufficient to man between forty and fifty ships of the line; that their exhausted dock-yards were replenished; that, at the moment he was writing all these lies, (Dec. 11, 1802,) they had actually more ships of the line commissioned than we."

All these demoniac paroxysms of hydrophobia,

Polit. Reg. March 6, 1803.

+ Pol. Reg. Nov. 20, 1802.

would have been passed over, with the contempt they deserved, had they not formed a link of the conspiracy, planned to unnerve and depress the spirit of the people. For, it must be observed, that while these dreams of fury were revealing, the same active partisan declared roundly, that we had not five ships of the line fit to go to sea, and only one ship of the line in the channel, I cannot avoid remarking the singular coincidence between all the writings of this man, and the French Jacobins. The moment the latter received intelligence of the destruction of their Toulon fleet, by Lord Nelson, they gaily voted the building of one hundred ships of the line in three weeks; and with the same facetious levity, Mr. Cobbett, on the conclusion of the peace,

"The time is gone by when our fleets and dour guineas were sure to vanquish the men and the women of France." Ibid. That our fleets have ever conquered France, no one disputes, but this is the first time I ever heard that all the women in France were prostitutes. The age of chivalry is past! He also asserts, (Jan. 15, 1803,) the following FACT respecting the navy. "The fact is, that the whole of this mighty machine is at a stand, and is falling, as fast as possible, into irretrievable ruin." In charity to human infirmities, I must be lieve that when the writer sat down to prepare this FACT for publication, he must have been labouring under one of his fits of hydrophobia.