called tyranny and usurpation which is not formed on their fancies. In
this manner the stirrers-up of this contention, not satisfied with
distracting our dependencies and filling them with blood and slaughter,
are corrupting our understandings; they are endeavouring to tear up,
along with practical liberty, all the foundations of human society, all
equity and justice, religion and order.


ECONOMY AND PUBLIC SPIRIT.

Economy and public spirit have made a beneficent and an honest spoil;
they have plundered from extravagance and luxury, for the use of
substantial service, a revenue of near four hundred thousand pounds. The
reform of the finances, joined to this reform of the court, gives to the
public nine hundred thousand pounds a year and upwards.

The minister who does these things is a great man--but the king who
desires that they should be done is a far greater. We must do justice to
our enemies--these are the acts of a patriot king. I am not in dread of
the vast armies of France; I am not in dread of the gallant spirit of
its brave and numerous nobility; I am not alarmed even at the great navy
which has been so miraculously created. All these things Louis the
Fourteenth had before. With all these things, the French monarchy has
more than once fallen prostrate at the feet of the public faith of Great
Britain. It was the want of public credit which disabled France from
recovering after her defeats, or recovering even from her victories and
triumphs. It was a prodigal court, it was an ill-ordered revenue, that
sapped the foundations of all her greatness. Credit cannot exist under
the arm of necessity. Necessity strikes at credit, I allow, with a
heavier and quicker blow under an arbitrary monarchy, than under a