present to the menagerie at Paris. We talk of waiting from
particular considerations, as if centuries of joy and prosperity
were before us: in the next ten years our fate must be decided; we
shall know, long before that period, whether we can bear up against
the miseries by which we are threatened or not; and yet, in the very
midst of our crisis, we are enjoined to abstain from the most
certain means of increasing our strength, and advised to wait for
the remedy till the disease is removed by death or health. And now,
instead of the plain and manly policy of increasing unanimity at
home, by equalising rights and privileges, what is the ignorant,
arrogant, and wicked system which has been pursued? Such a career
of madness and of folly was, I believe, never run in so short a
period. The vigour of the ministry is like the vigour of a grave-
digger--the tomb becomes more ready and more wide for every effort
which they make. There is nothing which it is worth while either to
take or to retain, and a constant train of ruinous expeditions have
been kept up. Every Englishman felt proud of the integrity of his
country; the character of the country is lost for ever. It is of
the utmost consequence to a commercial people at war with the
greatest part of Europe, that there should be a free entry of
neutrals into the enemy's ports; the neutrals who earned our
manufactures we have not only excluded, but we have compelled them
to declare war against us. It was our interest to make a good
peace, or convince our own people that it could not be obtained; we
have not made a peace, and we have convinced the people of nothing
but of the arrogance of the Foreign Secretary: and all this has
taken place in the short space of a year, because a King's Bench
barrister and a writer of epigrams, turned into Ministers of State,
were determined to show country gentlemen that the late
administration had no vigour. In the meantime commerce stands