there any general who can be responsible for the obedience of a brigade? Any colonel for that of a regiment? Any captain for that of a company? And as to the municipal army, reinforced as it is by the new citizen deserters, under whose command are they? Have we not seen them, not led by, but dragging their nominal commander with a rope about his neck, when they, or those whom they accompanied, proceeded to the most atrocious acts of treason and murder? Are any of these armies? Are any of these citizens?

"We have in such a difficulty as that of fitting a standing army to the state, he conceived, done much better. We have not distracted our army by divided principles of obedience. We have put them under a single authority, with a simple (our common) oath of fidelity; and we keep the whole under our annual inspection. This was doing all that could be safely done.

"He felt some concern that this strange thing, called a Revolution in France, should be compared with the glorious event, commonly called the Revolution in England; and the conduct of the soldiery, on that occasion, compared with the behaviour of some of the troops of France in the present instance. At that period, the Prince of Orange, a prince of the blood royal in England, was called in by the flower of the English aristocracy to defend its ancient constitution, and not to level all distinctions. To this Prince, so invited, the aristocratic leaders, who commanded the troops, went over with their several corps, in bodies, to the deliverer of their country. Aristocratic leaders brought up the corps of citizens, who newly enlisted in this cause. Military obedience changed its object; but military discipline was not for a moment interrupted in its principle. The troops were ready for war, but indisposed to mutiny.

"But as the conduct of the English armies was different, so was that of the whole English nation at that time. In truth, the circumstances of our Revolution (as it is called) and that of France, are just the reverse of each other, in almost every particular, and in the whole spirit of the transaction. With us it was the case of a legal monarch attempting arbitrary power:-in France, it is the case of an arbitrary monarch, beginning, from whatever cause, to legalize his authority. The one was to be resisted, the other was to be managed and directed; but in neither case was the order of the state to be changed, lest government might be ruined, which ought only to be corrected and legalized. With us, we got rid of the man, and preserved the constituent parts of the state. There, they get rid of the constituent parts of the state, and keep the man. What we did was in truth and substance, and in a constitutional light, a Revolution, not made, but prevented. We took solid securi. ties; we settled doubtful questions; we corrected anomalies in our law. In the stable, fundamental parts of our constitution we made no revolution; no, nor any alteration at all. We did not impair the monarchy; perhaps it might be shewn we strengthened it very considerably. The nation kept the same ranks, the same orders, the same privileges, the same franchises, the same rules for property, the same subordinations, the same order in the law, in the revenue, and in the magistracy; the same Lords, the same Commons, the same corporations, the same electors.

"The church was not impaired. Her estates, her majesty, her splendor, her orders and gradations continued the same. She was preserved in her full efficiency, and cleared only of a certain intolerance, which was her weakness, and disgrace. The church and the state were

the

the same after the Revolution that they were before, but better secured in every part.

"Was little done, because a Revolution was not made in the constitution? No! every thing was done; because we commenced with reparation, not with ruin. Accord ingly the state flourished. Instead of lying as dead, in a sort of trance, or exposed, as some others, in an epileptic fit, to the pity, or derision of the world, for her wild, ridiculous, convulsive movements, impotent to every purpose but that of dashing out her brains against the pavement, Great Britain rose above the standard, even of her former self. An æra of a more improved domestic prosperity then commenced, and still continues, not only unimpaired, but growing, under the wasting hand of time. All the energies of the country were awakened. England never presented a firmer countenance, or a more vigorous arm, to all her enemies, and all her rivals.-Europe under her respired and revived. Every where she appeared as the protector, assertor, or avenger of liberty. A war was made and supported against fortune itself. The treaty of Ryswick, which first li mited the power of France, was soon after made; the grand alliance very shortly followed, which shook to the foundations the dreadful power which menaced the independence of mankind. The states of Europe lay happy under the shade of a great and free monarchy, which knew how to be great, without endangering its own peace at home, or the internal or external peace of any of its neighbours.

"Mr. BURKE said, he should have felt very unpleasantly if he had not delivered these sentiments. He was near the end of his natural, probably still nearer to the end of his political career; that he was weak and weary; and wished for rest. That he was little disposed to contro

versies, or what is called a detailed opposition. That at his time of life, if he could not do something by some sort of weight of opinion, natural, or acquired, it was useless, and indecorous to attempt any thing by mere struggle. Turpe senex miles. That he had for that reason little attended the army business, or that of the revenue, or almost any other matter of detail for some years past. That he had, however, his task. He was far from condemning such opposition; on the contrary, he most highly applauded it, where a just occasion existed for it, and gentlemen had vigor and capacity to pursue it. Where a great occasion occurred, he was, and while he continued in parliament would be, amongst the most active and the most earnest, as he hoped he had shewn on a late event. With respect to the constitution itself, he wished few alterations in it; happy if he left it not the worse for any share he had taken in its service."

"Mr. Fox declared, that he rose with a concern of mind, which it was almost impossible to describe, at perceiving himself driven to the hard necessity of making at least a short answer to the latter part of a speech, to which he had listened with the greatest attention, and which, some observations and arguments excepted, he admired as one of the wisest and most brilliant flights of oratory ever delivered in that House. There were parts of it, however, which he wished had either been omitted, or deferred to some other and more fit occasion. His right honorable friend, in alluding to him, had mixed his remarks with so much personal kindness towards him, that he felt himself under a difficulty in making any return, lest the House should doubt his sincerity, and consider what he might say as a mere discharge of a debt of compli ments. He must, however, declare, that such was his

sense

sense of the judgment of his right honorable friend, such his knowledge of his principles, and such the value which he set upon them, and the estimation in which he held his friendship, that if he were to put all the political information which he had learnt from books, all which he had gained from science, and all which the knowledge of the world and its affairs had taught him, into one great scale, and the improvement which he had derived from his right honorable friend's instruction and conversation were placed in the other, he should be at a loss to decide, to which to give the preference. He had learnt more from his right honorable friend, than from all the men with whom he had ever conversed. His right honorable friend had grounded all which he had said, on that part of a speech made by him on a former day, when he wished that his right honorable friend had been present, in which he had stated, that if ever he could look at a standing army with less constitutional jealousy than before, it was now, since, during the late transactions in France, the army had manifested, that on becoming soldiers, they did not cease to continue citizens, and would not act as the mere instruments of a despot. That opinion he still maintained; but did such a declaration warrant the idea, that he was a friend to democracy? He declared himself equally the enemy of all absolute forms of government, whether an absolute monarchy, an absolute aristocracy, or an absolute democracy. He was averse from all extremes, and a friend only to a mixed government, like our own, in which, if the aristocracy, or indeed either of the three branches of the constitution, were destroyed, the good effect of the whole, and the happiness derived under it, would, in his mind, be at an end. When he described himself as exulting over the success of some of the late attempts in France, he cer