་ He is an ill-furnished undertaker, who has no machinery but his own hands to work with. Poor in my own faculties, I ever thought myself rich in theirs. In that period of difficulty and danger, more especially, I confulted, and fincerely co-operated with men of all parties, who seemed main part difpofed to the fame ends, or to any of them. Nothing, to prevent diforder, was omitted when it appeared, nothing to fubdue it, was left uncounfelled, nor unexecuted, as far as I could prevail. At the time I speak of, and having a momentary lead, fo aided and fo encouraged, and as a feeble inftrument in a mighty hand-I do not fay, I faved my Country; I am fure I did my Country important fervice. There were few, indeed, that did not at that time acknowledge it, and that time was thirteen. years ago. It was but one voice, that no man in the kingdom better deferved an honourable provifion fhould be made for him. So much for my general conduct through the whole of the portentous crifis from 1780 to 1782, and the general fenfe then entertained of that conduct by my country. But my character, as a reformer, in the particular inftances which the Duke of Bedford refers to, is fo connected in principle with my opinions on the hideous changes, which have fince barbarized France, D France, and spreading thence, threaten the political and moral order of the whole world, that it seems to demand fomething of a more detailed difcuffion. My œconomical reforms were not, as his Grace may think, the fuppreffion of a paltry penfion or employment, more or lefs. Economy in my plans was, as it ought to be, fecondary, fubordinate, inftrumental. I acted on state principles. I found a great diftemper in the commonwealth; and, according to the nature of the evil and of the object, I treated it. The malady was deep; it was complicated, in the causes and in the symptoms. Throughout it was full of contraindicants. On one hand Government, daily growing more invidious for an apparent increase of the means of ftrength, was every day growing more contemptible by real weakness. Nor was this diffolution confined to Government commonly fo called. It extended to Parliament; which was lofing not a little in it's dignity and estimation, by an opinion of it's not acting on worthy motives. On the other hand, the defires of the People, (partly natural and partly infufed into them by art) appeared in fo wild and inconfiderate a manner, with regard to the economical object (for ว (for I fet afide for a moment the dreadful tampering with the body of the Conflitution itself) that if their petitions had literally been complied with, the State would have been convulsed; and a gate would have been opened, through which all property might be facked and ravaged. Nothing could have faved the Publick from the mischiefs of the falfe reform but it's abfurdity; which would foon have brought itself, and with it all real reform, into difcredit. This would have left a rankling wound in the hearts of the people who would know they had failed in the accomplishment of their wishes, but who, like the rest of mankind in all ages, would impute the blame to any thing rather than to their own proceedings. But there were then perfons in the world, who nourished complaint; and would have been thoroughly disappointed if the people were ever fatisfied. I was not of that humour. I wished that they should be fatisfied. It was my aim to give to the People the substance of what I knew they defired, and what I thought was right whether they defired it or not, before it had been modified for them into fenfeless petitions. I knew that there is a manifeft marked diftinction, which ill men, with ill designs, or weak men incapable of any defign, will conftantly be confounding, that is, a marked diftinction be ་ tween Change and Reformation. The former alters the fubftance of the objects themselves; and gets rid of all their effential good, as well as of all the accidental evil annexed to them, Change is novelty; and whether it is to operate any one of the effects of reformation at all, or whether it may not contradict the very principle upon which reformation is defired, cannot be certainly known beforehand. Reform is, not a change in the fubftance, or in the primary modification of the object, but a direct application of a remedy to the grievance complained of So far as that is removed, all is fure. It stops there; and if it fails, the fubftance which underwent the operation, at the very worst, is but where it was. All this, in effect, I think, but am not fure, I have faid elfewhere. It cannot at this time be too often repeated; line upon line; precept upon precept; until it comes into the currency of a proverb, To innovate is not to reform. The French revolutionists complained of every thing; they refused to reform any thing; and they left nothing, no, nothing at all unchanged. The confequences are before us,-not in remote history; not in future prognoftication: they are about us; they are upon us. They shake the publick fecurity; fecurity; they menace private enjoyment. They dwarf the growth of the young; they break the quiet of the old. If we travel, they stop our way. They infeft us in town; they pursue us to the country. Our business is interrupted; our repose is troubled; our pleasures are faddened; our very ftudies are poifoned and perverted, and knowledge is rendered worse than ignorance, by the enormous evils of this dreadful innovation. The revolution harpies of France, fprung from night and hell, or from that chaotick anarchy, which generates equivocally "all monftrous, all prodigious things," cuckoolike, adulteroufly lay their eggs, and brood over, and hatch them in the neft of every neighbouring State. Thefe obfcene harpies, who deck themselves, in I know not what divine attributes, but who in reality are foul and ravenous birds of prey (both mothers and daughters) flutter over our heads, and foufe down upon our tables, and leave nothing unrent, unrifled, unravaged, or unpolluted with the flime of their filthy offal *. * Triftius haud illis monftrum, nec fævior ulla Here |