it to be an insuperable obstacle, I admit it to be a point of considerable delicacy and difficulty.  It is not, indeed, for us to discuss minutely what arrangement might be formed on this point to conciliate and unite opposite interests; but whoever considers the precarious tenure and depreciated value of lands held under the revolutionary title, and the low price for which they have generally been obtained, will think it, perhaps, not impossible that an ample compensation might be made to the bulk of the present possessors, both for the purchase-money they have paid and for the actual value of what they now enjoy; and that the ancient proprietors might be reinstated in the possession of their former rights, with only such a temporary sacrifice as reasonable men would willingly make to obtain so essential an object.

The honourable and learned gentleman, however, has supported his reasoning on this part of the subject by an argument which he undoubtedly considers as unanswerable—­a reference to what would be his own conduct in similar circumstances; and he tells us that every landed proprietor in France must support the present order of things in that country from the same motive that he and every proprietor of three per cent stock would join in the defence of the constitution of Great Britain.  I must do the learned gentleman the justice to believe that the habits of his profession must supply him with better and nobler motives for defending a constitution which he has had so much occasion to study and examine, than any which he can derive from the value of his proportion (however large) of three per cents, even supposing them to continue to increase in price as rapidly as they have done during the last three years, in which the security and prosperity of the country has been established by following a system directly opposed to the counsels of the learned gentleman and his friends.

The learned gentleman’s illustration, however, though it fails with respect to himself, is happily and aptly applied to the state of France; and let us see what inference it furnishes with respect to the probable attachment of moneyed men to the continuance of the revolutionary system, as well as with respect to the general state of public credit in that country.  I do not, indeed, know that there exists precisely any fund of three per cents in France, to furnish a test for the patriotism and public spirit of the lovers of French liberty.  But there is another fund which may equally answer our purpose—­the capital of three per cent stock which formerly existed in France has undergone a whimsical operation, similar to many other expedients of finance which we have seen in the course of the revolution—­this was performed by a decree which, as they termed it, republicanized their debt; that is, in other words, struck off, at once, two-thirds of the capital, and left the proprietors to take their chance for the payment of interest on the remainder.  This