The approbation of those immediately concerned in the consequences is nothing to this author.  He and his friends have so much tenderness for people’s interests, and understand them so much better than they do themselves, that, whilst these politicians are contending for the best of possible terms, the claimants are obliged to go without any terms at all.

One of the first and justest complaints against the administration of the author’s friends, was the want of rigor in their foreign negotiations.  Their immediate successors endeavored to correct that error, along with others; and there was scarcely a foreign court, in which the new spirit that had arisen was not sensibly felt, acknowledged, and sometimes complained of.  On their coming into administration, they found the demolition of Dunkirk entirely at a stand:  instead of demolition, they found construction; for the French were then at work on the repair of the jettees.  On the remonstrances of General Conway, some parts of these jettees were immediately destroyed.  The Duke of Richmond personally surveyed the place, and obtained a fuller knowledge of its true state and condition than any of our ministers had done; and, in consequence, had larger offers from the Duke of Choiseul than had ever been received.  But, as these were short of our just expectations under the treaty, he rejected them.  Our then ministers, knowing that, in their administration, the people’s minds were set at ease upon all the essential points of public and private liberty, and that no project of theirs could endanger the concord of the empire, were under no restraint from pursuing every just demand upon foreign nations.

The author, towards the end of this work, falls into reflections upon the state of public morals in this country:  he draws use from this doctrine, by recommending his friend to the king and the public, as another Duke of Sully; and he concludes the whole performance with a very devout prayer.

The prayers of politicians may sometimes be sincere; and as this prayer is in substance, that the author, or his friends, may be soon brought into power, I have great reason to believe it is very much from the heart.  It must be owned too that after he has drawn such a picture, such a shocking picture, of the state of this country, he has great faith in thinking the means he prays for sufficient to relieve us:  after the character he has given of its inhabitants of all ranks and classes, he has great charity in caring much about them; and indeed no less hope, in being of opinion, that such a detestable nation can ever become the care of Providence.  He has not even found five good men in our devoted city.

He talks indeed of men of virtue and ability.  But where are his men of virtue and ability to be found?  Are they in the present administration?  Never were a set of people more blackened by this author.  Are they among the party of those (no small body) who adhere to the system of 1766?  These it is the great purpose of this book to calumniate.  Are they the persons who acted with his great friend, since the change in 1762, to his removal in 1765?  Scarcely any of these are now out of employment; and we are in possession of his desideratum.  Yet I think he hardly means to select, even some of the highest of them, as examples fit for the reformation of a corrupt world.