This is all, Sir, that I shall say upon our circumstances and our resources:  I mean to say a little more on the operations of the enemy, because this matter seems to me very natural in our present deliberation.  When I look to the other side of the water, I cannot help recollecting what Pyrrhus said, on reconnoitring the Roman camp:—­“These barbarians have nothing barbarous in their discipline.”  When I look, as I have pretty carefully looked, into the proceedings of the French king, I am sorry to say it, I see nothing of the character and genius of arbitrary finance, none of the bold frauds of bankrupt power, none of the wild struggles and plunges of despotism in distress,—­no lopping off from the capital of debt, no suspension of interest, no robbery under the name of loan, no raising the value, no debasing the substance of the coin.  I see neither Louis the Fourteenth nor Louis the Fifteenth.  On the contrary, I behold, with astonishment, rising before me, by the very hands of arbitrary power, and in the very midst of war and confusion, a regular, methodical system of public credit; I behold a fabric laid on the natural and solid foundations of trust and confidence among men, and rising, by fair gradations, order over order, according to the just rules of symmetry and art.  What a reverse of things!  Principle, method, regularity, economy, frugality, justice to individuals, and care of the people are the resources with which France makes war upon Great Britain.  God avert the omen!  But if we should see any genius in war and politics arise in France to second what is done in the bureau!—­I turn my eyes from the consequences.

The noble lord in the blue ribbon, last year, treated all this with contempt.  He never could conceive it possible that the French minister of finance could go through that year with a loan of but seventeen hundred thousand pounds, and that he should be able to fund that loan without any tax.  The second year, however, opens the very same scene.  A small loan, a loan of no more than two millions five hundred thousand pounds, is to carry our enemies through the service of this year also.  No tax is raised to fund that debt; no tax is raised for the current services.  I am credibly informed that there is no anticipation whatsoever.  Compensations[31] are correctly made.  Old debts continue to be sunk as in the time of profound peace.  Even payments which their treasury had been authorized to suspend during the time of war are not suspended.

A general reform, executed through every department of the revenue, creates an annual income of more than half a million, whilst it facilitates and simplifies all the functions of administration.  The king’s household—­at the remotest avenues to which all reformation has been hitherto stopped, that household which has been the stronghold of prodigality, the virgin fortress which was never before attacked—­has been not only not defended, but it has, even in the