forms, been surrendered by the king to the economy of his minister.  No capitulation; no reserve.  Economy has entered in triumph into the public splendor of the monarch, into his private amusements, into the appointments of his nearest and highest relations.  Economy and public spirit have made a beneficent and an honest spoil:  they have plundered from extravagance and luxury, for the use of substantial service, a revenue of near four hundred thousand pounds.  The reform of the finances, joined to this reform of the court, gives to the public nine hundred thousand pounds a year, and upwards.

The minister who does these things is a great man; but the king who desires that they should be done is a far greater.  We must do justice to our enemies:  these are the acts of a patriot king.  I am not in dread of the vast armies of France; I am not in dread of the gallant spirit of its brave and numerous nobility; I am not alarmed even at the great navy which has been so miraculously created.  All these things Louis the Fourteenth had before.  With all these things, the French monarchy has more than once fallen prostrate at the feet of the public faith of Great Britain.  It was the want of public credit which disabled France from recovering after her defeats, or recovering even from her victories and triumphs.  It was a prodigal court, it was an ill-ordered revenue, that sapped the foundations of all her greatness.  Credit cannot exist under the arm of necessity.  Necessity strikes at credit, I allow, with a heavier and quicker blow under an arbitrary monarchy than under a limited and balanced government; but still necessity and credit are natural enemies, and cannot be long reconciled in any situation.  From necessity and corruption, a free state may lose the spirit of that complex constitution which is the foundation of confidence.  On the other hand, I am far from being sure that a monarchy, when once it is properly regulated, may not for a long time furnish a foundation for credit upon the solidity of its maxims, though it affords no ground of trust in its institutions.  I am afraid I see in England, and in France, something like a beginning of both these things.  I wish I may be found in a mistake.

This very short and very imperfect state of what is now going on in France (the last circumstances of which I received in about eight days after the registry of the edict[32]) I do not, Sir, lay before you for any invidious purpose.  It is in order to excite in us the spirit of a noble emulation.  Let the nations make war upon each other, (since we must make war,) not with a low and vulgar malignity, but by a competition of virtues.  This is the only way by which both parties can gain by war.  The French have imitated us:  let us, through them, imitate ourselves,—­ourselves in our better and happier days.  If public frugality, under whatever men, or in whatever mode of government, is national strength, it is a strength which our enemies are in possession of before us.