the revolutions of our time have reduced to parochial importance; and the debates which then shook the nation now appear of no higher moment than a discussion in a vestry.  When I was very young, a general fashion told me I was to admire some of the writings against that minister; a little more maturity taught me as much to despise them.  I observed one fault in his general proceeding.  He never manfully put forward the entire strength of his cause.  He temporized, be managed, and, adopting very nearly the sentiments of his adversaries, he opposed their inferences.  This, for a political commander, is the choice of a weak post.  His adversaries had the better of the argument as he handled it, not as the reason and justice of his cause enabled him to manage it.  I say this, after having seen, and with some care examined, the original documents concerning certain important transactions of those times.  They perfectly satisfied me of the extreme injustice of that war, and of the falsehood of the colors which, to his own ruin, and guided by a mistaken policy, he suffered to be daubed over that measure.  Some years after, it was my fortune to converse with many of the principal actors against that minister, and with those who principally excited that clamor.  None of them, no, not one, did in the least defend the measure, or attempt to justify their conduct.  They condemned it as freely as they would have done in commenting upon any proceeding in history in which they were totally unconcerned.  Thus it will be.  They who stir up the people to improper desires, whether of peace or war, will be condemned by themselves.  They who weakly yield to them will be condemned by history.

In my opinion, the present ministry are as far from doing full justice to their cause in this war as Walpole was from doing justice to the peace which at that time he was willing to preserve.  They throw the light on one side only of their case; though it is impossible they should not observe that the other side, which is kept in the shade, has its importance too.  They must know that France is formidable, not only as she is France, but as she is Jacobin France.  They knew from the beginning that the Jacobin party was not confined to that country.  They knew, they felt, the strong disposition of the same faction in both countries to communicate and to cooeperate.  For some time past, these two points have been kept, and even industriously kept, out of sight.  France is considered as merely a foreign power, and the seditious English only as a domestic faction.  The merits of the war with the former have been argued solely on political grounds.  To prevent the mischievous doctrines of the latter from corrupting our minds, matter and argument have been supplied abundantly, and even to surfeit, on the excellency of our own government.  But nothing has been done to make us feel in what manner the safety of that government is connected with the principle and with the issue of this war.  For anything which in the late discussion has appeared, the war is entirely collateral to the state of Jacobinism,—­as truly a foreign war to us and to all our home concerns as the war with Spain in 1739, about Guardacostas, the Madrid Convention, and the fable of Captain Jenkins’s ears.