There is one thing in this business which appears to be wholly unaccountable, or accountable on a supposition I dare not entertain for a moment.  I cannot help asking, Why all this pains to clear the British nation of ambition, perfidy, and the insatiate thirst of war?  At what period of time was it that our country has deserved that load of infamy of which nothing but preternatural humiliation in language and conduct can serve to clear us?  If we have deserved this kind of evil fame from anything we have done in a state of prosperity, I am sure that it is not an abject conduct in adversity that can clear our reputation.  Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar.  The pride of no person in a flourishing condition is more justly to be dreaded than that of him who is mean and cringing under a doubtful and unprosperous fortune.  But it seems it was thought necessary to give some out-of-the-way proofs of our sincerity, as well as of our freedom from ambition.  Is, then, fraud and falsehood become the distinctive character of Englishmen?  Whenever your enemy chooses to accuse you of perfidy and ill faith, will you put it into his power to throw you into the purgatory of self-humiliation?  Is his charge equal to the finding of the grand jury of Europe, and sufficient to put you upon your trial?  But on that trial I will defend the English ministry.  I am sorry that on some points I have, on the principles I have always opposed, so good a defence to make.  They were not the first to begin the war.  They did not excite the general confederacy in Europe, which was so properly formed on the alarm given by the Jacobinism of France.  They did not begin with an hostile aggression on the Regicides, or any of their allies.  These parricides of their own country, disciplining themselves for foreign by domestic violence, were the first to attack a power that was our ally by nature, by habit, and by the sanction of multiplied treaties.  Is it not true that they were the first to declare war upon this kingdom?  Is every word in the declaration from Downing Street concerning their conduct, and concerning ours and that of our allies, so obviously false that it is necessary to give some new-invented proofs of our good faith in order to expunge the memory of all this perfidy?

We know that over-laboring a point of this kind has the direct contrary effect from what we wish.  We know that there is a legal presumption against men, quando se nimis purgitant; and if a charge of ambition is not refuted by an affected humility, certainly the character of fraud and perfidy is still less to be washed away by indications of meanness.  Fraud and prevarication are servile vices.  They sometimes grow out of the necessities, always out of the habits, of slavish and degenerate spirits; and on the theatre of the world, it is not by assuming the mask of a Davus or a Geta that an actor will obtain credit for manly simplicity and a liberal openness of proceeding.  It is an erect countenance, it