Your brother repeated to me his great desire that you should publish your speech,(410) as he told you.  I do not conceive why he is so eager for it, for he professes total despair about America.  It looks to me as if there was a wish of throwing the blame somewhere; but I profess I am too simple to dive into the objects of shades of intrigues:  nor do I care about them.  We shall be reduced to a miserable little island; and from a mighty empire sink into as insignificant a country as Denmark or Sardinia!  When our trade and marine are gone, the latter of which we keep up by unnatural efforts, to which our debt will put a stop, we shall lose the East Indies as Portugal did; and then France will dictate to us more imperiously than ever we did to Ireland, which is in a manner already gone too!  These are mortifying reflections, to -which an English mind cannot easily accommodate itself.  But, alas! we have been pursuing the very conduct that France would have prescribed, and more than with all her presumption she could have dared to expect.  Could she flatter herself that we would take no advantage of the dilatoriness and unwillingness of Spain to enter into the war? that we would reject the disposition of Russia to support us? and that our still more natural friend, Holland,(411) would be driven into the league against us?  All this has happened; and, like an infant, we are delighted with having set our own frock in a blaze!  I sit and gaze with astonishment at our frenzy.  Yet why?  Are not nations as liable to intoxication as individuals?  Are not predictions founded on calculation oftener rejected than the prophecies of dreamers?  Do we not act precisely like Charles Fox, who thought he had discovered a new truth in figures, when he preached that wise doctrine, that nobody could want money that would pay enough for it?  The consequence was, that in two years he left himself without the possibility of borrowing a shilling.  I am not surprised at the spirits of’ a boy of parts; I am not surprised at the people; I do wonder at government, that games away its consequence.  For what are we now really at war with America, France, Spain, and Holland!—­Not with hopes of reconquering America; not with the smallest prospect of conquering a foot of land from France, Spain, or Holland.  No; we are at war on the defensive to protect what is left, or more truly to stave off, for a year perhaps, a peace that must proclaim our nakedness and impotence.  I would not willingly recur to that womanish vision of something may turn up in our favour!  That something must be a naval victory that will annihilate at once all the squadrons of Europe—­must wipe off forty millions of new debt—­reconcile the affections of America, that for six years we have laboured to alienate; and that must recall out of the grave the armies and sailors that are perished--and that must make thirteen provinces willing to receive the law, without the necessity of keeping ten thousand men amongst them.