have ventured to do this, because ONE of the adverse powers MIGHT have experienced an equal distress?

The honourable gentleman who spoke last has amused the house with various statements, on the different principles of uti possidetis and restitution. The principle of those statements is as false as it is unexpected from him. Did his great naval friend acquaint him with the respective values of Dominique and St. Lucia? that lord, who in His Majesty's councils had advised, and perhaps wisely, a preference of the former! The value of Dominique, Sir, was better known to our enemies; and the immense sums employed by them in fortifying that island, prove as well its present value, as their desire to retain it. That honourable gentleman has, on all occasions, spoke with approbation of the last peace was St. Lucia left in our hands by that peace, the terms of which we ourselves prescribed? or was St. Lucia really so impregnable as to endanger all our possessions at the commencement of the present war?

It would be needless for me to remind the honourable gentleman who spoke last of any declarations he had made in a preceding session: professions from him so antiquated and obsolete, would have but little weight in this House. But I will venture to require consistency for a single week, and shall remind him. of his declaration in Monday's debate, "that even this peace was preferable to a continuance of the war." Will he then eriminate His Majesty's ministers by the present motion, for preferring what he would have preferred? or how will he presume to prove, that, if better terms could have been obtained, it was less their interest than their duty to have obtained them.

Was this peace, Sir, concluded with the same indecent levity, that the honourable gentleman would proceed to its condemnation? Many days and nights were laboriously employed by His Majesty's ministers in such extensive negociations;-consultations were held with persons the best informed on the respective subjects; many doubts were well weighed, and removed; and weeks and months of solemn discussion gave birth to that peace, which we are required to destroy without examination : that peace,

the positive ultimatum from France, and to which I solemnly assure the public there was no other alternative but a continuance of war.

Could the ministers, thus surrounded with scenes of ruin, affect to dictate the terms of peace? And are these articles seriously compared with the peace of Paris? There was, indeed, a time when Great Britain might have met her enemies on other conditions; and if an imagination, warmed with the power and glory of this country, could have diverted any member of His Majesty's councils from a painful inspection of the truth, I might, I hope, without presumption, have been entitled to that indulgence. I feel, Sir, at this instant, how much I had been animated in my childhood by a recital of England's victories:-I was taught, Sir, by one whose memory I shall ever revere, that at the close of a war, far different indeed from this, she had dictated the terms of peace to submissive nations. This, in which I place something more than a common interest, was the memorable æra of England's glory. But that æra is past: she is under the awful and mortifying necessity of employing a language that corresponds with her true condition: the visions of her power and pre-eminence are passed away.

We have acknowledged American Independence that, Sir, was a needless form: the incapacity of the noble lord who conducted our affairs; the events of war, and even a vote of this House, had already granted what it was impossible to withhold. We have ceded Florida - We have obtained Providence and the Bahama Islands.

We have ceded an extent of fishery on the coast of Newfoundland -We have established an exclusive right to the most valuable banks.

We have restored St. Lucia, and given up Tobago-We have regained Grenada, Dominica, St. Kitt's, Nevis, and Montserrat, and we have rescued Jamaica from her impending danger. In Africa we have ceded Goree, the grave of our countrymen; and we possess Senegambia, the best and most healthy settlement.

In Europe we have relinquished Minorca-kept up at an im

We have likewise permitted His Most Christian Majesty to repair his harbour of Dunkirk. The humiliating clause for its destruction was inserted, Sir, after other wars than the past. But the immense expense attending its repair, will still render this indulgence useless: add to this, that Dunkirk was first an object of our jealousy when ships were constructed far inferior to their present draught. That harbour, at the commencement of the war, admitted ships of a single deck; no art or expense will enable it to receive a fleet of the line.

In the East Indies, where alone we had power to obtain this peace, we have restored what was useless to ourselves, and scarcely tenable in a continuance of the war.

But we have abandoned the unhappy loyalists to their implacable enemies - Little, Sir, are those unhappy men befriended by such a language in this House; nor shall we give much assistance to their cause, or add stability to the reciprocal confidence of the two states, if we already impute to Congress a violence and injustice, which decency forbids us to suspect. Would a continuance of the war have been justified on the single principle of assisting these unfortunate men? or would a continuance of the war, if so justified, have procured them a more certain indemnity? Their hopes must have been rendered desperate indeed by any additional distresses of Britain; those hopes which are now revived by the timely aid of peace and reconciliation.

These are the ruinous conditions to which this country, engaged with four powerful states, and exhausted in all its resources, thought fit to subscribe, for the dissolution of that alliance, and the immediate enjoyment of peace. Let us examine what is left, with a manly and determined courage. Let us strengthen ourselves against inveterate enemies, and reconciliate our antient friends. The misfortunes of individuals and of kingdoms, that are laid open and examined with true wisdom, are more than half redressed; and to this great object should be directed all the virtue and abilities of this House. Let us feel our calamities - let us bear them too, like men.

But, Sir, I fear I have too long engaged your attention to no

real purpose; and that the public safety is this day risqued, without a blush, by the malice and disappointment of faction. The honourable gentleman who spoke last has declared, with that sort of consistency that marks his conduct, "Because he is prevented from prosecuting the noble lord in the blue ribbon to the satisfaction of public justice, he will heartily embrace him as his friend." So readily does he reconcile extremes, and love the man whom he wishes to persecute! With the same spirit, Sir, I suppose he will cherish this peace too-because he abhors it.

But I will not hesitate to surmise, from the obvious complexion of this night's debate, that it originates rather in an inclination to force the Earl of Shelburne from the treasury, than in any real conviction that ministers deserve censure for the concessions they have made: concessions, which, from the facts I have enumerated, and the reasoning I have stated, as arising from these facts, are the obvious result of an absolute necessity, and imputable, not so much to those of whom the present cabinet is composed, as to that cabinet of which the noble lord in the blue ribbon was a member. This noble earl, like every other person eminent for ability, and acting in the first department of a great state, is undoubtedly an object of envy to some, as well as of admiration to others. The obloquy to which his capacity and situation have raised him. has been created and circulated with equal meanness and address: but his merits are as much above my panegyric, as the arts, to which he owes his defamation, are beneath my attention. When stripped of his power and emoluments, he once more descends to private life without the invidious appendages of place, men will see him through a different medium, and perceive in him qualities which richly entitle him to their esteem. That official superiority which at present irritates their feelings, and that capacity of conferring good offices on those he prefers, which all men are fond of possessing, will not then be any obstacle to their making an impartial estimate of his character. But notwithstanding a sincere predilection for this nobleman, whom I am bound by every tie to treat with sentiments of deference and regard, I am far from wishing him retained in power against the public approbation; and if his

removal can be innocently effected, if he can be compelled to resign without entailing all those mischiefs which seem to be involved in the resolution now moved, great as his zeal for his country is, powerful as his abilities are, and earnest and assiduous as his endeavours have been to rescue the British empire from the difficulties that oppress her, I am persuaded he will retire, firm in the dignity of his own mind, conscious of his having contributed to the public advantage, and, if not attended with the fulsome plaudits of a mob, possessed of that substantial and permanent satisfaction which arises from the habitual approbation of an upright mind. I know him well; and dismiss him from the confidence of his sovereign, and the business of state when you please, to this transcendent consolation he has a title, which no accident can invalidate or affect. It is the glorious reward of doing well, of acting an honest and honourable part. By the difficulties he encountered on his accepting the reins of government, by the reduced situation in which he found the state of the nation, and by the perpetual turbulence of those who thought his elevation effected at their own expense, he has certainly earned it dearly: and with such a solid understanding, and so much goodness of heart as stamp his character, he is in no danger of losing it. Nothing can be a stronger proof that his enemies are eager to traduce, than the frivolous grounds on which they affect to accuse him. An action, which reflects a lustre on his attention to the claims of merit *, has yet been improved into a fault in his conduct. A right honourable gentleman who has exhausted his strength in the service of the state, and to whose years and infirmities his absence from parliament can only be attributed, owes to the friendship and interference of the noble earl a pension, which, however adequate to all his necessities and convenience in the evening of life, is no extraordinary compensation for the public spirit which has uniformly marked his parliamentary conduct. Surely the abilities and virtues of this veteran soldier and respectable senator, deserved some acknowledgment from that community in which they have been so often and so manfully exerted. Surely his age entitled

Alluding to the pension granted to Colonel Barré.