e subject of your resources is this: that they are
not likely to be increased by wasting them. I think I shall be permitted
to assume that a system of frugality will not lessen your riches,
whatever they may be. I believe it will not be hotly disputed, that
those resources which lie heavy on the subject ought not to be objects
of preference,--that they ought not to be the _very first choice_, to an
honest representative of the people.

This is all, Sir, that I shall say upon our circumstances and our
resources: I mean to say a little more on the operations of the enemy,
because this matter seems to me very natural in our present
deliberation. When I look to the other side of the water, I cannot help
recollecting what Pyrrhus said, on reconnoitring the Roman camp:--"These
barbarians have nothing barbarous in their discipline." When I look, as
I have pretty carefully looked, into the proceedings of the French king,
I am sorry to say it, I see nothing of the character and genius of
arbitrary finance, none of the bold frauds of bankrupt power, none of
the wild struggles and plunges of despotism in distress,--no lopping off
from the capital of debt, no suspension of interest, no robbery under
the name of loan, no raising the value, no debasing the substance of the
coin. I see neither Louis the Fourteenth nor Louis the Fifteenth. On the
contrary, I behold, with astonishment, rising before me, by the very
hands of arbitrary power, and in the very midst of war and confusion, a
regular, methodical system of public credit; I behold a fabric laid on
the natural and solid foundations of trust and confidence among men, and
rising, by fair gradations, order over order, according to the just
rules of symmetry and art. What a reverse of things! Principle, method,
regularity, economy, frugality, justice to individuals, and care of the
people are the resources with which France makes war upon Great Britain.
God avert the omen! But if we should see any genius in war and politics
arise in France to second what is done in the bureau!--I turn my eyes
from the consequences.

The noble lord in the blue ribbon, last year, treated all this with
contempt. He never could conceive it possible that the French minister
of finance could go through that year with a loan of but seventeen
hundred thousand pounds, and that he should be able to fund that loan
without any tax. The second year, however, opens the very same scene. A
small loan, a loan of no