gratifying the resentment of the Nation, could not
fail to be popular; and from hence arose the popularity of the Court.

Transitions of this kind exhibit a Nation under the government of
temper, instead of a fixed and steady principle; and having once
committed itself, however rashly, it feels itself urged along to justify
by continuance its first proceeding. Measures which at other times
it would censure it now approves, and acts persuasion upon itself to
suffocate its judgment.

On the return of a new Parliament, the new Minister, Mr. Pitt, found
himself in a secure majority; and the Nation gave him credit, not out
of regard to himself, but because it had resolved to do it out of
resentment to another. He introduced himself to public notice by
a proposed Reform of Parliament, which in its operation would have
amounted to a public justification of corruption. The Nation was to be
at the expense of buying up the rotten boroughs, whereas it ought to
punish the persons who deal in the traffic.

Passing over the two bubbles of the Dutch business and the million
a-year to sink the national debt, the matter which most presents itself,
is the affair of the Regency. Never, in the course of my observation,
was delusion more successfully acted, nor a nation more completely
deceived. But, to make this appear, it will be necessary to go over the
circumstances.

Mr. Fox had stated in the House of Commons, that the Prince of Wales,
as heir in succession, had a right in himself to assume the Government.
This was opposed by Mr. Pitt; and, so far as the opposition was
confined to the doctrine, it was just. But the principles which Mr. Pitt
maintained on the contrary side were as bad, or worse in their extent,
than those of Mr. Fox; because they went to establish an aristocracy
over the nation, and over the small representation it has in the House
of Commons.

Whether the English form of Government be good or bad, is not in this
case the question; but, taking it as it stands, without regard to its
merits or demerits, Mr. Pitt was farther from the point than Mr. Fox.

It is supposed to consist of three parts:--while therefore the Nation
is disposed to continue this form, the parts have a national standing,
independent of each other, and are not the creatures of each other. Had
Mr. Fox passed through Parliament, and said that the person alluded to
claimed on the ground of the Nation, Mr. Pitt must then have contended
what he calle