itics, the military, the revenues of the
British empire in India! With six great chopping bastards,[67] each as
lusty as an infant Hercules, this delicate creature blushes at the sight
of his new bridegroom, assumes a virgin delicacy; or, to use a more fit,
as well as a more poetic comparison, the person so squeamish, so timid,
so trembling lest the winds of heaven should visit too roughly, is
expanded to broad sunshine, exposed like the sow of imperial augury,
lying in the mud with all the prodigies of her fertility about her, as
evidence of her delicate amours,--

Triginta capitum foetus enixa jacebat,
Alba, solo recubans, albi circum ubera nati.

Whilst discovery of the misgovernment of others led to his own power, it
was wise to inquire, it was safe to publish: there was then no
delicacy; there was then no danger. But when his object is obtained, and
in his imitation he has outdone the crimes that he had reprobated in
volumes of reports and in sheets of bills of pains and penalties, then
concealment becomes prudence, and it concerns the safety of the state
that we should not know, in a mode of Parliamentary cognizance, what all
the world knows but too well, that is, in what manner he chooses to
dispose of the public revenues to the creatures of his politics.

The debate has been long, and as much so on my part, at least, as on the
part of those who have spoken before me. But long as it is, the more
material half of the subject has hardly been touched on: that is, the
corrupt and destructive system to which this debt has been rendered
subservient, and which seems to be pursued with at least as much vigor
and regularity as ever. If I considered your ease or my own, rather than
the weight and importance of this question, I ought to make some apology
to you, perhaps some apology to myself, for having detained your
attention so long. I know on what ground I tread. This subject, at one
time taken up with so much fervor and zeal, is no longer a favorite in
this House. The House itself has undergone a great and signal
revolution. To some the subject is strange and uncouth; to several,
harsh and distasteful; to the relics of the last Parliament it is a
matter of fear and apprehension. It is natural for those who have seen
their friends sink in the tornado which raged during the late shift of
the monsoon, and have hardly escaped on the planks of the general wreck,
it is but too natural for them, as soon as they make