his conscience I have. I have never suppressed any man, never checked
him for a moment in his course, by any jealousy, or by any policy. I was
always ready, to the height of my means, (and they wore always
infinitely below my desires,) to forward those abilities which
overpowered my own. He is an ill-furnished undertaker who has no
machinery but his own hands to work with. Poor in my own faculties, I
ever thought myself rich in theirs. In that period of difficulty and
danger, more especially, I consulted and sincerely cooeperated with men
of all parties who seemed disposed to the same ends, or to any main part
of them. Nothing to prevent disorder was omitted: when it appeared,
nothing to subdue it was left uncounselled nor unexecuted, as far as I
could prevail. At the time I speak of, and having a momentary lead, so
aided and so encouraged, and as a feeble instrument in a mighty hand--I
do not say I saved my country; I am sure I did my country important
service. There were few, indeed, that did not at that time acknowledge
it,--and that time was thirteen years ago. It was but one voice, that no
man in the kingdom better deserved an honorable provision should be made
for him. So much for my general conduct through the whole of the
portentous crisis from 1780 to 1782, and the general sense then
entertained of that conduct by my country. But my character as a
reformer, in the particular instances which the Duke of Bedford refers
to, is so connected in principle with my opinions on the hideous changes
which have since barbarized France, and, spreading thence, threaten the
political and moral order of the whole world, that it seems to demand
something of a more detailed discussion.

My economical reforms were not, as his Grace may think, the suppression
of a paltry pension or employment, more or less. Economy in my plans
was, as it ought to be, secondary, subordinate, instrumental. I acted on
state principles. I found a great distemper in the commonwealth, and
according to the nature of the evil and of the object I treated it. The
malady was deep; it was complicated, in the causes and in the symptoms.
Throughout it was full of contra-indicants. On one hand, government,
daily growing more invidious from an apparent increase of the means of
strength, was every day growing more contemptible by real weakness. Nor
was this dissolution confined to government commonly so called. It
extended to Parliament, which was losing not a litt