To follow this gentleman thro’ even one of his grand divisions, was a task much beyond the utmost rapidity of a short-hand writer. Indeed the noise from all parts of the house was so excessive, during the several hours which he engrossed in this laborious harangue, that it was totally impossible to catch up any thing beyond the mutilated fragments, and ruins of his oratory. At length however the house sunk into a sudden calm, upon the disclosure of a fact, which seemed to startle even the wildest zealots of faction.—For, after every other argument was exhausted to so little purpose, inflamed by disappointment, and hurried, as we are willing to suppose, by the violence of patriotism, the Honourable Gentleman avowed to the House, that one of his grounds for denouncing ruin to his country was _his private knowledge of DR. FRANKLYN’S sentiments on that head_.[4] “Dr. Franklyn (he exclaimed) the Cromwell of his age, Dr. Franklyn, Ambassador Plenipotentiary from America to France, is my most intimate and most cordial friend!”⸺He went on by declaring, he had passed great part of the summer at Paris, with Dr. Franklyn, in the most unreserved communication of sentiments and facts; and he concluded with repeating, as the joint result of his own and Dr. Franklin’s deliberation, that the glory of England was destroyed for ever!⸺This extraordinary confession produced however no violent effect. Ministers seemed to receive it with a contemptuous pity, not unmingled with ridicule,[5] when _Mr. W[ilke]s_, finding the little success of serious treason, rose, and indulged himself in the more ludicrous stile of it. [Sidenote: Mr. W[ilke]s.]