_Mr. B[u]rke_⸺I must confess, Sir, notwithstanding my long and melancholy experience of the present administration, I cannot hear, without astonishment, the language held forth by the speech, and echoed in this day’s debate. This session, Sir, at a period big with horror, pregnant with ruin to this country, is ushered in with the song of triumph; and parliament are bid to rejoice at a time when nothing but the language of despair is to be heard throughout the nation. Surely, Sir, the hour is at last arrived, when humility and moderation ought to take place of pride and confidence; when, instead of launching further into a sea of troubles, we might be content to try what little can be saved from the wreck of national honour and prosperity. Ministers might at length condescend to tell us, what means are left to avert the gathering ruin; how we are to tread back the mazes of error and folly, through which we have been led; and where are the resources from which one gleam of hope might dawn upon us, in the hour of danger and despair—But, deaf to the solemn call of occasion and necessity, they rejoice in the absence of thought, in the contempt of foresight. Like the wretch who seeks in stupefaction a momentary relief from sorrow, they sink from a voluntary intoxication into a torpid insensibility. The illusion, indeed, is not to be confined within the narrow limits of their own minds; its baneful influence must be circulated through every corner of the nation; and, by a shameful perversion, that anxiety for the public welfare, which, in times like these, is, in my opinion, the highest of public virtues, must be amused with the pageantry of domestic warfare, or lulled by the opiate of our American Gazettes. I own, Sir, even on principles of criticism, I cannot but consider the stile of these Ministerial annals, as no very favourable criterion of the present times. In happier days, their characteristic was plain conciseness. Victories were then too rapid, too numerous, to admit of a dilated relation.—Success is seldom tedious, but I am afraid our highest atchievements have amounted to no more than the inroads of savages, or the depredations of pyrates. Upon my word, Sir, though we may censure our Officers, our Ministers at least shew some generalship; if they cannot deceive the enemy, they are prompt enough to mislead their countrymen; though they discover but little skill in the arrangement of armies, they have an admirable talent in marshalling Gazettes. They have given celebrity to sheep-stealing, and blazoned, in all the pompous prolixity of ostentatious phraseology, the important depredations at—_Martha’s_ Island—Certainly, Sir, the gallant Commander of that expedition may vie in pastoral atchievements with Ajax, with Jason, or at least Don Quixote; and, if he does not obtain a triumph, he is clearly entitled to an _ovation_. Not, Sir, that I mean to cast any reflection on those Officers and Soldiers to whose lot these ridiculous