He had not the advantage of being personally acquainted with any of the Gentlemen of the DIRECTORY; he understood, however, that one of them (MR. MERLIN) previous to the last change, had stood in a situation similar to his own—he was, in fact, nothing less than a leading Advocate and Barrister in the midst of a free, powerful and enlightened people. The conduct of the DIRECTORY with regard to the exiled Deputies had been objected to by some persons on the score of a pretended rigour. For his part he should only say that having been, as he had been, both a Soldier and a Sailor, if it had been his fortune to have stood in either of those two relations to the DIRECTORY—as a Man and as a Major-General he should not have scrupled to direct his artillery against the National Representation:—as a Naval Officer he would undoubtedly have undertaken for the removal of the Exiled Deputies; admitting the exigency, under all its relations, as it appeared to him to exist, and the then circumstances of the times, with all their bearings and dependencies, branching out into an infinity of collateral considerations, and involving in each a variety of objects political, physical, and moral; and these again under their distinct and separate heads, ramifying into endless subdivisions which it was foreign to his purpose to consider. Having thus disposed of this part of his subject, MR. ERSKINE passed in a strain of rapid and brilliant allusions over a variety of points characteristic of the conduct and disposition of the present Ministry; Mr. Burke’s metaphor of “the Swinish Multitude,” Mr. Reeves’ metaphor of the “Tree of Monarchy,” “the Battle of Tranent,” “the March to Paris,” the phrase of “Acquitted Felons,” and the exclamation of “Perish Commerce”—which last expression he declared he should never cease to attribute to Mr. Windham; so long, at least, as it should please the Sovereign Dispenser to continue to him the power of utterance and the enjoyment of his present faculties. He condemned the expedition to Quiberon, he regretted the “Fate of Messrs. Muir and Palmer,” he exulted in the “Acquittal of Citizens Tooke, Hardy, Thelwall, Holcroft and others,” and he blessed that Providence to which (as it had been originally allotted to him (Mr. Erskine) the talents which had been exerted in their defence) the preservation of those Citizens might perhaps be indirectly attributed. He then descanted on the captivity of La Fayette, and the Dividend on the Imperial Loan.