The correspondence was called for, and was placed before the Commons on the 3d of February, 1800. Mr. Dundas immediately proposed an Address to the Throne approving of the course taken by the ministry. This opened the whole subject of the attitude of England toward Napoleon for debate. Whitbred, Canning, and Erskine complained in strong terms of the discourteous language used by Lord Grenville. Pitt made no defence on this point, but took up the subject on the broadest scale. He reviewed not only the origin of the war, but also the atrocities of the French in overrunning a large part of Europe, the instability of the successive French governments, his own motives in treating with the French on a former occasion, and the character of Bonaparte as a military commander. The speech is at once the most important and the most elaborate ever delivered by Pitt. It expressed and defined the policy of the nation in the great struggle which as yet had only begun. As a parliamentary oration, designed at once to inform and inspire, it has probably never been surpassed. SIR,—I am induced, at this period of the debate, to offer my sentiments to the House, both from an apprehension that at a later hour the attention of the House must necessarily be exhausted, and because the sentiment with which the honorable and learned gentleman [Mr. Erskine] began his speech, and with which he has thought proper to conclude it, places the question precisely on that ground on which I am most desirous of discussing it. The learned gentleman seems to assume as the foundation of his reasoning, and as the great argument for immediate treaty, that every effort to overturn the system of the French Revolution must be unavailing; and that it would be not only imprudent, but almost impious, to struggle longer against that order of things which, on I know not what principle of predestination, he appears to consider as immortal. Little as I am inclined to accede to this opinion, I am not sorry that the honorable gentleman has contemplated the subject in this serious view. I do, indeed, consider the French Revolution as the severest trial which the visitation of Providence has ever yet inflicted upon the nations of the earth; but I cannot help reflecting, with satisfaction, that this country, even under such a trial, has not only been exempted from those calamities which have covered almost every other part of Europe, but appears to have been reserved as a refuge and asylum to those who fled from its persecution, as a barrier to oppose its progress, and perhaps ultimately as an instrument to deliver the world from the crimes and miseries which have attended it.