Under this impression, I trust the House will forgive me, if I endeavor, as far as I am able, to take a large and comprehensive view of this important question. In doing so, I agree with my honorable friend [Mr. Canning] that it would, in any case, be impossible to separate the present discussion from the former crimes and atrocities of the French Revolution; because both the papers now on the table, and the whole of the learned gentleman’s argument, force upon our consideration the origin of the war, and all the material facts which have occurred during its continuance. The learned gentleman [Mr. Erskine] has revived and retailed all those arguments from his own pamphlet, which had before passed through thirty-seven or thirty-eight editions in print, and now gives them to the House embellished by the graces of his personal delivery. The First Consul has also thought fit to revive and retail the chief arguments used by all the opposition speakers and all the opposition publishers in this country during the last seven years. And (what is still more material) the question itself, which is now immediately at issue—the question whether, under the present circumstances, there is such a prospect of security from any treaty with France as ought to induce us to negotiate, can not be properly decided upon without retracing, both from our own experience and from that of other nations, the nature, the causes, and the magnitude of the danger against which we have to guard, in order to judge of the security which we ought to accept.