I send you a paper entitled a _Breviate_, which I laid before the late Ministry, and their not having acted upon it, was a proof to me that the disposition of their heart to America was not altered, but that all their relenting arose from the impracticability of that war, and their want of success in it. But desponding as they were at last, it was not inconsistent with my expectations of their conduct, that they should make great offers to France to abandon America. It was the only weapon left in their hands. In course of negotiating with the late Ministry, I perceived their courage drooping from time to time, for the last three or four years, and it was upon that ground I gave them credit for an increasing disposition towards peace. Some dropped off, others sunk under the load of folly, and at last they all failed. My argument _ad homines_ to the late Ministry might be stated thus. _If you don't kill them, they will kill you._ But the war is impracticable _on your part_; ergo, the best thing you can do _for your own sake_ is to make _peace_. This was reasoning to men, and through men to things. But there is no measure of rage in pride and disappointment, Spicula coeca relinquunt Infixa venis, animasque in vulnere ponunt. So much for the argument of the _breviate_, as far as it respected the late Ministry. It was a test which proved that they were not sincere in their professions. If they had been in earnest, to have given the war a turn towards the House of Bourbon, and to have dropped the American war, a plain road lay before them. The sentiments of the people of England were conformable to the argument of that breviate; or rather I should say, what is the real truth, that the arguments of the breviate were dictated by the notoriety of that sentiment in the people of England. My object and wish always has been to strike at the root of the evil, the American war.