“If I praised Mr. Pitt, it was Mr. Pitt the ‘heaven-born’ minister, with regard to whose character I had participated in the adoption of those notions so prevalent amongst the ignorant crowd about twenty years ago. It was Mr. Pitt the corner-stone of the confederacy against republican France: Mr. Pitt who had openly and solemnly vowed never to make peace with France till the political balance of Europe should be completely restored, and till safety and tranquillity could be obtained for England; it was this Mr. Pitt that I praised, and not the Mr. Pitt who advised, who defended, and who extolled the peace of Amiens. The Mr. Pitt that I praised, as a financier, was the Mr. Pitt who, in the year 1799, declared that he would carry on the war for any length of time without the creation of new debt; and not the Mr. Pitt who, in less than two years afterwards, justified the peace as necessary for the husbanding of our resources, having, in the interim, created new debt to the amount of about seventy millions sterling. If I praised Mr. Pitt, as an upright public man, as a real patriot, it was the Mr. Pitt who began his career with professions of incorruptible purity, and who, in the warmth of his zeal, had proposed to reform the Parliament itself, rather than not cut off the means of corruption; and not the Mr. Pitt who procured to be passed the bill relating to the Nabob of Arcot’s debts (of which bill I had never yet heard); nor the Mr. Pitt who, notwithstanding the information of Mr. Raikes, suffered the practices of Lord Melville and Trotter to go on unchecked; no, no; not the Mr. Pitt who lent forty thousand pounds of the public money, without interest, to two members of Parliament--never making, or causing to be made, any record or minute of the transaction, and never communicating any knowledge of it even to the cabinet ministers.… The English Constitution that I extolled was that Constitution which, to use the words of Mr. Pitt himself (in his early days), carefully watches over the property of the people; that Constitution which effectually prevents any misapplication of the public money, or severely punishes those who may be guilty of such misapplication; and which, above all things, provides that the money raised upon the people, by the consent of their representatives, shall not in any degree, or under any name, be _given_ to those representatives by the ministers of the crown, and especially in a _secret_ manner. This Constitution I hope yet to see preserved in its purity; and were it not for that hope, neither hand nor pen would I move in its defence. But it will be so preserved, or we are the most base of mankind.”