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of our disposable military force, the continued triumphs of our powerful and victorious navy, and the events which, in the course of the last two years, have raised the military ardor and military glory of the country to a height unexampled in any period of our history.

In addition to these grounds of reliance on our own strength and exertions, we have seen the consummate skill and valor of the arms of our allies proved by that series of unexampled successes in the course of the last campaign, and we have every reason to expect a co-operation on the continent, even to a greater extent, in the course of the present year. If we compare this view of our own situation with every thing we can observe of the state and condition of our enemy-if we can trace him laboring under equal difficulty in finding men to recruit his army, or money to pay it—if we know that in the course of the last year the most rigorous efforts of military conscription were scarcely sufficient to replace to the French armies, at the end of the campaign, the numbers which they had lost in the course of it-if we have seen that that force, then in possession of advantages which it has since lost, was unable to contend with the efforts of the combined

armies-if we know that, even while supported by the plunder of all the countries which they had overrun, those armies were reduced, by the confession of their commanders, to the extremity of distress, and destitute not only of the principal articles of military supply, but almost of the necessaries of life—if we see them now driven back within their own frontiers, and confined within a country whose own resources have long since been proclaimed by their successive governments to be unequal either to paying or maintaining them-if we observe that since the last revolution no one substantial or effectual measure has been adopted to remedy the intolerable disorder of their finances, and to supply the deficiency of their credit and resources -if we see through large and populous districts of France, either open war levied against the present usurpation, or evident marks of disunion and distraction, which the first occasion may call forth into a flame-if, I say, sir, this comparison be just, I feel myself authorized to conclude from it, not that we are entitled to consider ourselves certain of ultimate success, not that we are to suppose ourselves exemptèd from the unforeseen vicissitudes of war, but that, considering the value of the object for

which we are contending, the means for supporting the contest, and the probable course of human events, we should be inexcusable, if at this moment we were to relinquish the struggle on any grounds short of entire and complete security; that from perseverance in our efforts under such circumstances, we have the fairest reason to expect the full attainment of our object; but that at all events, even if we are disappointed in our more sanguine hopes, we are more likely to gain than to lose by the continuation of the contest; that every month to which it is continued, even if it should not in its effects lead to the final destruction of the Jacobin system, must tend so far to weaken and exhaust it, as to give us at least a greater comparative security in any termination of the war; that, on all these grounds, this is not the moment at which it is consistent with our interest or our duty to listen to any proposals of negotiation with the present ruler of France; but that we are not, therefore, pledged to any unalterable determination as to our future conduct; that in this we must be regulated by the course of events; and that it will be the duty of his Majesty's ministers from time to time to adapt their measures to any variation of circumstances, to consider how

far the effects of the military operations of the allies or of the internal disposition of France correspond with our present expectations; and, on a view of the whole, to compare the difficulties or risks which may arise in the prosecution of the contest with the prospect of ultimate success, or of the degree of advantage to be derived from its farther continuance, and to be governed by the result of all these considerations in the opinion and advice which they may offer to their sovereign.

CHARLES JAMES FOX.

MR. FOX, one of the most ceiebrated of English orators, was the second son of the first Lord Holland, and was born in 1749. His father, though a man of dissolute habits, was an influential member of Parliament, indeed for many years was regarded as the most formidable opponent of the elder Pitt in the House of Commons. The elder Fox received, as a mark of royal favor, the most lucrative office in the gift of the Government, that of Paymaster of the Forces; and he administered the duties of this position so much to the satisfaction of the king, that he was soon advanced to the peerage. His great wealth and his marriage with Lady Georgiana Lennox, a very accomplished daughter of the Duke of Richmond, made Holland House what it continued to be for three generations, the favorite resort of what

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