to enter into so extensive
a field of inquiry. Yet, to my surprise, he had hardly laid down this
restrictive proposition, to which his authority would have given so much
weight, when directly, and with the same authority, he condemns it, and
declares it absolutely necessary to enter into the most ample historical
detail. His zeal has thrown him a little out of his usual accuracy. In
this perplexity, what shall we do, Sir, who are willing to submit to the
law he gives us? He has reprobated in one part of his speech the rule he
had laid down for debate in the other, and, after narrowing the ground
for all those who are to speak after him, he takes an excursion,
himself, as unbounded as the subject and the extent of his great
abilities.

Sir, when I cannot obey all his laws, I will do the best I can. I will
endeavor to obey such of them as have the sanction of his example, and
to stick to that rule which, though not consistent with the other, is
the most rational. He was certainly in the right, when he took the
matter largely. I cannot prevail on myself to agree with him in his
censure of his own conduct. It is not, he will give me leave to say,
either useless or dangerous. He asserts, that retrospect is not wise;
and the proper, the only proper subject of inquiry, is "not how we got
into this difficulty, but how we are to get out of it." In other words,
we are, according to him, to consult our invention, and to reject our
experience. The mode of deliberation he recommends is diametrically
opposite to every rule of reason and every principle of good sense
established amongst mankind. For that sense and that reason I have
always understood absolutely to prescribe, whenever we are involved in
difficulties from the measures we have pursued, that we should take a
strict review of those measures, in order to correct our errors, if they
should be corrigible,--or at least to avoid a dull uniformity in
mischief, and the unpitied calamity of being repeatedly caught in the
same snare.

Sir, I will freely follow the honorable gentleman in his historical
discussion, without the least management for men or measures, further
than as they shall seem to me to deserve it. But before I go into that
large consideration, because I would omit nothing that can give the
House satisfaction, I wish to tread the narrow ground to which alone the
honorable gentleman, in one part of his speech, has so strictly confined
us.

He desires to know, wh