at
home, that eat up their fellow-subjects? What are your mercenaries
abroad, whom you hire to fight their own quarrels? What is your militia,
that wise measure of a sagacious ministry, but a larger gang of petty
thieves, who steal sheep and poultry through mere idleness; and were
they confronted with an enemy, would steal themselves away? What is your
. . . but a knot of thieves, who pillage the nation under colour of
law, and enrich themselves with the wreck of their country? When you
consider the enormous debt of above an hundred millions, the intolerable
load of taxes and impositions under which we groan, and the manner in
which that burden is yearly accumulating, to support two German
electorates, without our receiving anything in return, but the shows of
triumph and shadows of conquest;--I say, when you reflect on these
circumstances, and at the same time behold our cities filled with
bankrupts, and our country with beggars, can you be so infatuated as to
deny that the ministry is mad, or worse than mad--our wealth exhausted,
our people miserable, our credit blasted, and our state on the brink of
perdition? This prospect, indeed, will make the fainter impression, if
we recollect that we ourselves are a pack of such profligate, corrupted,
pusillanimous rascals, as deserve no salvation."

The stranger, raising his voice to a loud tone, replied, "Such, indeed,
are the insinuations, equally false and insidious, with which the
desperate emissaries of a party endeavour to poison the minds of his
majesty's subjects, in defiance of common honesty and common sense. But
he must be blind to all perception, and dead to candour, who does not see
and own that we are involved in a just and necessary war, which has been
maintained on truly British principles, prosecuted with vigour, and
crowned with success; that our taxes are easy, in proportion to our
wealth; that our conquests are equally glorious and important; that our
commerce flourishes, our people are happy, and our enemies reduced to
despair. Is there a man who boasts a British heart, that repines at the
success and prosperity of his country? Such there are, (Oh, shame to
patriotism, and reproach to Great Britain!) who act as the emissaries of
France, both in word and writing; who exaggerate our necessary burdens,
magnify our dangers, extol the power of our enemies, deride our
victories, extenuate our conquests, condemn the measures of our
government, and sca