ted; and the second gratified with a pension. Thus, in
the minute detail of employment, in adjusting the indeclinables of a
court calendar, to detach a _commis_ from this department, and to fix a
clerk in that, burthen after burthen has been heaped upon the shoulders
of a callous and lethargic people.--But no man can say, that the earl of
Shelburne has been idle. Beside all this, he has restored peace to his
country. His merits in this business, have already been sufficiently
agitated. To examine them afresh would lead me too far from the scope of
my subject. I will not therefore now detain myself either to exculpate
or criminate the minister, to whom, whatever they are, they are
principally to be ascribed.

From the considerations already suggested, I am afraid thus much may be
fairly inferred, that the earl of Shelburne is a man, dark, insidious
and inexplicit in his designs; no decided friend of the privileges of
the people; and in both respects a person very improper to conduct the
affairs of this country. I would hope however, that the celebrated
character given of him by the late lord Holland was somewhat too severe.
"I have met with many, who by perseverance and labour have made
themselves Jesuits; it is peculiar to this man to have been born one."

Such then is the estimate we are compelled to form of a man who in his
professions has sometimes gone as far, as the most zealous votaries of
liberty. And what is the inference we shall draw from this? Shall we,
for the sake of one man so specious and plausible, learn to think the
language of all men equally empty and deceitful? Having once been
betrayed, shall we avoid all future risk, by treating every pretender to
patriotism and public spirit, as a knave and an impostor? This indeed is
a conclusion to which the unprincipled and the vicious are ever
propense. They judge of their fellows by themselves, and from the
depravity of their own hearts are willing to infer, that every honesty
has its price. But the very motive that inclines the depraved to such a
mode of reasoning, must, upon the very same account, deter the man of
virtue from adopting it. Virtue is originally ever simple and
unsuspecting. Conscious to its own rectitude, and the integrity of its
professions, it naturally expects the same species of conduct from
others. By every disappointment of this kind, it is mortified and
humbled. Long, very long must it have been baffled, and countless must
have been i