,—I do assure you, I did not intend to have troubled you on this occasion. But such incidents now generally happen toward the end of our debates, nothing at all relating to the subject; and gentlemen make such suppositions (meaning some person, or perhaps, as they say, no person now in being), and talk so much of wicked ministers, domineering ministers, ministers pluming themselves in defiances—which terms, and such like, have been of late so much made use of in this House—that if they really mean nobody either in the House or out of it, yet it must be supposed they at least mean to call upon some gentlemen in this House to make them a reply. I hope, therefore, I may be allowed to draw a picture in my turn; and I may likewise say, that I do not mean to give a description of any particular person now in being. When gentlemen talk of ministers abandoned to all sense of virtue or honor, other gentlemen may, I am sure, with equal justice, and, I think, more justly, speak of anti-ministers and mock-patriots, who never had either virtue or honor; but in the whole course of their opposition are actuated only by motives of envy, and of resentment against those who have disappointed them in their views, or may not perhaps have complied with all their desires.
But now, sir, let me too suppose, and the House being cleared, I am sure no one that hears me can come within the description of the person I am to suppose. Let us suppose in this, or in some other unfortunate country, an anti-minister, who thinks himself a person of so great and extensive parts, and of so many eminent qualifications, that he looks upon himself as the only person in the kingdom capable to conduct the public affairs of the nation; and therefore christening every other gentleman who has the honor to be employed in the administration by the name of Blunderer. Suppose this fine gentleman lucky enough to have gained over to his party some persons really of fine parts, of ancient families, and of great fortunes, and others of desperate views, arising from disappointed and malicious hearts; all these gentlemen, with respect to their political behavior, moved by him, and by him solely; all they say, either in private or in public, being only a repetition of the words he has put into their mouths, and a spitting out of that venom which he has infused into them; and yet we may suppose this leader not really liked by any, even of those who so blindly follow him, and hated by all the rest of mankind. We will suppose this anti-minister to be in a country where he really ought not to be, and where he could not have been but by an effect of too much goodness and mercy; yet endeavoring, with all his might and with all his art, to destroy the fountain from whence that mercy flowed. In that country suppose him continually contracting friendships and familiarities with the embassadors of those princes who at the time happen to be most at enmity with his own; and if at any time it should happen to be for the interest of any of those foreign ministers to have a secret divulged to them, which might be highly prejudicial to his native country, as well as to all its friends; suppose this foreign minister applying to him, and he answering, "I will get it you; tell me but what you want, I will endeavor to procure it for you." Upon this he puts a speech or two in the mouths of some of his creatures, or some of his new converts. What he wants is moved for in Parliament, and when so very reasonable a request as this is refused, suppose him and his creatures and tools, by his advice, spreading the alarm over the whole nation, and crying out, "Gentlemen, our country is at present involved in many dangerous difficulties, all which we would have extricated you from, but a wicked minister and a corrupt majority refused us the proper materials!" And upon "this scandalous victory," this minister became so insolent as "to plume himself in defiances!" Let us further suppose, this anti-minister to have traveled, and at every court where he was, thinking himself the greatest minister, and making it his trade to betray the secrets of every court where he had before been; void of all faith or honor, and betraying every master he ever served. I could carry my suppositions a great deal further, and I may say I mean no person now in being; but if we can suppose such a one, can there be imagined a greater disgrace to human nature than such a wretch as this?