SUBSTANCE M TR BURKE's speech on the report of the army estimates has not been correctly stated in fome of the publick papers. It is of consequence to him not to be misunderstood. The. matter which incidentally came into discussion is of the most serious importance. It is thought that the heads and substance of the speech will answer the purpose sufficiently. If in making the abstract, through defect of memory, in the person who now gives it, any difference at all should be perceived from the speech as it was spoken, it will not, the editor imagines, be found in any thing which may amount to a retraction of the opinions he then maintained, or to any softening in the expressions in which they were conveyed. Mr. Burke spoke a confiderable time in answer to various arguments which had been insisted upon by Mr. Grenville and Mr. Pitt, for keeping an increased peace establishment, and against an impro per jealousy of the ministers, in whom a full confidence, B 2 : fidence, subject to responsibility, ought to be placed, on account of their knowledge of the real situation of affairs; the exact state of which it frequently happened, that they could not disclose, without violating the constitutional and political secrecy, necessary to the well-being of their country. Mr. Burke faid in substance, That confidence might become a vice, and jealousy a virtue, according to circumstances. That confidence, of all publick virtues, was the most dangerous, and jealoufy in an house of commons, of all publick vices, the most tolerable; especially where the number and the charge of standing armies, in time of peace, was the question. That in the annual mutiny bill, the annual army was declared to be for the purpose of preserving the balance of power in Europe. The propriety of its being larger or smaller depended, therefore, upon the true ftate of that balance. If the increase of peace establishments demanded of parliament agreed with the manifest appearance of the balance, confidence in ministers, as to the particulars, would be very proper. If the increase was not at all fupported by any fuch appearance, he thought great jealoufy might, and ought to be, entertained on that fubject. That he did not find, on a review of all Europe, that, politically, we stood in the smallest degree of danger danger from any one state or kingdom it contained; nor that any other foreign powers than our own allies were likely to obtain a confiderable preponderance in the scale. That France had hitherto been our first object, in all confiderations concerning the balance of power. The prefence or absence of France totally varied every fort of speculation relative to that balance. That France is, at this time, in a political light, to be confidered as expunged out of the system of Europe. Whether she could ever appear in it again, as a leading power, was not easy to determine: but at present he confidered France as not politically exifting; and most assuredly it would take up much time to restore her to her former active existence-Gallos quoque in bellis floruisse audivimus, might possibly be the language of the rifing generation. He did not mean to deny that it was our duty to keep our eye on that nation, and to regulate our preparation by the symptoms of her recovery. That it was to her strength, not to her form of government which we were to attend; because republicks, as well as monarchies, were fufceptible of ambition, jealousy, and anger, the usual causes of war. But if, while France continued in this swoon, we should go on increasing our expences, we should B 3 ۱ L should certainly make ourselves less a match for her, when it became our concern to arm. It was said, that as she had speedily fallen, she might speedily rise again. He doubted this. That the fall from an height was with an accelerated velocity; but to lift a weight up to that height again was difficult, and opposed by the laws of physical and political gravitation. In a political view, France was low indeed. She had lost every thing, even to her name. 1 "Jacet ingens littore truncus, “ Avolfumque humeris caput, et fine nomine corpus."* He was astonished at it-he was alarmed at ithe trembled at the uncertainty of all human greatnefs. Since the house had been prorogued in the fummer much work was done in France. The French * Mr. Burke, probably, had in his mind the remainder of he passage, and was filled with some congenial apprehenfions: "Hæc finis Priami fatorum; hic exitus illum had had shewn themselves the ablest architects of ruin that had hitherto existed in the world. In that very short space of time they had completely pulled down to the ground, their monarchy; their church; their nobility; their law; their revenue; their army; their navy; their commerce; their arts; and their manufactures. They had done their business for us as rivals, in a way in which twenty Ramillies or Blenheims could never have done it. Were we absolute conquerors, and France to lie proftrate at our feet, we should be ashamed to fend a commission to fettle their affairs, which could impose so hard a law upon the French, and so destructive of all their consequence as a nation, as that they had imposed upon themselves. France, by the mere circumstance of its vicinity, had been, and in a degree always must be, an object of our vigilance, either with regard to her actual power, or to her influence and example. As to the former, he had spoken; as to the latter, (her example) he should say a few words: for by this example our friendship and our intercourse with that nation had once been, and might again, become more dangerous to us than their worst hoftility. In the last century, Louis the Fourteenth had established a greater and better difciplined military force than ever had been before seen in Eu B4 rope, t |