They have administered to me the only consolation I am capable
of receiving, which is, to know that no individual will suffer by my
thirty years' service to the public. If things should give us the
comparative happiness of a struggle, I shall be found, I was going to
say fighting, (that would be foolish,) but dying, by the side of Mr.
Pitt. I must add, that, if anything defensive in our domestic system
can possibly save us from the disasters of a Regicide peace, he is the
man to save us. If the finances in such a case can be repaired, he is
the man to repair them. If I should lament any of his acts, it is only
when they appear to me to have no resemblance to acts of his. But let
him not have a confidence in himself which no human abilities can
warrant. His abilities are fully equal (and that is to say much for any
man) to those which are opposed to him. But if we look to him as our
security against the consequences of a Regicide peace, let us be assured
that a Regicide peace and a constitutional ministry are terms that will
not agree. With a Regicide peace the king cannot long have a minister to
serve him, nor the minister a king to serve. If the Great Disposer, in
reward of the royal and the private virtues of our sovereign, should
call him from the calamitous spectacles which will attend a state of
amity with Regicide, his successor will surely see them, unless the same
Providence greatly anticipates the course of Nature.
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