Note 136 — Chapter VIII

The advantage of the Ministers lay in the disunion of their opponents—a fact which the speeches of Mr. Grenville and Mr. Burke, angry as each of them was with the Government, most palpably disclosed;—America, as before, being the subject of their differences. Mr. Grenville, however, disapproved of the dissolution of the American Assemblies, observing that “no corporation was bound to obey the orders of the Secretary of State further than they are enjoined by the laws of the land.” The picture he drew of the state of England is in dark colours. “Distress is among the common people; luxury among the rich; servility, licentiousness, venality, of a nature the most dangerous to the constitution; an enormous debt; a diminishing specie; an increasing paper credit.” Mr. Burke greatly overrated the importance of Corsica. “Corsica naked,” he observed, “I do not dread; but Corsica a province of France, is dreadful to me.”—(Cavendish, vol. i. p. 46.) This apprehension was very generally entertained,—time has proved it to be utterly unfounded, the French having up to this moment derived as little benefit from their conquest as has accrued to them from any of their ultramarine possessions.—E.