SUBSTANCE OF MR. BURKE'S SPEECH IN THE DEBATE ON THE ARMY ESTIMATES, IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, On Tuesday, the 9th Day of February, 1790. COMPREHENDING A DISCUSSION OF THE PRESENT SITUATION OF AFFAIRS IN FRANCE. SUBSTANCE OF M THE SPEECH, R BURKE's speech on the report of the army estimates has not been correctly ftated 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 foftening 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 improper jealoufy of the ministers, in whom a full confidence, B 2 fidence, subject to responsibility, ought to be plac ed, on account of their knowledge of the real fituation 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 preferving the balance of power in Europe. The propriety of its being larger or smaller depended, therefore, upon the true state of that balance. If the increase of peace establishments demanded of parliament agreed with the manifest appearance of the balance, confidence in minifters, 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 |