yet prove a bond of permanent union between the two countries; to this end neither attention nor disposition on my part shall be wanting."
The speech then alluded to the affairs of India, to the necessity of economy, to the execution of the reductions in the Civil List expenses ordered by the Act of the previous session, to the further reforms in the public departments which had been carried out, to the suppression of sinecure places, to the necessity of continuing the policy of reform in the same direction, to the inquiry which had been set on foot into the administration of the landed revenue and the management of the Mint, and then went to say: "I must recommend to you an immediate attention to the great objects of the public receipts and expenditure and above all to the state of the public debt. Notwithstanding the great increase of it during the war, it is to be hoped that such regulations may still be established, such savings made, and future loans so conducted, as to promote the means of its gradual redemption, by a fixed course of payment."[1]
The condition of parties in Parliament at this period, according to Gibbon, who had received his information from Eden, was "Minister one hundred and forty; Reynard, ninety; Boreas, one hundred and twenty; the rest unknown or uncertain. The last of the three by self or agents talks too much of absence, neutrality, moderation. I still think he will discard the game."[2]
As yet no union existed between the two sections of the Opposition, although they joined to attack the treaty which they had not yet seen. Their grounds for doing so were however different, if not contradictory. Lord Stormont attacked the concession of independence to America, because, he said, it was irrevocable, while Fox renewed his old attack on Shelburne for having made independence an article of treaty.[3] Unfortunately for the Ministers, they gave a handle to their adversaries, by themselves adopting a contradictory line of defence in
