practice which they pursued. In glancing over the proceedings of their legislative bodies that very day he had found that one of their reporters stated, that the sale of the national property (that was what was the property of individuals) was the pivot of the revolution. If their lordships were not disposed to give up the security of their property, and to introduce that levelling system, they would pause when they contemplated the serious consequences, with which the measures recommended would be accompanied. Were their lordships prepared to submit to the mandates of the Directory? At their command were they ready to let loose all those who had been doomed to punishment for the propagation of sedition, and for attacks upon the constitution? Were they prepared to set at liberty Mr. York? To recall from Botany Bay the Jacobins who had been transported to that country? When they had consented to disband our troops, and to dismantle our fleet, now in the height of its power, did they imagine that we should be able to cope with the forces of the Directory, wielding the combined strength of the navies of Spain and Holland? If their lordships did not wish to expose the country to these disasters, they would not concur in giving to his majesty advice that would strike at the interest of the state, and weaken the se announced their intention, and success was to afford the means of extending the application of their principles. Now we might observe the prevalence of the same dispositions. They were avowed in repeated proclamations, in which their determination to overturn the established order of the countries to which they could dictate, was renewed. It was not their arms which he had to dread, but the system by which their success was accompanied. He begged their lordships to consider the instance of Sardinia. No sooner was the king of Sardinia compelled to submit to accept a peace from France, than it was succeeded by their interference in the internal administration of his government. They insisted upon his restoring to their liberty, and to their effects, all the persons who had been condemned to imprisonment or to penalties, for the propagation of their anarchical doctrines. At Rome they had signalised their triumph by imposing the same degrading conditions. Were their lordships prepared to submit to such indignities? Would they act even so as to invite such disgraceful interference? Would they endure the badge of disorder, which the king of Prussia had allowed in his dominions? In Berlin the standard of insurrection was reared, the national cockade was worn to attract partizans and propagate the principles of which it was the emblem. And were their lordships pre-curity of his government. Did ministers pared to allow the national cockade to be worn in this country by every man whom the French Directory might choose to consider as a Frenchman? By arms alone these attempts and these disgraces were to be resisted. To these evils their lordships exposed themselves if they consented to conclude any peace with the enemies of established government and of moral and religious order. Whatever confidence might be reposed in the affection, steadiness and loyalty of the people at home, what did their lordships say to our distant possessions? Were our colonies safe? Were the West India islands in a situation in which we could rely upon their tranquillity? What had been the effect of the principles of France in her own settlements? What devastation had they not produced? What ravage had they not extended to our own islands of St. Vincents and Grenada? The effect of their principles was, to overthrow all the barriers by which property was protected; and the tendency was realized by the mean to recognize France, circumscribed and limited within her ancient boundaries or the republic of France, bounded by the Rhine and the Alps? For a series of years our ancestors had struggled to limit the territories of France, and to maintain the balance of Europe, and it was surely no trivial consideration, whether this aggrandizement was to be acknowledged, and these acquisitions to be sanctioned. The effects which our commerce would sustain by the aggrandizement of France, were not indifferent. It was no light reflection that Holland was under the control of the enemy, that the ports of Italy were in the hands of the enemy; that Leghorn, once so important in war, from the supplies which it furnished, and in peace, as the great mart of our manufactures, was now taken from us. All the coasts of Europe were now shut against our commerce. In Italy the establishment of a republic, under the control of France, would exclude our trade from that country, and unless the king of Naples came boldly forward to resist the plans of the enemy, the whole of the north of Italy would be inaccessible to our manufactures. By commerce this nation had flourished. What, however, was to be our situation, when every port into which our commodities had flowed, was shut against us? If the French succeeded in establishing a republic in Italy, it would quickly spread over that country the same poverty which in France the revolutionary government had introduced. We might treat with the French Directory; but what traffic could our merchants maintain with individuals who were destitute of property, or possessed it without security? The loss of Spain, too, was now certain. By whatever name she was distinguished, whether as a monarchy or a republic, was of little consequence. She was the tributary of France, and from the tenor of the Speech, he concluded, that with her too, we should have to contend. The noble carl concluded with moving an Amendment to the Address, by inserting at the end of the first paragraph, the following words: "That this House, strongly impressed with the justice and necessity of the present war, carried on for the maintenance of civil and moral order in the world, and for securing the balance of power in Europe, and the independence of all states, will continue to give his Majesty a vigorous support in asserting the general cause of his Majesty and his allies, and for preserving the good faith, dignity, and honour of the crown, in full assurance that no steps will be taken inconsistent with those principles, or with the future safety and prosperity of these kingdoms; and should the apparently hostile dispositions of the court of Madrid, instigated by the intrigues and menaces of the common enemy, put his majesty under the necessity of repelling force by force, his majesty may rely on the determination of this House to give his majesty the most ample support in defending against every aggression, the dignity, rights, and interests of the British empire." The Earl of Guilford said, it was not his intention to oppose the address; on the contrary, he felt great pleasure in being able to give it his cordial support. If a safe, honourable, and permanent peace could now be obtained, he would sit down well satisfied with all the obloquy which had been so plentifully heaped upon himself and those with whom he had the honour to act for the last three years. The achievements of the archduke Charles had been noble and splendid in the extreme, and he firmly believed they had been the means of saving the House of Austria, and the whole Germanic body from a state of the greatest humiliation. If these fortunate atchievements should operate, as he hoped they would, to serve as an advantageous means of cool, temperate, and rational negotiation, they ought to be considered as omens of great happiness to us and our ally; if, on the contrary, they should have the fatal tendency of reviving the inauspicious hopes formerly entertained, and cause the parties to rise in their demands, so as to be the means of prolonging this miserable and unavailing contest, then they would, and ought to be, looked upon as evils and misfortunes of the deepest dye. Conceiving a peace to be the greatest blessing this country could at present possess, he cordially came forward in support of the present address; but by so doing he did not preclude himself from the right he had to inquire, at any future period, into the causes of the present calamitous contest, and the conduct of those who had plunged us into it. Lord Grenville said, that even supposing the address had formed the subject of the keenest and most obstinate debate that had ever taken place in that House, it would have been impossible for him to add to the energy with which the argument had been supported, or the impression made upon the House by the noble mover. It gave him joy, as a public man, to see his noble friend bringing into action, those talents which he had long known him to possess. To those who had not witnessed the display of talents his noble friend had made, such language might be considered as proceeding from the warmth of private friendship, while he wished it to be considered as the congratulation of a public man upon a great public advantage. He should forbear entering into any argument upon the points on which the noble earl who spoke last had expressed a difference of opinion. As for the threatened inquiry into the causes of the war, and the conduct of those who had the management of it, he was ready at any time to meet the trial, and to take his share of responsibility for all its consequences. Another noble earl (Fitzwilliam) had stated it as inconsistent with the principles on which the war was undertaken, to treat with any other govern ment in France than a monarchy. That the existence of a republic in France was an insuperable bar to negotiation, and that monarchy was indispensable, was a calumny which ministers had at all seasons contradicted. They had expressed what they still believed, that the best issue to the contest would be, the reestablishment of monarchy in France; yet they had never pledged themselves, much less the parliament, to an opinion so wild and extravagant, as that, without this object, no peace could be attained. It was somewhat strange in the noble earl to infer, from the opening of negotiation, that the worst terms would be concluded. He saw nothing in the state of the country that should lead us to embrace any other than just, honourable, and solid conditions of peace. The amendment was negatived, and the Address agreed to. Protest of Earl Fitzwilliam against the Rejection of his Amendment to the Address of Thanks.] The following Protest was entered on the Journals: "Dissentient, 1. "Because, by this Address, unamended as it stands, the sanction of the Lords is given to a series of measures as ill-judged with regard to their object as they are derogatory from the dignity of his majesty's crown, and from the honour of this kingdom. The reiteration of solicitations for peace, to a species of power, with whose very existence all fair and equitable accommodation is imcompatible, can have no other effect than that which it is notorious all our solicitations have hitherto had. They must increase the arrogance and ferocity of the common enemy of all nations; they must fortify the credit, and fix the authority of an odious government over an enslaved people; they must impair the confidence of all other powers in the magnanimity, constancy, and fidelity of the British councils; and it is much to be apprehended it will inevitably tend to break the spring of that energy, and to lower that spirit which has characterised in former times this high-minded nation, and which, far from sinking under misfortune, have even risen with the difficulties and dangers in which our country has been involved. sources, and providing for the safety of this kingdom, and its inseparable connexions and dependencies, can be had with the usurped power now exercising authority in France; considering the description, the character, and the conduct of those who compose that government, the methods by which they have obtained their power, the policy by which they hold it, and the maxims they have adopted, openly professed and uniformly acted on, towards the destruction of all governments not formed on their model, and subservient to their domination. 3. "Because the idea that this kingdom is competent to defend itself, its laws, liberties, and religion, under the general subjugation of all Europe, is presumptuous in the extreme, contradictory to the supposed motives for our present eager solicitations for peace, and is certainly contrary to the standing policy both of state and commerce, by which Great Britain has hitherto flourished. 4" Because, while the common enemy exercises his power over the several states of Europe in the way we have seen, it is impossible long to preserve our trade, or, what cannot exist without it, our naval power. This hostile system seizes on the keys of the dominions of these powers, without any consideration of their friendship, their enmity, or their neutrality, prescribes laws to them as to conquered provinces; mulcts and fines them at pleasure; forces them, without any particular quarrel, into direct hostility with this kingdom, and expels us from such ports and markets as she thinks fit: insomuch that (Europe remaining under its present slavery) there is no harbour which we can enter without her permission, either in a commercial or a naval character. This general interdict cannot be begged off; we must resist it by our power, or we are already in a state of vassalage. 5. "Because, whilst this usurped power shall continue thus constituted and thus disposed, no security whatever can be hoped for in our colonies and plantations, those invaluable sources of our national wealth and our naval power. This war has shown that the power preva lent in France, by intentionally disorganizing that plantation system (which France had in common with all other European nations), and by inverting the 2. "Because no peace, such as may be order and relations therein established, capable of recruiting the strength, econo- has been able with a naval force, altomizing the means, augmenting the re-gether contemptible, and with very incon. [VOL. XXXII.] [4 G] felt in every country. New means, new arms, new pretexts, are furnished to ambition: and new persons are intoxicated with that poison. siderable succours from Europe, to baffle, in a great measure, the most powerful armaments ever sent from this country into the West Indies, and at an expense hitherto unparalleled, and has, by the force of example, and by the effect of her machinations, produced at little or no expense to herself either of blood or treasure, universal desolation and ruin by the general destruction of every thing valuable and necessary for cultivation, throughout several of our islands, lately among the most flourishing and productive. The new system, by which these things have been effected, leave our colonies equally endangered in peace as in war. It is therefore with this general system (of which the West India scheme is but a ramification) that all ancient establishments are essentially at war for the sake of self-preservation. 6. "Because it has been declared from the throne, and in effect the principle has been adopted by parliament, that there was no way likely to obtain a peace, commonly safe and honorable, but through the ancient and legitimate government long established in France. That government in its lawful succession has been solemnly recognised, and assistance and protection as solemnly promised to those Frenchmen, who should exert themselves in its restoration. The political principle upon which this recognition was made, is very far from being weakened by the conduct of the new invented government. Nor are our obligations of good faith pledged on such strong motives of policy to those who have been sound in their allegiance, dissolved, nor can they be so, until fairly directed efforts have been made to secure this great fundamental point. None have yet been None have yet been employed with the smallest degree of vigour and perseverance. 7. "Because the example of the great change made by the usurpation in the moral and political world (more dangerous than all her conquests) is by the present procedure confirmed in all its force. It is the first successful example furnished by history of the subversion of the ancient government of a great country, and of all its laws, orders, and religion, by the corruption of mercenary armies, and by the seduction of a multitude, bribed by confiscation to sedition, in defiance of the sense, and to the entire destruction of almost the whole proprietory body of the nation. The fatal effects of this example must be 8. "Because our eagerness in suing for peace may induce the persons exercising power in France erroneously to believe, that we act from necessity, and are unable to continue the war-a persuasion which, in the event of an actual peace, will operate as a temptation to them to renew that conduct which brought on the present war-neither shall we have any of the usual securities in peace. In their treaties, they do not acknowledge the obligation of that law, which for ages has been common to all Europe. They have not the same sentiments, nor the same ideas of their interest in the conservation of peace, which have hitherto influenced all regular governments; they do not in the same manner feel public distress, or the private misery of their subjects; they will not find the same difficulty on the commencement of a new war to call their whole force into sudden action, where, by the law, every citizen is a soldier, and the person and properties of all are liable at once to arbitrary requisitions. On the other hand, no attempt has been made to show in what manner, whether by alliances, by force, military or naval, or by the improvement and augmentation of our finances, we shall be better able to resist their hostile attempts after the peace than at the present hour. If we remain armed, we cannot reap the ordinary advantage of peace in economy; if we disarm, we shall be subject to be driven into a new war, under every circumstance of disadvantage, unless we now prepare ourselves to suffer with patience and submission whatever insults, indignities, and injuries we may receive from that insolent, domineering, and unjust power. 9. "Because the inability of humbling ourselves again to solicit peace in a manner, which is a recognition of the French Republic, contrary to all the prin'ciples of the war, the danger of peace, if obtained, the improbability of its duration, and the perseverance of the enemy throughout the interval of peace in their mischievous system, is not conjecture, but certainty. It has been avowed by the actual governors of France at the very moment when they had before them our application for a passport. They chose that moment for publishing a state paper, Debate in the Commons on the Address of Thanks.] Oct. 6. The Commons being returned to their House, and his Majesty's Speech being read by the Speaker, breathing the most hostile mind. In it they stimulate and goad us, by language the most opprobrious and offensive. They frankly tell us, that it is not our interest to desire peace, for that they regard peace only as the opportunity of preparing fresh means for the annihilation of our naval power. By making peace, they do not conceal that it will be their object to wrest from us our maritime prepon'derancy—to re-establish what they invidiously call the freedom of the seas to 'give a new impulse to the Spanish, Dutch, and French marines-and to carry to the highest degree of prosperity the industry and commerce of those nations,' which they state to be our rivals, which they charge us us with unjustly attacking, when we can no longer dupe,' and which they throughout contemplate as their own dependencies, united in arms, and furnishing resources from our future humiliation and destruction. They resort to that well-known and constant allusion of theirs to ancient history, by which representing France as modern Rome, and England as modern Carthage,' they accuse us of a national perfidy, and hold England up as an object to be blotted out from the face of the earth.' They falsely assert, that the English nation supports with impatience the continuance of the war, and has extorted all his majesty's overtrues for peace by complaints and reproaches;' and above all, not only in that passage, but throughout their official note, they show the most marked adherence to that insidious and intolerable policy of their system, by which they, from the commencement of the revolution, sought to trouble and subvert all the governments in Europe. They studiously disjoin the English nation from its sovereign. 10. "Because, having acted throughout the course of this awful and momentous crisis upon the principles herein expressed, and after having, on the present occasion, not only fully reconsidered, and jealously examined their soundness and validity, but gravely attended to, and scrupulously weighed the merits of all those arguments which have been offered to induce a dereliction of them, conscientiously adhering to, and firmly abiding by them, I thus solemnly record them, in justification of my own conduct, and in discharge of the duty I owe to my king, my country, and the general interests of civil society. (Signed) "WENTWORTH FITZWILLIAM." Viscount Morpeth rose to move an Address. As he was not in the habit of addressing the House, he hoped he should experience its indulgence on the present occasion. He felt however somewhat emboldened, from the consideration of the contents of the Speech they had just heard, and which, he flattered himself, would meet with the cordial approbation of the House. He trusted that the sentiments avowed in that speech would tend to reconcile that variety and opposition of sentiment which had hitherto subsisted; for whatever opinions gentlemen might have entertained with respect to the origin of the war, and the manner in which it had been conducted, it must assuredly give them satisfaction to concur in a motion which had for its object the expediting of an honourable peace. Those who thought that this was a war just and necessary in its commencement, and unavoidable in its continuance, must also rejoice that the period was arrived in which a negotiation might be entered into, that there existed in France a government possessing stability and security, and that might therefore be treated with. He hoped that we should not neglect to employ our resources in such a manner as to show that while we are desirous for peace, we are nevertheless in a condition to continue the contest. He was glad to observe, that if this painful alternative should be unavoidable, our resources would be adequate; and here he must observe, that the Speech from the throne was fully justified, as to the condition of our trade and commerce: they certainly were flourishing in a high degree, as was evinced by the produce of the duties upon our imports and exports, and by the general state of our revenue. was a fact upon which reliance might be placed, that our exports for the last half year exceeded by two millions sterling the amount of the half year which corresponded with it in the preceding year. This must afford them the utmost satisfaction, since it incontrovertibly proved that the commerce of the country was progressively increasing, and its resources unexhausted. Let it be remembered also that our commercial prosperity had risen to such a pitch during a period It |