sentations? Instead of Austria having been able to penetrate into any part of the French dominions, or to wound them in any one point, they were told that it was an improvement of their situation, that the French had recently been forced to retreat from posts of which they were not in possession at the time of the guarantee. Was it an improvement in our situation, that they had extended their dominion beyond the Rhine; that Man heim had fallen into their hands, and that the greater part of the palatinate had also been over-run? It was an insult on the understandings of Englishmen, to say that in this quarter of the war there was an improvement in our situation. The check given to the French in Italy was also introduced as a matter of triumph; that was because the French had not succeeded in all their extent of operations, and because they were not masters of every part of the countries they had invaded, the situation of Great Britain was improved. Or did ministers mean to insinuate that, in a general comparison of the situation of the two countries, our state was better than last year? ple of Great Britain as a matter of consolation to them! He would not quarrel about the words "unparalleled distress!" it might be so; but he must animadvert on the strange logic which was used upon the occasion; for the people of this country were to be told, that this unpa-, ralleled distress of the French was owing entirely to the war; whereas the distresses of England had nothing on earth to do with it! How such a difference could exist in the operation of the war it was not for him to divine-that in France all their scarcity, all their calamities were to be imputed to it, but that in England the war had no effect whatever on our internal situation. If the people of this country had so thoroughly surren dered their understandings to the eloquence of ministers as to believe this kind of logic, he had no more to say; it was impossible to add any thing that could expose so gross an absurdity-The depreciation of assignats was the everlasting burthen of all their harangues. "France was utterly undone! France was incapable of all exertion! France was completely exhausted in consequence of It had been alleged by himself and the depreciation of her assignats!" This others, in the course of last session, that had been the incessant story with which there was great reason to apprehend a the parliament and people of this country scarcity of grain in the kingdom, and that had been deluded from the beginning of it was worthy the consideration of mi- the war. Last year they were told, that nisters, before they pressed for a continu- France could not go on, for her assignats ance of a system that necessarily increased were at a discount of eighty per cent. the consumption, to see that the country [Some gentleman said in a whisper, that was plentifully supplied with the necessa- it was not last year, but the year before ries of life. This observation was treated that this was said]. Last year, or the with the most lofty disdain, and in a tone year before, said Mr. Fox, it is a little of insolent and haughty indignation, the matter which; it is hardly possible for suggestion was imputed to a factious spi. any memory to state the precise time of rit, which sought to raise an unnecessary these assertions, they have been so incesalarm in the minds of men. But how santly made, so incessantly repeated, had the event turned out? That these so incessantly held forth to the peowarnings had been most lamentably veri ple of this country as grounds of hope, fied, it was not necessary for him he be and have so constantly ended in dislieved, now to state; nor would it be al appointment, that whether it was last leged, that in this particular our internal year, or the year before, was precisely situation was" materially improved." Imthe same to the argument. When he proved! Good God, when we were re- was told that the assignats were at a disduced to such a point of misery, that, count of 80 per cent. he ceased to think looking into the situation of the common upon the subject: from the moment that labourer, from one end of the country to they were at 80 per cent. discount, it was the other, it was a melancholy and a heart- no longer of consequence to speculate breaking fact, that not one man out of upon them. All theories of mere arithten was able by his labour to earn suffi-meticians on the subject were from that cient bread for himself and his family! instant at an end; when a paper currency Oh, but it seemed that France was re- was at 80 per cent. discount, it would be duced to a situation of " unparalleled dis-said, upon the mere calculations of theory. tress!" And this was held out to the peo- to be tantamount to extinction. But when he looked to experience and prac-ment, so as to enable us to treat with them tice, when he referred to the example of with confidence and security. What do America, a reflecting statesman would they say now? "The distraction and hesitate before he presumed to delude anarchy which have so long prevailed in his country, by building on such an hy- that country have led to a crisis-" When pothesis. And, accordingly, as if the I heard these words, said Mr. Fox, I instance of America had not been suffi- took it for granted that we were to be cient to correct the fallacy of mere cal- told the exact nature of the crisis, and culation on such a subject, France had the good which our ministers were about given another lesson on the point-France to extract from it. But, mark the words: that was reduced to such a state of weak- have led to a crisis of which it is, as yet, ness, as, from her deplorable situation, to impossible to foresee the issue." Here is be held out as an easy prey-France, a piece of information for the parliament that, in the month of June last, was said and people of Great Britain! It goes on, to be gasping in her last agonies, and however: "but which must in all human when, on account of her deplorable situa- probability produce"-Ay, now we come, tion, it was said to be impolitic for us to I hope, to the desirable point-produce give her peace-France has, since the peace, I hope-no such thing!" produce date of her expiring agony, made the consequences highly important to the inmost brilliant campaign that the history terests of Europe!" Good God! is this a of mankind almost ever exhibited, in proof of the improvement of our situation which her arms had every where been since last year? Does this hold out to triumphant, and where, by the mere force the oppressed and starving people of Engof conquest, she had reduced almost every land a nearer prospect of the termination one of our allies to sue for peace, and seof this unfortunate war? Last year their cure their safety by negociation. Such distress was likely to produce such an orwas the issue of their calculations upon der of things as would give us a secure her distress! He was afraid, he said, of peace; and now, all that we are to look. such agonies; and surely no man of com- for from the distraction and anarchy that mon sense, after such a result, would again reign in France, are consequences that calculate upon success from the depre- may be "important to the interests of ciation of their paper. Europe!" What period of the eventful history of this wonderful revolution has not been productive of consequences materially important to Europe? Of what change that has taken place might not the same thing be said? When the revolution, as it is called, of the 31st of May took place, might it not have been said, that a crisis was approached that might have produced consequences important to the interests of Europe? When Robespierre's tyranny was extinguished, might not the same thing have been said? Upon the insurrections that have happened from time to time, and particularly on the late insurrection, in short, on every great event that has arisen in France, the same equivocal words might have been used by his majesty's ministers. But it was not their paper only which was adduced as a proof of their distress; they were utterly destitute of provisions, it seemed; and as an argument for continuing the war, the House were told, that the French government had been obliged to unload the ships at Brest in order to supply Paris with bread. This was said to have been their condition. Be it so. What must be their feeling of the cause in which they had engaged, that under such a pressure of scarcity, could rouse them to such exertions? Those who had last year held out this argument of their distress as a ground of hope, and who put into his majesty's speech the memorable expression," that the internal situation of the enemy should make us indulge a hope that they were hastening to such a state of order and regular government, as might be capable of maintaining the accustomed relations of peace and amity with other powers," would now explain upon what better grounds they held out the less precise and less intelligible hope of the present speech. They then said, that the distresses were likely to produce a return of a state of order and regular govern What, then, were the people of England to understand from these words now? What prospect did they hold forth that his majesty's ministers were to seize on the first favourable moment in which they might negociate beneficially for peace? If they were to argue from their past conduct, they surely could draw no favourable conclusion, nor any rational ground of hope from these unintelligible words. this exhibit between the present and the ancient state of England, when the power of control which belonged to the vigorous understanding and the manly spirit of Englishmen was extinct, and the people were supinely content to wait until obstinate fury should, by its natural course, correct itself! Oh, miserable England, to what a state are you fallen, when such is the wretched consolation in which you indulge! The expedition to Quiberon was one of the grand sources by which this conviction was produced in ministers. He knew not by whom that expedition was In December 1792, Mr. Fox said, he had made a motion, to which he certainly could not, without a degree of egotism, recur, because he could not recur to it without pride and satisfaction to himself. He asked, whether a negociation might not have been entered upon at that moment with a greater probability of securing a beneficial peace to England than now? He had in every session since that period, renewed, in one way or another, the same motion; and he desired to know whether our perverse continuance in the proud denial of its being the proper moment to negociate, had bettered our condition, or opened to us the prospect of a more ho-planned; he knew not in whose desperate nourable termination of the war? On the contrary, had we not from year to year entangled ourselves deeper, and rendered the practicability of peace upon safe and honourable terms more hopeless? But, there was one point of view in which our present situation had been viewed by an hon. gentleman, very much connected with ministers, and who, he hoped, spoke on the present occasion authoritatively. The hon. gentleman had said, that he was now willing to admit, that all prospect of restoring the emigrants to their estates, and the Bourbon family to the throne of France was hopeless; that it was a matter of prudence to calculate the value of an object, together with the chance of procuring it, and not to pursue any object, however desirable, beyond the rational hope of obtaining it. If the disasters of the war had produced this conviction in the minds of ministers, he, who thought that wisdom was the first of human acquisitions, and that prudence in the governors of a state was not merely a most valuable but a most necessary virtue, would be willing to allow that our situation was improved. It was improved, because our ministers were brought at length to a conviction of their error; because they had returned to their senses. But, good God, what a series of calamity and disaster had been required to produce this restoration of their reason! What a state of degradation must that House and the country be come to, that it should be held out as a matter of exultation, and as a proof of our situation being improved, that ministers had been at length corrected, not by the indignation and energy of the people, but by the consequences of their own imbecility and guilt! What a contrast did See Vol. 30, p. 80. bosom the idea of the horrid expedition was engendered, but it was a scene over which the heart of every manly Briton shed tears of blood; and which had done more mischief to the British character, had sunk it lower in the eyes of observant Europe, and would stain it more in the estimation of posterity, than all the rest of the operations of this war, frantic, base, and inhuman as many of its projects had been. Good God! to think that so many brave and honourable men, among whom there were gentlemen of the purest feelings and of the most honourable principles, should be led to massacre in the way in which they were! That one of the most gallant among them the [count de Sombreuil] should be denied the slender consolation which he requested in his expiring moments of having his letter made public, was such an act of savage barbarity as would leave an eternal stain upon England, if parliament and the people did not testify their indignation by fixing a strong mark of censure upon its authors. Yet even this lesson-even the dreadful issue of this abominable scheme-did not produce the effect upon the minds of his majesty's ministers which might have been expected; another expedition was framed, in which the emigrants were to be employed in a descent upon the coast of France. The second expedition was concerted, perhaps, with somewhat less indiscretion, and somewhat less barbarity, than the first; but it seemed to have its origin in the same principles, and to owe its birth to the same parent. It was owing only to its utter failure that it had not been equally disastrous; for if the expedition to L'Isle Dieu had been carried into effect in the same manner as the first, the unfortunate persons must have been equally abandoned. And yet, though not attended with the same fatal effects as the first, the expedition had been attended with misfortune Our fleet had been exposed to great risk on a dangerous coast; and even now we must either land the stores upon L'Isle Dieu, for the maintenance of the unhappy persons still there, or abandon them to the certain, though lingering death of famine, or to the more merciful doom of the guillotine. It was impossible to animadvert upon the conduct of ministers in these expeditions without being astonished at the insanity with which they were planned It must now be a matter of secret congratulation to themselves that every one of their projects had failed; their success would have made it impossible for them to have maintained the argument which they had held that day. What did they do? They sent an officer to summon Belle Isle in the name of Louis 18th, the rightful king of France, and thus they made their officer declare a falsehood, a direct falsehood, as great a falsehood as if he were traitor enough to declare that cardinal York was the rightful king of Great Britain. But what must have been the consequence if, upon this summons, Belle Isle or Noirmoutier had yielded? We must have landed and taken possession of them in the name of Louis 18th, and the unfortunate prince, just landed in the place under our auspices, would have been identified with our cause, and we should have been pledged to the restoration of this legal monarch in his rights. Could we then have had the blessing which was this day held up, of abandoning a course, which could no longer be pursued with rational hopes? We should then have been reduced to the melancholy alternative of abandoning the prince and his followers with infamy, or of prosecuting his cause under the most desperate circumstances. Fortunately for ministers, however, their project had failed, and they were thus relieved by the want of success from the folly of their act. It was by this sort of reasoning alone that he could resolve the strange paradox of the seconder of the motion, who had said, that the very failure of the war had produced good consequences. If it were applied to our expeditions to the coast of France, it perhaps might hold true, as the consequence was a conviction in the breasts of ministers, that it was impracticable to pursue the restoration of Louis any more. It was with pain that he took up the time of the House, with any observations upon this kind of reasoning. He was confident that the natural plain sense and understandings of Englishmen, who had always been distinguished for their love of direct and plain dealing, would soon be disgusted, and reject with indignation and nausea a cause that required such refinement of reasoning to support it. An hon. gentlemen had said, that the opinions of the French were certainly specious in themselves, and calculated to intoxicate the minds of the lower ranks of men; but that, in their own nature, they would, sooner or later, generate such a tyranny as that which Robespierre exhibited, which again, in its own nature, would correct the impression which the specious opinions had originally made. The war, then, with all its disasters had been so far useful, that it had accelerated the conviction which Robespierre's tyranny would of itself have more slowly produced. The war was a sort of yeast that fermented this tyranny: and thus, in this idle train of reasoning, was the House presented with another theory in excuse of the war. If men were to play with such theories as matter of amusement, he should certainly not contend about them. He should then be extremely willing to leave them as a very good theme for school-boys, as the hon. seconder had said; but it was a dreadful thing when such theories were taken up by statesmen, and gravely acted upon as legitimate causes for plunging their country into the horrors of war. Such theories might suit well for a literary or a political disputant, and might be made very amusing either in a club-room or in a pamphlet; but for a man to undertake the office of a statesman, and to bring such theories into practice, was such an outrage, not merely upon common sense, but upon moral duty, as must shock the heart of every considerate, and of every feeling mind. What a picture of human wantonness did it not exhibit, that in order to ascertain the question, whether a certain set of opinions might be brought so much more speedily into disrepute, it was a good and right thing that a hundred millions of money should be squandered, and hundreds of thousands of our fellow-creatures be put to death! In his mind, a war against opinions was in no one instance, and could not be, either just or pardonable. A war of self-defence against acts he could understand, he could explain, and he could justify; but no war against opinions could be supported by reason or by justice: it was drawing the sword of the inquisition. How could we blame all those abominable acts of bloodshed and torture, which had been committed from time to time under the specious name of religion, when we ourselves had the presumption to wage a similar war? Who would say, that all the blood that had been spilt from the fury of religious enthusiasm, might not have been made to flow from the pure but misguided motive of correcting opinions, when we ourselves thus dared to dip our hands in the blood of our fellow creatures, on the mere pretext of correcting the errors of opinion? We must change all the doctrines that we had been taught to cherish about religious persecution and intolerance; we must begin to venerate the authors of the holy inquisition, and consider them as pious and pure men, who committed their murders for the beneficent purpose of correcting the heresies which they considered as so abominable, and restoring the blessings of what they conceived to be the only true system of christianity. In the same manner, the present war against opinions was to be entitled to our esteem, and its authors to be venerated for their morality. In this war they also were great conquerors; they had lost towns, cities, nay kingdoms, they had squandered a hundred millions of money, they had lost a hundred thousand men, they had lost their allies, they had lost the cause of the emigrants, they had lost the throne to the family of the Bourbons, -but they had gained a set of rather better opinions to France! He contended, that at every moment from the commencement of the war to the present instant, our ministers might have negociated with the French upon better terms than they could at this time! and that our relative situation had been gradually growing worse. The famous decree of the 19th November, 1792, was the first great pretext for going to war. That decree we might have got rid of by negociation. But if that decree was an obstacle to negociation, it was well known that the disgusting tyrant Robespierre himself not only formally repealed it, but made it the pretext for murdering Brissot and about one hundred persons more, whom he called its authors. Why not negociate after that decree was repealed? Oh! they were afraid of the T fascination of French principles on the minds of the people of this country. But, surely, they could not say that these principles continued to be fascinating and tempting after the reign of Robespierre. If ever they had any attraction for the popular mind, they surely must have lost it, and become, on the contrary, the detestation and horror of every human being, as exhibited under the implacable tyranny of that despicable miscreant. Did they make overtures of peace when these principles had lost their temptation? What! it would be said, would you have treated with Robespierre? Why not with Robespierre? Do we not daily treat with tyrants? He would have treated with Robespierre; not because he did not think his government the most disgusting tyranny that ever existed, but because England had nothing to do with his tyranny. On the 27th of July, Robespierre was cut off, and his principles were declared to be infamous. Why did not ministers then make overtures of peace? There was nothing in their former conduct that could give that House or the nation confidence in their intentions of making peace whenever the favourable opportunity should arrive. the contrary, they stood convicted of fraud; for when an hon. friend of his (Mr. Grey) made a motion on the 26th of January last, which it was not found convenient directly to oppose, an amendment was moved, declaring that they were ready to enter into a negociation, whenever there should be a government established in France, capable of maintaining the customary relations of amity and peace. Did they offer negociation when it was proved by experience that France had such a government? It had been proved that France did maintain such relations of peace and amity, for Prussia had made peace with her, Spain had made peace with her, many of the states of Germany had made peace with her, and among others, the elector of Hanover had made peace. The hon. seconder of the motion had said, that any one who made an argument on the conduct of the elector of Hanover, and reasoned on it as an example for England, would deserve to be treated as a schoolboy. He must submit to incur the imputation; for he confessed, with deference to the hon. gentleman, that it was worthy * See Vol. 31, p. 1193 |