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made.* He always expressed himself with the utmost horrour concerning such alliances, so did all his phalanx. Mr. Sheridan in particular, after one of his invectives against those powers, sitting by him, said, with manifest marks of his approbation, that if we must go to war, he had rather go to war alone than with such allies.

20. Immediately after the French declaration of war against us, parliament addressed the king in support of the war against them, as just and necessary, and provoked as well as formally declared against Great Britain. He did not divide the house upon this measure; yet he immediately followed this our solemn parliamentary engagement to the king, with a motion proposing a set of resolutions, the effect of which was, that the two houses were to load themselves with every kind of reproach for having made the address, which they had just carried to the throne. He commenced this long string of criminatory resolutions against his country, (if king, lords and commons of Great Britain, and a decided majority without doors, are his country,) with a declaration against intermeddling in the interiour concerns of France. The purport of this resolution of non-interference is a thing unexampled in the history of the world, when one nation has been actually at war with another. The best writers on the law of nations give no sort of countenance to his doctrine of non-interference, in the extent and manner in which he used it, even when there is no war. When the war exists, not one authority is against it in all its latitude. His doctrine is equally contrary to the enemy's uniform practice, who, whether in peace or in war, makes it his great aim not only to change the government, but to make an entire revolution in the whole of the social order in every country.

The object of the last of this extraordinary string of resolutions moved by Mr. Fox was to advise the Crown not to enter into such an engagement with any foreign power, so as to hinder us from making a separate peace with France, or which might tend to enable any of those powers to introduce a government in that country, other than such as those persons, whom he calls the people of France, shall choose to establish. In short, the whole of these resolutions appeared to have but one drift-namely, the sacrifice of our own domestick dignity and safety, and the independency of Europe, to the support of this strange mixture of anarchy and tyranny which prevails in France, and which Mr. Fox and his party were pleased to call a government. The immediate consequences of these measures was (by an example, the ill effects of which, on the whole world, are not to be calculated) to secure the robbers of the innocent nobility, gentry, and ecclesiasticks of France, in the enjoyment of the spoil they have made of the estates, houses, and goods of their fellowcitizens.

21. Not satisfied with moving these resolutions, It is an exception, that in one of his last speeches, (but not

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tending to confirm this horrible tyranny and robbery, and with actually dividing the house on the first of the long string which they composed, in a few days afterwards he encouraged and supported Mr. Grey in producing the very same string in a new form, and in moving, under the shape of an address of parliament to the Crown, another virulent libel on all its own proceedings in this session, in which not only all the ground of the resolutions was again travelled over, but much new inflammatory matter was introduced. In particular, a charge was made, that Great Britain had not interposed to prevent the last partition of Poland. On this head the party dwelt very largely, and very vehemently. Mr. Fox's intention, in the choice of this extraordinary topick, was evident enough. He well knows two things; first, that no wise or honest man can approve of that partition, or can contemplate it without prognosticating great mischief from it to all countries at some future time. Secondly, he knows quite as well, that, let our opinions on that partition be what they will, England, by itself, is not in a situation to afford to Poland any assistance whatsoever, The purpose of the introduction of Polish politicks into this discussion was not for the sake of Poland; it was to throw an odium upon those who were obliged to decline the cause of justice from their impossibility of supporting a cause which they approve; as if we, who think more strongly on this subject than he does, were of a party against Poland, because we are obliged to act with some of the authors of that injustice, against our common enemy, France. But the great and leading purpose of this introduction of Poland into the debates on the French war was to divert the publick attention from what was in our power, that is, from a steady co-operation against France, to a quarrel with the allies for the sake of a Polish war, which, for any useful purpose to Poland, he knew it was out of our power to make. If England can touch Poland ever so remotely, it must be through the medium of alliances. But by attacking all the combined powers together for their supposed unjust aggression upon France, he bound them by a new common interest, not separately to join England for the rescue of Poland. The proposition could only mean to do what all the writers of his party in the Morning Chronicle have aimed at persuading the publick to, through the whole of the last autumn and winter, and to this hour; that is, to an alliance with the jacobins of France, for the pretended purpose of succouring Poland. This curious project would leave to Great Britain no other ally in all Europe, except its old enemy, France.

22. Mr. Fox, after the first day's discussion on the question for the address, was at length driven to admit-(to admit rather than to urge, and that very faintly) that France had discovered ambitious views, which none of his partisans, that I before.) Mr. Fox seemed to think an alliance with Spain might be proper.

recollect, (Mr. Sheridan excepted,) did, however, either urge or admit. What is remarkable enough, all the points admitted against the jacobins were brought to bear in their favour as much as those in which they were defended. For when Mr. Fox admitted that the conduct of the jacobins did discover ambition, he always ended his admission of their ambitious views by an apology for them, insisting, that the universally hostile disposition shewn to them rendered their ambition a sort of defensive policy. Thus, on whatever roads he travelled, they all terminated in recommending a recognition of their pretended republick, and in the plan of sending an ambassador to it. This was the burthen of all his song" Every thing which "we could reasonably hope from war, would be "obtained from treaty." It is to be observed, however, that, in all these debates, Mr. Fox never once stated to the house upon what ground it was he conceived, that all the objects of the French system of united fanaticism and ambition would instantly be given up, whenever England should think fit to propose a treaty. On proposing so strange a recognition, and so humiliating an embassy as he moved, he was bound to produce his authority, if any authority he had. He ought to have done this the rather, because Le Brun, in his first propositions, and in his answers to Lord Grenville, defended, on principle, not on temporary convenience, every thing which was objected to France, and shewed not the smallest disposition to give up any one of the points in discussion. Mr. Fox must also have known, that the convention had passed to the order of the day, on a proposition to give some sort of explanation or modification to the hostile decree of the 19th of November, for exciting insurrections in all countries; a decree known to be peculiarly pointed at Great Britain. The whole proceeding of the French administration was the most remote that could be imagined from furnishing any indication of a pacific disposition for at the very time in which it was pretended that the jacobins entertained those boasted pacifick intentions, at the very time in which Mr. Fox was urging a treaty with them, not content with refusing a modification of the decree for insurrections, they published their ever memorable decree of the 15th of December, 1792, for disorganizing every country in Europe, into which they should on any occasion set their foot; and on the 25th and 30th of the same month, they solemnly, and, on the last of these days, practically, confirmed that decree.

23. But Mr. Fox had himself taken good care in the negociation he proposed, that France should not be obliged to make any very great concessions to her presumed moderation-for he had laid down one general, comprehensive rule, with him (as he said) constant and inviolable. This rule, in fact, would not only have left to the faction in France all the property and power they had usurped at home, but most, if not all, of the conquests, which, by their atrocious perfidy and violence, they had made abroad. The principle laid

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down by Mr. Fox is this, "That every state, in "the conclusion of a war, has a right to avail "itself of its conquests towards an indemnifica "tion." This principle (true or false) is totally contrary to the policy which this country has pursued with France, at various periods, particularly at the treaty of Ryswick, in the last century, and at the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in this. Whatever the merits of his rule may be, in the eyes of neutral judges it is a rule which no statesman before him ever laid down in favour of the adverse power with whom he was to negociate. The adverse party himself may safely be trusted to take care of his own aggrandizement. But (as if the black boxes of the several parties had been exchanged) Mr. Fox's English ambassador, by some odd mistake, would find himself charged with the concerns of France. If we were to leave France as she stood at the time when Mr. Fox proposed to treat with her, that formidable power must have been infinitely strengthened, and almost every other power in Europe as much weakened, by the extraordinary basis which he laid for a treaty. For Avignon must go from the Pope; Savoy (at least) from the king of Sardinia, if not Nice. Liege, Mentz, Salm, Deux-Ponts, and Bâle, must be separated from Germany. On this side of the Rhine, Liege (at least) must be lost to the empire, and added to France. Mr. Fox's general principle fully covered all this. How much of these territories came within his rule, he never attempted to define. He kept a profound silence as to Germany. As to the Netherlands, he was something more explicit. He said (if I recollect right) that France, on that side, might expect something towards strengthening her frontier. As to the remaining parts of the Netherlands, which he supposed France might consent to surrender, he went so far as to declare that England ought not to permit the emperour to be repossessed of the remainder of the ten Provinces, but that the people should choose such a form of independent government as they liked. This proposition of Mr. Fox was just the arrangement which the usurpation in France had all along proposed to make. As the circumstances were at that time, and have been ever since, his proposition fully indicated what government the Flemings must have in the stated extent of what was left to them. A government so set up in the Netherlands, whether compulsory, or by the choice of the sans-culottes, (who he well knew were to be the real electors, and the sole electors,) in whatever name it was to exist, must evidently depend for its existence, as it has done for its original formation, on France. In reality, it must have ended in that point, to which, piece by piece, the French were then actually bringing all the Netherlands; that is, an incorporation with France, as a body of new departments, just as Savoy and Liege, and the rest of their pretended independent popular sovereignties, have been united to their republick. Such an arrangement must have destroyed Austria; it must have left Holland always at the mercy

of France; it must totally and for ever cut off all political communication between England and the continent. Such must have been the situation of Europe, according to Mr. Fox's system of politicks, however laudable his personal motives may have been in proposing so complete a change in the whole system of Great Britain, with regard to all the continental powers.

24. After it had been generally supposed that all publick business was over for the session, and that Mr. Fox had exhausted all the modes of pressing this French scheme, he thought proper to take a step beyond every expectation, and which demonstrated his wonderful eagerness and perseverance in his cause, as well as the nature and true character of the cause itself. This step was taken by Mr. Fox immediately after his giving his assent to the grant of supply voted to him by Mr. Serjeant Adair and a committee of gentlemen, who assumed to themselves to act in the name of the publick. In the instrument of his acceptance of this grant, Mr. Fox took occasion to assure them, that he would always persevere in the same conduct which had procured to him so honourable a mark of the publick approbation. He was as good as his word.

lated to inflame the manufacturers throughout the kingdom.

27. In support of his motion, he declaimed in the most virulent strain, even beyond any of his former invectives, against every power with whom we were then, and are now, acting against France. In the moral forum, some of these powers certainly deserve all the ill he said of them; but the political effect aimed at, evidently was to turn our indignation from France, with whom we were at war, upon Russia, or Prussia, or Austria, or Sardinia, or all of them together. In consequence of his knowledge that we could not effectually do without them, and his resolution that we should not act with them, he proposed, that having, as he asserted, "obtained the only avowed object of the war, (the " evacuation of Holland,) we ought to conclude an "instant peace."

28. Mr. Fox could not be ignorant of the mistaken basis upon which his motion was grounded. He was not ignorant, that, though the attempt of Dumourier on Holland, (so very near succeeding,) and the navigation of the Scheld, (a part of the same piece,) were among the immediate causes, they were by no means the only causes alleged for parliament's taking that offence at the proceedings 25. It was not long before an opportunity was of France, for which the jacobins were so prompt found, or made, for proving the sincerity of his in declaring war upon this kingdom. Other full professions, and demonstrating his gratitude to as weighty causes had been alleged: They were, those who have given publick and unequivocal 1. The general overbearing and desperate ambition marks of their approbation of his late conduct. of that faction. 2. Their actual attacks on every One of the most virulent of the jacobin faction, nation in Europe. 3. Their usurpation of terriMr. Gurney, a banker of Norwich, had all along tories in the empire with the governments of distinguished himself by his French politicks. By which they had no pretence of quarrel. 4. Their the means of this gentleman, and of his associates perpetual and irrevocable consolidation with their of the same description, one of the most insidious own dominions of every territory of the Netherand dangerous hand-bills that ever was seen had lands, of Germany, and of Italy, of which they been circulated at Norwich against the war, drawn got a temporary possession. 5. The mischiefs up in an hypocritical tone of compassion for the attending the prevalence of their system, which poor. This address to the populace of Norwich would make the success of their ambitious designs was to play in concert with an address to Mr. Fox; a new and peculiar species of calamity in the it was signed by Mr. Gurney and the higher part world. 6. Their formal, publick decrees, particuof the French fraternity in that town. In this pa-larly those of the 19th of November, and 15th per Mr. Fox is applauded for his conduct throughout the session, and requested, before the prorogation, to make a motion for an immediate peace with France.

26. Mr. Fox did not revoke to this suit: he readily and thankfully undertook the task assigned to him. Not content, however, with merely falling in with their wishes, he proposed a task on his part to the gentlemen of Norwich, which was, that they should move the people without doors to petition against the war. He said, that, without such assistance, little good could be expected from any thing he might attempt within the walls of the house of commons. In the mean time, to animate his Norwich friends in their endeavours to besiege parliament, he snatched the first opportunity to give notice of a motion, which he very soon after made, namely, to address the Crown to make peace with France. The address was so worded as to co-operate with the handbill in bringing forward matter calcu

and 25th of December. 7. Their notorious attempts to undermine the constitution of this country. 8. Their publick reception of deputations of traitors for that direct purpose. 9. Their murder of their sovereign, declared by most of the members of the convention, who spoke with their vote (without a disavowal from any) to be perpetrated, as an example to all kings, and a precedent for all subjects to follow. All these, and not the Scheld alone, or the invasion of Holland, were urged by the minister, and by Mr. Windham, by myself, and by others who spoke in those debates, as causes for bringing France to a sense of her wrong in the war which she declared against us. Mr. Fox well knew, that not one man argued for the necessity of a vigorous resistance to France, who did not state the war as being for the very existence of the social order here, and in every part of Europe; who did not state his opinion, that this war was not at all a foreign war of empire, but as much for our liberties, properties, laws, and religion, and

even more so, than any we had ever been engaged in. This was the war, which, according to Mr. Fox and Mr. Gurney, we were to abandon before the enemy had felt, in the slightest degree, the impression of our arms.

29. Had Mr. Fox's disgraceful proposal been complied with, this kingdom would have been stained with a blot of perfidy hitherto without an example in our history, and with far less excuse than any act of perfidy which we find in the history of any other nation. The moment, when by the incredible exertions of Austria (very little through ours) the temporary deliverance of Holland (in effect our own deliverance) had been achieved, he advised the house instantly to abandon her to that very enemy, from whose arms she had freed ourselves, and the closest of our allies.

30. But we are not to be imposed on by forms of language. We must act on the substance of things. To abandon Austria in this manner, was to abandon Holland itself. For suppose France, encouraged and strengthened as she must have been by our treacherous desertion, suppose France, I say, to succeed against Austria, (as she had succeeded the very year before,) England would, after its disarmament, have nothing in the world but the inviolable faith of jacobinism and the steady politicks of anarchy to depend upon, against France's renewing the very same attempts upon Holland, and renewing them (considering what Holland was and is) with much better prospects of success. Mr. Fox must have been well aware, that if we were to break with the greater continental powers, and particularly to come to a rupture with them, in the violent and intemperate mode in which he would have made the breach, the defence of Holland against a foreign enemy, and a strong domestick faction, must hereafter rest solely upon England, without the chance of a single ally, either on that or on any other occasion. So far as to the pretended sole object of the war, which Mr. Fox supposed to be so completely obtained, (but which then was not at all, and at this day is not completely obtained,) as to leave us nothing else to do than to cultivate a peaceful, quiet correspondence with those quiet, peaceable, and moderate people, the jacobins of France.

31. To induce us to this, Mr. Fox laboured hard to make it appear, that the powers with whom we acted were full as ambitious and as perfidious as the French. This might be true as to other nations. They had not, however, been so to us or to Holland. He produced no proof of active ambition and ill faith against Austria. But supposing the combined powers had been all thus faithless, and been all alike so, there was one circumstance which made an essential difference between them and France. I need not therefore be at the trouble of contesting this point, which, however, in this latitude, and as at all affecting Great Britain and Holland, I deny utterly: be it

So.

But the great monarchies have it in their power to keep their faith if they please, because they are governments of established and recognised

authority at home and abroad. France had, in reality, no government. The very factions, wh exercised power, had no stability. The French convention had no powers of peace or war. Supposing the convention to be free (most assuredly it was not) they had shewn no disposition to abandon their projects. Though long driven out of Liege, it was not many days before Mr. Fox's motion, that they still continued to claim it as a country, which their principles of fraternity bound them to protect, that is, to subdue and to regulate at their pleasure. That party which Mr. Fox inclined most to favour and trust, and from which be must have received his assurances, (if any he did receive,) that is, the Brissotins, were then either prisoners or fugitives. The party which prevailed over them (that of Danton and Marat) was itself in a tottering condition, and was disowned by a very great part of France. To say nothing of the royal party who were powerful and growing, and who had full as good a right to claim to be the legitimate government, as any of the Parisian factions with whom he proposed to treat or rather (as it seemed to me) to surrender at discretion.

32. But when Mr. Fox began to come from his general hopes of the moderation of the jacobins, to particulars, he put the case, that they might not perhaps be willing to surrender Savoy. He certainly was not willing to contest that point with them; but plainly and explicitly (as I understood him) proposed to let them keep it; though he knew (or he was much worse informed than he would be thought) that England had, at the very time, agreed on the terms of a treaty with the king of Sardinia, of which the recovery of Savoy was the casus federis. In the teeth of this treaty, Mr. Fox proposed a direct and most scandalous breach of our faith, formally and recently given. But to surrender Savoy, was to surrender a great deal more than so many square acres of land, or so much revenue. In its consequences, the surrender of Savoy was to make a surrender to France of Switzerland and Italy, of both which countries Savoy is the key-as it is known to ordinary speculators in politicks, though it may not be known to the weavers in Norwich, who it seems are, by Mr. Fox, called to be the judges in this matter.

33. A sure way, indeed, to encourage France not to make a surrender of this key of Italy and Switzerland, or of Mentz, the key of Germany, or of any other object whatsoever which she holds, is to let her see, that the people of England raise a clamour against the war before terms are so much as proposed on any side. From that moment, the jacobins would be masters of the terms.They would know, that parliament, at all hazards, would force the king to a separate peace. The Crown could not, in that case, have any use of its judgment. Parliament could not possess more judgment than the Crown, when besieged (as Mr. Fox proposed to Mr. Gurney) by the cries of the manufacturers. This description of men, Mr. Fox endeavoured in his speech, by every method, to

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irritate and inflame. In effect, his two speeches were, through the whole, nothing more than an amplification of the Norwich hand-bill. He rested the greatest part of his arguments on the distress of trade, which he attributed to the war; though it was obvious to any tolerably good observation, and, much more, must have been clear to such an observation as his, that the then difficulties of the trade and manufacture could have no sort of connexion with our share in it. The war had hardly begun. We had suffered neither by spoil, nor by defeat, nor by disgrace of any kind. Publick credit was so little impaired, that, instead of being supported by any extraordinary aids from individuals, it advanced a credit to individuals to the amount of five millions for the support of trade and manufactures, under their temporary difficulties, a thing before never heard of;-a thing of which I do not commend the policy-but only state it, to shew, that Mr. Fox's ideas of the effects of war were without any trace of foundation.

33. It is impossible not to connect the arguments and proceedings of a party with that of its leader-especially when not disavowed or controuled by him. Mr. Fox's partisans declaim against all the powers of Europe, except the jacobins, just as he does; but not having the same reasons for management and caution which he has, they speak out. He satisfies himself merely with making his invectives, and leaves others to draw the conclusion. But they produce their Polish interposition, for the express purpose of leading to a French alliance. They urge their French peace, in order to make a junction with the jacobins to oppose the powers, whom, in their language, they call Despots, and their leagues, a combination of Despots. Indeed, no man can look on the present posture of Europe with the least degree of discernment, who will not be thoroughly convinced, that England must be the fast friend, or the determined enemy, of France. There is no medium; and I do not think Mr. Fox to be so dull as not to observe this. His peace would have involved us instantly in the most extensive and most ruinous wars; at the same time that it would have made a broad highway (across which no human wisdom could put an effectual barrier) for a mutual intercourse with the fraternizing jacobins of both sides. The consequences of which, those will certainly not provide against, who do not dread or dislike them.

34. It is not amiss in this place to enter a little more fully into the spirit of the principal arguments on which Mr. Fox thought proper to rest this his grand and concluding motion, particularly such as were drawn from the internal state of our affairs. Under a specious appearance, (not uncommonly put on by men of unscrupulous ambition,) that of tenderness and compassion to the poor, he did his best to appeal to the judgments of the meanest and most ignorant of the people on the merits of the war. He had before done something of the same dangerous kind in his printed letter.

The ground of a political war is of all things that which the poor labourer and manufacturer are the least capable of conceiving. This sort of people know in general that they must suffer by war. It is a matter to which they are sufficiently competent, because it is a matter of feeling. The causes of a war are not matters of feeling, but of reason and foresight, and often of remote considerations, and of a very great combination of circumstances, which they are utterly incapable of comprehending; and, indeed, it is not every man in the highest classes who is altogether equal to it. Nothing, in a general sense, appears to me less fair and justifiable, (even if no attempt were made to inflame the passions,) than to submit a matter on discussion to a tribunal incapable of judging of more than one side of the question. It is at least as unjustifiable to inflame the passions of such judges against that side, in favour of which they cannot so much as comprehend the arguments. Before the prevalence of the French system (which as far as it has gone has extinguished the salutary prejudice called our Country) nobody was more sensible of this important truth than Mr. Fox; and nothing was more proper and pertinent, or was more felt at the time, than his reprimand to Mr. Wilberforce for an inconsiderate expression, which tended to call in the judgment of the poor to estimate the policy of war upon the standard of the taxes they may be obliged to pay towards its support.

35. It is fatally known, that the great object of the jacobin system is to excite the lowest description of the people to range themselves under ambitious men, for the pillage and destruction of the more eminent orders and classes of the community. The thing, therefore, that a man not fanatically attached to that dreadful project would most studiously avoid, is, to act a part with the French Propagandists, in attributing (as they constantly do) all wars, and all the consequences of wars, to the pride of those orders, and to their contempt of the weak and indigent part of the society. The ruling jacobins insist upon it, that even the wars which they carry on with so much obstinacy against all nations are made to prevent the poor from any longer being the instruments and victims of kings, nobles, and the aristocracy of burghers and rich men. They pretend that the destruction of kings, nobles, and the aristocracy of burghers and rich men, is the only means of establishing an universal and perpetual peace. This is the great drift of all their writings from the time of the meeting of the states of France, in 1789, to the publication of the last Morning Chronicle. They insist that even the war which, with so much boldness, they have declared against all nations, is to prevent the poor from becoming the instruments and victims of these persons and descriptions. It is but too easy, if you once teach poor labourers and mechanicks to defy their prejudices, and as this has been done with an industry scarcely credible, to substitute the principles of fraternity in the room of that salutary prejudice

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