party of the Whigs sided with him. On the 24th the French Ambassador was informed that the King refused to receive his credentials, and on the 1st of February the Convention, anticipating the English premier, declared war against Great Britain. The die was cast, and the people of England in general gladly accepted the terrible alternative. The animating principle of the struggle in which they engaged was the defence of hereditary right, and resistance to the principles of the French Revolution.

Fox is said to have acknowledged on his death-bed that Pitt had really no alternative but to make war; and Sir Cornewall Lewis believed that a mere recognition of the French republic would not have prevented the Convention from commencing hostilities, unless England had declared herself friendly to the principles professed by the members of that body. Samuel Rogers declares in his "Recollections" + that the war was forced on Pitt; but Wilberforce, though he maintains that "we were not the assailants, and therefore the conflict was just and necessary," adds nevertheless, that "the ministry had not taken due pains to prevent its breaking out." A variety of circumstances make it evident that, if Pitt was not the first actually to make war, he had latterly led up to it, and made it necessary for the Convention to

"Administrations of Great Britain," p. 138.

† Page 189.

"Life of Wilberforce," vol. ii. p. 11.

declare it, or to abandon altogether the position which they had taken.*

To some persons Pitt's conduct in this matter appears laudable, to others it seems to need excuse. The most moderate men, however, on all sides allow that he might at least, by a longer exercise of forbearance and prudence, have postponed the hostilities he at last invited. If his grand object was to crush the hydra-headed spirit of democracy rampant in France, he should have waited for some distinct and daring act of aggression on the part of the republicans against England. He would then have had the support of all parties, Fox included, and would have faced the foe with tenfold strength. By provoking the French he only stimulated their fierce enthusiasm, and saw within a twelvemonth more than a million of them rush to arms. He knew little or nothing of the Continent, having crossed the Channel but once during a vacation, and his powerful mind was by no means richly endowed with experience in the ways of the world.† Great as was his capacity for government in time of peace, he appears to have been incapable of calculating the military resources and prowess of France as contrasted with the diminutive war establishment of Great Britain. He fondly expected a prompt and easy victory, though warned of his error even by Burke, by Lord Stanhope, and M. Bigot de St. Croix, who had formerly been

*Jesse's "George III.," vol. iii. p. 196.

"Life of Wilberforce," vol. ii. pp. 92-3.

Minister for Foreign Affairs in France. It was not long before the English army was laughed at by all Europe; and though always remarkable for courage, it proved as ill-trained and ill-provisioned as in our own day in the Crimea ; while in a few years the martial power of France, so far from being abashed, had planted its foot on the necks of the proudest and the most ancient of European sovereignties.

Pitt's change of policy as regards foreign affairs produced a corresponding change in his administration at home. The premier no longer appeared as the warm advocate of reform, and several of his measures were severely repressive. The state of the country was thought to justify prosecutions for political opinion, of which we should now be ashamed.* Muir and Palmer were sentenced to transportation for an offence so slight that it could scarcely be called a misdemeanour; yet Pitt did not even in private express any disapproval of the penalty which these men were to endure the one during fourteen, and the other during seven years. A Traitorous Correspondence Bill was passed; and Pitt did not oppose the clause which provided that an offender might be hanged, drawn and quartered, without being furnished with a copy of the indictment, or permitted the means of defence. To advocate Parliamentary Reform was called sedition; small householders were termed the rabble;

* See Lord Cloncurry's "Personal Recollections," and Castlereagh's "Memoirs," vol. i.

and a Lord Justice maintained that the landed interest only had a right to be represented, and that those who taught the contrary ought to be hanged or thrown to wild beasts.

The law of constructive treason, Lord Campbell says, was intended to extinguish all political agitation, and to bring under the head of criminals persons whose intentions were benevolent and honest, and who advocated moderate changes by constitutional means. Attempts were made to bring Lord Stanhope, Horne Tooke, and Thelwall within its scope; but even George III., who certainly cannot be accused of over-indulgence to liberals, exclaimed against it to his Chancellor. "Constructive

treason won't do, my Lord," he said; "it won't do. You have got us into the wrong box."

*

Such were some of the repressive measures which Pitt countenanced. He had it in his power also to put down the Orange atrocities in Ireland, but he did not put them down. He might have encouraged Irish trade without hampering it with invidious restrictions; he might have promoted reform in the Irish parliament instead of stirring up the Peep-o'-Day Boys and the United Irishmen; he might have kept aloof from a shameless system of bribery and corruption; and by concessions more important than those of the Catholic Relief Bill of 1793, he might have averted the conspiracy of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the rising of 1798, the burning and savage *Smiles, "History of Ireland," p. 386.

slaughtering of the insurgents by the Orange yeomanry, and the fierce reprisals, of which Scullabogue was but a sample.

The close alliance of a constitutional government, like that of England, with continental Powers intolerant of any limit to absolute rule, was unnatural, and involved Pitt in consequences unfavourable to the freedom of English subjects. The Allies, moreover, were bent on spoiling France and aggrandising their own dominionsan object by no means in accordance with British interests. It was a small matter to Pitt that he should be held up to execration in France, and that every species of infamy should there be laid to his charge. He accounted it an honour to be accused by them of suborning assassins to put an end to Lepelletier and Robespierre, of corrupting the Gironde, hiring the murderers of September, and perpetrating by means of his tools the horrors of the Reign of Terror. Citizen Garnier proposed in full Convention,* that Pitt should be decreed the enemy of the human race, and that every one should be at liberty to slay him. As fast as one party rose to power in Paris, it ascribed the atrocities of its predecessors, and the calamities which they had caused, to the fiend who directed the counsels of the King of England. He could afford to treat such libels with silent scorn; but it would have been well if he had been raised equally high above the animadversions of foes at home.

* August 7, 1793.