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17 9 3 AND 18 5 3,
IN
THREE LETTERS.
BY
RICHAKD COBDEN, ESQ., M.P.
" The passions were excited ; democratic ambition was awakened ; the
" desire of power under the name of Reform was rapidly gaining ground
" among the middle ranks, and the institutions of the country were threatened
" with an overthrow as violent as that which had recently taken place in the
" French monarchy. In these circumstances, the only mode of checking the
" evil was by engaging in a foreign contest, by drawing off the ardent spirits
" into active service, and, in lieu of the modern desire for innovation, rousing
*' the ancient gallantry of the British nation." — Alison, vol. iv. p. 7.
P I F TIf ' S'B I T I C--N.
LONDON:
JAMES RIDGWAY, PICCADILLY.
« 1853.
9 8 S ^
„ • > » ,'^ „■>, •"■•
LETTER I.
iT MR. COBDEN TO THE REVEREND
$•
^
■^
>-
>« December, 1852.
My dear Sir,
Accept my thanks for your kindness in
forwarding me a copy of your Sermon upon the
^ death of the Duke of WeUington. 1 am glad to
2° observe, that like nearly all the commentators upon
the achievements of the great warrior, you think it
necessary to assume the fact that the war of the
French Revolution was on our side defensive in its
origin, and had for its object the vindication of the
rights and liberties of mankind. A word or two
upon that question by and by. But let us at least
^ rejoice, that, thanks to the progress of the spirit of
Christianity, we have so far improved upon the age
of Froissart, as no longer to lavish our admiration
upon warriors, regardless of the cause to which
they may devote themselves. It is not enough now
that a soldier possesses that courage which Gibbon
designates " the cheapest and most common qua-
lity of human nature," and which a still greater*
authority has declared to be the attribute of all
men, he must be morally right, or he fights without
our sympathy — he must present better title-deeds
oo
CC
Q_
* " I believe every man is brave." — Duke of Wellington,
C3
a
^ House of Lords, June 1.0, 18.52.
A 2
than the record of his exploits, written in blood
with the point of the sword, before he can lay claim
to our reverence or admiration. This, at least, is
the doctrine now professed ; and the profession of
such a faith, even if our works do not quite cor-
respond, is an act of homage to an advanced civili-
zation.
The Sermon with which you have favoured me,
and which is, I presume, but one of many thousands
written in the same spirit, takes still higher ground;
it looks forward to the time when the religion of
Christ shall have so far prevailed over the w^icked-
ness of this world, that men will " beat their swords
into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-
hooks : nation shall hot lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more." In the
mean time, it condemns all war, excepting that
which is strictly defensive, and waged in behalf of
the dearest interests of humanity; it professes no
sympathy for warriors, no admiration for the pro-
fession of arms, and sees less glory in the achieve-
ments of the most successful soldier than in the calm
endurance of the Christian martyr, or the heroism
of him who first ventures alone and unarmed as
the ambassador of Jesus Christ among the heathen.
" But," says the sermon, " an occasion may un-
doubtedly arise when a resort to arms is necessary
to rescue the nations of Europe from a tyrant who
has trodden their liberties under foot. At such
times God has never failed to raise up an instru-
ment to accomplish the good work : such an occa-
sion undoubtedly was the usurpation of Napoleon,
5
and his deadly hostility to this country, and such
an instrument was the Duke of Wellington."
It is impossible to deny that the last extract
gives exjjression to the opinion of the majority of
the people of this country,— or at least to a majority
of those who form opinions upon such matters,— as
to the orioin of the last war.
It we were discussing" the wars of the Heptarchy,
the question would not, as Milton has truly ob-
served, deserve more consideration at our hands
than a battle of kites and crows. But the impres-
sion that exists in the public mind respecting the
origin and history of the last French war may affect
the question of peace or war for the future: — it is
already giving a character to our policy towards
the government and people of France. There is
a prevalent and active belief among us that that
war arose from an unprovoked and unjust attack
made upon us; that we were desirous of peace, but
were forced into hostilities ; that in spite of our
pacific intentions, our shores were menaced with a
French invasion ; and that such having been our
fate, in spite of all our efi'orls to avoid a rupture,
what so natural as to expect a like treatment from
the same quarter in futu-re? and, as a rational de-
duction from these premises, we call for an increase
of our '* national defences."
Now, so far is this from being a true statement
of the case, it is, I regret to say, the very opposite
of the truth. I do not hesitate to athrm that
nothing was ever more conclusively proved by
evidence in a court of law than the fact, resting
6
upon historical documents, and official acts, that
England was the aggressor in the last French war.
It is not enough to say that France did not provoke
hostilities. She all but went down on her knees
(if I may apply such a phrase to a nation) to avert
aruplure with tliis country. Take one broad fact
in illustration of the conduct of the two countries.
On the news of the insurrection in Paris, on the
10th of August, 1792, reaching this country, our
ambassador was immediately recalled ; not on the
ground that any insult or slight had been offered to
him, but on the plea, as stated in the instructions
transmitted to him by the foreign minister, a copy
of which was presented to Parliament, that the King
of France having been deprived of his authority,
the credentials under which our ambassador had
hitherto acted were no longer available ; and at the
same time we gave the French ambassador at
London notice that he would no longer be officially
recognized by our government, but could remain
in England only in a private capacity. How far
the judgment of the present age sanctions the
course our government pursued on that occasion
may be known by comparing our conduct then
with the policy we adopted in 1848, when our
ambassador at Paris found no difficulty, after the
flight of Louis Philippe, in procuring fresh creden-
tials to the French Republic, and remaining at his
post during all the successive changes of rulers,
and when our own povernment hastened to receive
the ambassador of France although he was no
lon<i;er accredited from a crowned head.
7
But France being in 1792 already involved in a
war with Austria and Prussia, whose armies were
marching upon her frontiers, and menaced at the
same time by Russia, Sweden, Spain, and Sardinia,
being in fact assailed openly or covertly by all the
despotic powers of the Continent, nothing was so
much to be dreaded by her as a maritime war with
England, for which owing to the neglected state of
her navy she was wholly unprepared.* By the
Treaty of 1786, which then regulated the inter-
course of the two countries, it was stipulated
tliat the recalling or sending away their respective
ambassadors or ministers should be deemed to be
equivalent to a declaration of war between the two
countries. Instead of seizing the opportunity of a
rupture afforded by the conduct of England, the
French government redoubled their efforts to main-
tain peace. Their ambassador remained in London
from August till January following, in his private
capacity, holding frequent correspondence with our
foreign minister. Lord Grenville, submitting to any
condition however humiliating, in order to procure
a hearing, and not even resenting the indignity of
having had two of his letters returned to him, one
of them through the medium of a clerk in the
Foreign office. At length upon the receipt of the
intelligence of the execution of Louis XVlth, the
French Ambassador received on the 24th January,
1793, from Lord Granville, an order of the Privy
* England had, in 1792, 153 ships of the line ; and France, 86.
— James' Naval History.
8
Council peremptorily requiring Iiim to leave the
kingdom in eight clays.
The sole ground alleged by the British govern-
ment for this step was the execution of the French
King. England* which had 140 years before been
the first to set the example to Europe of decapitat-
ing a monarch, England which, as is observed by
Madame de Stael, has dethroned, banished, and
executed more kings than all the rest of Europe,
was suddenly seized with so great a horror for regi-
cides as to be unable to tolerate the presence of the
French ambassador 1
The war which followed is said by the sermon
before me to have been in defence of the liberties
of Europe. Where are they? Circumspice ! — 1
can only say that I have sought for them from
Cadiz to Moscow without having been so fortunate
as to find them. When shall we be proof against the
transparent appeal to our vanity involved in the
" liberties-of-Europe" argument? We had not
forty thousand British troops engaged on one field
of battle on the Continent during the whole war.
Yet we are taught to believe that the nations of
Europe, numbering nearly two hundred millions,
* The Marquis of Lansdowne speaking of the probable exe-
cution of the King of France, said " Such a King was not a fit
object for punishment, and to screen him from it every nation
ought to interpose its good offices ; but England, above all, was
bound to do so, because he had reason to believe that what had
encouraged the French to bring him to trial was the precedent
established by England in the unfortunate and disgraceful case
of Charles 1st."— Dec. 21, 1/92.
9
owe their liberty to our prowess. If so, no better
proof could be given that they are not worthy of
freedom.
But, in truth, the originators of the war never
pretended that they were fighting for the liberties of
the people anywhere. Their avowed object was to
sustain the old governments of Europe. Th advo-
cates of the war were not the friends of popular free-
dom even at home. The liberal party were ranged on
the side of peace — Lansdowne, Bedford, and Lauder-
dale, in the Lords ; and Fox, Sheridan, and Grey,
in the Commons — were the strenuous opponents of
the war. They were sustained out of doors by a
small minority of intelligent men who saw through
the arts by which the war was rendered popular.
But, (and it is a mournful fact,) the advocates of
peace were clamoured down, their persons and pro-
perty left insecure, and even their families exposed
to outrage at the hands of the populace. Yes, the
whole truth must be told, for we require it to be
known, as some safeguard against a repetition of the
same scenes ; the mass of the people, then wholly
uneducated, were instigated to join in the cry for
war against France. It is equally true, and must be
remembered, that when the war had been carried on
for two years only, and when its effects had been
felt, in the high price of food, diminished employ-
ment, and the consequent sufferings of the working
classes, crowds of people surrounded the King's
carriage, as he proceeded to the Houses of Parlia-
ment, shouting, " Bread, bread ! peace, peace ! "
But, to revert to the question of tiie merits of the
10
last French war. The assumption put forth in the
Sermon that we were engaged in a strictly defen-
sive war is, I regret to say, historically untrue. If
you will examine the proofs, as they exist in the un-
changeable public records, you will be satisfied of
this. And let us not forget that our Iiistory will
ultimately be submitted to the judgment of a tri-
bunal, over which Englishmen will exercise no in-
fluence beyond that which is derived from the truth
and justice of their cause, and from whose decision
there w ill be no appeal. I allude, of course, to the
collective wisdom, and moral sense, of future genera-
tions of men. In the case before us, however, not
only are we constrained, by the evidence of facts, to
confess that we were engaged in an aggressive war,
but the multiplied avowals and confessions of its au-
thors and partisans themselves leave no room to
doubt that they entered upon it to put down opinions
by physical force, one of the worst, if not the very
worst, of motives with which a people can embark
in war. The question, then, is, shall we, in esti-
mating the glory of the general who commands in
such a war, take into account the antecedent merits
of the war itself? The question is answered by the
Sermon before me, and by every other writer upon
the subject, professing to be under the influence of
Christian principles ; they all assume, as the condi-
tion precedent, that England was engaged in a
defensive uar.
There are two ways of judging the merits of a
soldier : the one, by regarding solely his genius as
a commander, excludino: all considerations of the
11
justice of the cause for which he fights. This is the
ancient mode of dealing witli the subject, and is
still followed by professional men, and others of easy
consciences in such matters. These critics will, for
example, recognise a higher title to glory, in the
career of Suwarrovv than in that of Kosciusko, be-
cause the former gained the greater number of im-
portant victories.
There is another and more modern school of
commentators which p7^ofesses to withhold its admi-
ration from the deeds of the military hero, unless
they be performed in defence of justice and huma-
nity. With these the patriot Pole is greater than
the Russian general, because his cause was just, he
having been obviously engaged in a defensive con-
tent, and contending, too, for the dearest rights of
home, family and country.
Now, the condition which I think we may fairly
impose upoii the latter description of judges is,
that they take the needful trouble to inform them-
selves of the merits of the cause in hand, so as to be
competent to give a conscientious judgment upon
it. In the case of the Duke of Wellington, the
wars which he carried on with so much ability and
success on the Continent, were in their character
precisely tlie opposite of that upon which the Ser-
mon ought, accoi-ding to its own principle, to in-
voke the approbation ji' heaven.
The Duke himself did not evidently recocrnize
the responsibility of the commander for the moral
character of his campaigns. His theory of "duty"
12
gave him military absolution, and separated most
completely the man from the soldier.
Some of the Duke's biographers have hardly
done him justice, in the sense in which they have
eulogised him for the strict performance of his
duty. Nor have they acted with more fairness
towards their countrymen, for, by implication,
they would lead us to infer that it is an exception
to the rule when an Englishman does his duty.
In the vulgar meaning they have attached to this
trait in his character, thev have lowered him to the
level of the humblest labourer who does his duty
for weekly wages. Duty with the Duke meant
something more It was a professional principle,
— the military code expressed in one word. He
was always subordinate to some higher autho-
rity, and acted from an impulse imparted from
without ; just as an army surrenders will, reason,
and conscience to some one who exercises all
these powers in its behalf. Sometiuies it was the
Queen ; sometimes the public service ; or the
apprehension of a civil war ; or a famine which
changed his course, and induced him to take up a
new position ; but reason, or conscience, or will,
seemed to have no more to do in the matter than in
the manoeuvres of an army. We did not know to
his death what were the Duke's convictions upon
Free Trade, Reform, or Catholic Emancipation,
In his public capacity he never seemed to ask him-
self — what ought I to do ? but whdii must I do?
Tills principle of subordination, which is the very
13
essence of military discipline, is at the same time
the weak part and blot of the system. It deprives
us of the man, and gives us instead a machine ; and
not a self-acting machine, but one requiring power
of some description to move it. The best that can
be said of it is, that when honestly adhered to, as
in the case of the Duke, it protects us against the
attempts of individual selfishness or ambition. He
would never have betrayed his trust, so long as he
could find a power to whom he was responsible.
That was the only point upon which he coidd have
ever felt any difficulty. Had he been, like Monk,
in the command of an army in times of political
confusion, he would have gone to London to disco-
ver the legal heir to his " duty," whether it was the
son of the Protector, or the remains of the Rump Par-
liament; but he would never have dreamed of selling
himself to a Pretender, even had he been the son of
a king. Should the time ever come (which Heaven
forbid) when the work which the Duke achieved
needs to be repeated, it is not likely that there will
be found one who will surpass him in the ability,
courage, honesty and perseverance which he brought
to the accomplishment of the task. But amongst
all his high merits — and they place him in dignity
and moral worth immeasurably above Marlborougli
or even Nelson — he would have been probably the
last to have claimed for himself tlic3 title of the
champion of the liberties of any people. No atten-
tive reader of his dispatches will fall into any such
delusion as to his own views of his mission to the
Peninsula. Or if any doubt still remain, let him
consult the classic pages of Napier.
14
Let me only refer you to the accompanying ex-
tracts from the History of the Peninsular War: —
'' But the occult source of most of these difficulties
is to be found in the inconsistent attempts of the
British Cabinet to uphold national independence
with internal slavery against foreign aggression,
with an ameliorated government. The clergy, who
led the mass of the people, clung to the English be-
cause they supported aristocracy and church domi-
nation. * * * * The English ministers
hating Napoleon, not because he was the enemy of
England, but because he was the champion of
equality, cared not for Spain unless her people were
enslaved. They were willing enough to use a liberal
Cortes to defeat Napoleon, but they also desired to
put down that Cortes by the aid of the clergy, and
of the bigoted part of the people/' — Vol. iv. p. 259.
" It was some time before the church and aristo-
cratic party discovered that the secret policy of
England was the same as their own. It was so,
however, even to the upholding of the inquisition
which it was ridiculously asserted had become ob-
jectionable only in name." — Vol. iv. p. 350.
I could, also, refer you to another instructive
passage (vol. iii. p. 271), telling us, amongst other
things, that the " educated classes of Spain shrunk,
from the British Government's known hostility to all
free institutions," But I have carried my letter
already to an unreasonable length, and so I con-
dude. Yours ftiithfuUy,
R. COBDEN.
To the Reverend .
15
LETTER II.
MR. COBDEN TO THE REVEREND
December, 1852.
My dear Sir,
You ask me to direct you to the best sources
of information for those particulars of the origin of
the French war to which I briefly alluded in my last
letter. What an illustration does this afford of our
habitual neglect of the most important part of
history, — namely, that wliich refers to our own
country, and more immediately affects the destinies
of the generation to which we belong ! If you feel
at a loss for the facts necessary for forming a judg-
ment upon the events of the last century, how much
more inaccessible must that knowledge be to the
mass of the people In truth, modern English
history is a tabooed study in our common schools,
and the young men of our Universities acquire a far
more accurate knowledge of the origin and progress
of the Punic and Peloponnesian wars, than of the
wars of the French revolution.
The best record of facts, and especially of State
papers, referring to our modern history is to be found
in the Annual Register. These materials have been
digested by several writers. The Pictorial History
of England is not conveniently arranged for refer-
ence; and, although the facts are carefully given,
the opinions, with reference to the events in ques-
tion, have a strong Tory bias. The earliest and
16
latest periods of this history are written in a liberal
and enlightened spirit ; but that portion which
embraces the American and French revolutions fell
somehow under tlie control of politicians of a more
contracted and bigoted school. Alison, of whose
views and principles I shall not be expected to
approve, has given the best narrative of the events
which followed the French revolution down to the
close of the war. His work, which has passed
through many editions, is admirably arranged for
reference. Scott's Life of Napoleon is the most
readable book upon the subject, but not the most
reliable for facts and figures.
But if you would really understand the motives
with which we embarked upon the last French war,
you must turn to Hansard, and read the debates
in both Houses of Parliament upon the subject
from 1791 to 1796. This has been with me a
favourite amusement ; and I have culled many ex-
tracts which are within reach. Shall I put them
together for you ? They may probably be of use
beyond the purposes ©f a private letter. But there
is one condition for which I will stipulate. There
must be a very precise and accurate attention to
dates in order to understand the subject in hand.
Banish from your mind all vague floating ideas
founded upon a confusion of events extending over
the twenty-two years of war. Our business lies
with the interval from 1789, when the Constituent
Assembly of France met, till 1793, when war com-
menced between England and France. Bear in
mind we are now merely investigating the origin
17
and cause of the rupture between the two
countries.
The period from the close of the American war
in 1783 to the commencement of the war with
France in 1793, was characterised by great prosperity.
To the astonishment of all parties the separation of
the American Colonies which had been dreaded as
the signal for our national ruin was followed by an
increased commercial intercourse with the mother
country. The mechanical inventions connected
with the cotton trade and other manufactures, and
the recent improvement in the steam engine were
adding rapidly to our powers of production ; and
the consequent demand for labour, and accumula-
tion of capital diffused general comfort and well-
beins: throuo-hout the land. Such a state of thino;s
always tends to produce political contentment, and
n€ver were the people of this country less disposed
to seek for reforms, still less to think of revolution,
than when the attention of Europe was first drawn
to the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly
of France in 1789. The startling reforms effected
by that body, and the captivating appeals to first prin-
ciples made by its orators soon attracted the sympa-
thies of a certain class of philosophical reformers in
this country, who, followed by a few of the more in-
telligent and speculative amongst the artisan class
in the towns, began to take an active interest in
French politics. Amongst the most influential of the
leaders of this party were Doctor Price and Doctor
Priestley, and the Dissenters generally were ranked
amongst their adherents. But the great mass of
B
18
the population were strongly, almost fanatically on
the side of the Church, which was of course op-
posed to the doctrines of the French Assembly ;
the spirit of hostility to dissenters broke forth in
many parts of the country, and in Birmingham
and other manufacturing places, it led to riots, and
a considerable destruction of property. " It was
not," said Mr. Fox,* " in his opinion a republican
spirit that we had to dread in this country; there
was no tincture of republicanism in the country.
If there was any prevailing tendency to riot, it was
on the other side. It was the high church spirit,
and an indisposition to all reform which marked
more than anything else the temper of the times."
Such was the state of the public mind when Mr.
Burke pubHshed his celebrated Reflections on the
French Revolution^ a work which produced an in-
stant and most powerful effect not only in England
but upon the governing classes on the Continent.
This production was given to the world in 1790 :
the date is all important ; for bear in mind that the
Constituent Assembly had then been sitting for a
year only ; that its labours had been directed to
the effecting of reforms compatible with the preser-
vation of a limited monarchy ; and that such men
as Lafayette and Necker had been taking a lead in
its deliberations. Do not confound in your mind
the proceedings of this body with those of the Le-
gislative Assembly which succeeded to it the next
* House of Commons, May 25, 1792. All the speeches from
which I have quoted were delivered in Parliament, and the quo-
tations are from Hansard.
19
year ; or the National Convention wliicli followed
the year after. Do not disturb your fancy with
thoughts of the Reign of Terror : that did not begin
till four years later. Burke's great philippic con-
tains no complaint of t!ie Constituent x^ssembly
having interfered with us, or meditated forcing its
Reforms upon other countries. It gives utterance
to no suspicion of a warlike tendency on the side of
the French. On the contrary, the author of the
Reflections, in a speech upon the army estimates in
the House of Commons on the 9th of February of
this vear, had declared that " the French army was
rendered an army for every other purpose than that
of defence ;" describing the French soldiers " as
base hireling mutineers, and mercenary sordid de-
serters, wholly destitute of any honourable princi-
ple;" alleging on the same occasion, "that France
is at this time in a political light to be considered
as expunged out of the system of Europe ;" and he
asserted that the French " had done their business
for us as rivals in a way in which twentv Ramilies
or Blenheims could never have done it."
What then was the ground on wliich he assailed
the French Governrnent with a force of invective
that drew from Fox six years later the following
tribute to its fatal influence ?
" In a most masterly performance, he has charmed
"all the world with the brilliancy of his genius,
" fascinated the country witli the powers of his elo-
" quehce, and in as far as that cause went to pro-
" duce this effect, plunged the country into all the
"calamities consequent upon war. I admire the
B 2
20
"genius of the man, and I admit the integrity and
'* usefuhiess of liis long public life ; I cannot, how-
*' ever, but lament that his talents when in my
•'opinion they were directed most beneficially to
"the interest of his country, produced very little
"effect, and that when he espoused sentiments dif-
" ferent from those which I hold to be wise and
*' expedient, then his exertions should have been
" crowned with a success that I deplore."
Read this famous performance again ; and then,
having freed your mind from the effects of its gor-
geous imagery, and fascinating style, ask yourself
what grounds it affords, what facts it contains to
justify even an angry remonstrance, still less to lead
to a war. From beginning to end it is an indict-
ment against the representatives of the French
people, for having presumed to pursue a course, in
a strictly domestic matter, contrary to what Mr.
Burke and tlie English, who are assumed to be
infallible judges, held to be the wisest policy.
Everything is brought to the test of our own prac-
tice, and condemned or approved in proportion as it
is in opposition to or in harmony with British
example. The Constituent Assembly is charged
with robber}^, usurpation, imposture, cheating,
violence, and tyranny, for presuming to abolisli the
law of primogeniture, or appropriate tlieir Church
lands to secular purposes, making religion a charge
upon the State ; or limit to a greater degree than
ourselves the prerogative of the Crown ; or estab-
lish universal suffrage as the basis of their repre-
sentation j changes which however unsuitable they
21
may have been to the habits and di.- position of
Englishmen were yet such as have not been found
incompatible with tlie prosperity of the people of
America, and which to a large extent are practically
applied in the government of our own colonies.
But let us see what was done besides by this
Assembly. Liberty of religious worship to its
fullest extent was secured ; torture abolished ; trial
by jury and publicity of courts of law were estab-
lished; lettresde- cachet abolished; the nobles and
clergy made liable in common with other classes to
taxation ; the most oppressive imposts, such as
those on salt, tobacco, the ta'ille, &c. suppressed;
the feudal privileges of the nobles extinguished ;
access to the superior ranks of the army, heretofore
monopolized by the privileged class, made free to
all; and the same rule applied to all civil employ-
ments.
I dwell on these particulars, because it was from
this sweeping list of reforms, effected by the Con-
stituent Assembly of France, and the sympathy
which they excited amono-st the more active and
intelligent of our liberal politicians, that the war
between the two countries really sprung. It was
not to put down the Reign of Terror that we entered
npon hostilities. That would have been no legiti-
mate object for a war. But the Reign of Terror
did not commence till nearly a year after the war
began. Our indignation was not excited to blows
in 1793, by the madness which afterwards pos-
sessed the National Convention, and which mani-
fested itself in the alteration of the Calendar, the
22
abolition of Chriotianity, and, finally, in the depo-
sition of the Deity Himself. These were the con-
sequences, not the causes of war. No, the war was
entered upon to prevent the contagion of those prin-
ciples which were put forth in such captivating-
terms in 1789 and 1790 by the Constituent Assem-
bl}' of France. The ruling class in England took
alarm at a revolution poing: on in a nei»hbourin2:
state where the governing body had abolished all
Iiereditary titles, appropriated the Church lands to
State purposes, and decreed universal suffrage as
the basis of the representative system. "If," says
Alison,* " the changes in France were regarded
" with favour by one they were looked on with utter
" horror by another class of the community. The
*' majority of the aristocratic body, all the adherents
" of the Church, all the holders of ofSce under the
" Monarchy, in general, the great bulk of the opulent
" ranks of society, beheld them with apprehension
" or aversion.'
From this moment, the friends and opponents of
the French Revolution formed themselves into op-
posing parties, whose, conduct, says Sir W. Scott,f
resembled that of rival factions at a play, who hiss
and applaud the actors on the sttige as much from
party spirit as. from real critical judgment ; while
every instant increases the probability that they
will try the question by actual force. Strange that
to neither party should it have occurred, that to
ihe twentv-four millions of Frenchmen interested
* Vol. iii. p. 108. ^ f Life of Napoleon, ch, vii.
23
in the issue, might be left the task of framing their
own government, without the intervention of the
people of England ; and tliat the circumstance of
a peculiar form of Constitution having been found
suitable for one country, did not necessarily prove
that it would be acceptable to the other !
But the Revolution in France produced a more
decisive impression on the despotic powers of the
Continent. As spon as the democratic measures
of the Constituent Assembly were accomplished,
and the powers of the King made subordinate to
the will of the representative body, the neighbour-
ing potentates took the alarm, and began to concert
measures for enabling Louis XVI. to recover at least
a part of his lost prerogatives. The Emperor of
Germany, Leopold, the most able and enlightened
Sovereign of Europe, who, as Grand Duke of Tus-
cany, had carried out many of those great econo-
mical and legal reforms which constitute the pride
of modern statesmen, took the lead in these unwar-
rantable acts of intervention in the affairs of the
French people. His relationship to the Queen of
Louis XVI. (for they were both the offspring of
Maria Theresa) afforded, however, an amiable plea
for his conduct, which was not shared by his Royal
confederates. Almost every crowned head on the
Continent was now covertly, or openly, conspiring
against the principle of self-government in France ;
and even the Sovereign of England, under the
title of King of Hanover, v/as supposed to be repre-
sented at some of their secret conferences. The
result was the famous Declaration of Pilnitz, put
24
fortli in the names of the Emperor and the King of
Prussia, in which they declare conjointly, *' That
" they consider the situation of the King of France
*' as a matter of common interest to all the Euro-
" pean Sovereigns. They hope that the reality of
" that interest will be duly appreciated by the other
" powers, whose assistance they will invoke, and
" tliat in consequence, they will not decline to em-
*' ploy their forces conjointly with their Majesties,
*' in order to put the King of France in a situation
•' to lay the foundation of a monarchical govern-
" ment, conformable alike to the rights of Sove-
" reio-ns and the well-being of the French nation.
" In that case, the Emperor and King are resolved
" to act promptly with the forces necessary to
** attain their common end. In the mean time,
'* they will give the requisite orders for their troops
" to hold themselves in immediate readiness for
" active service."
It is all-important to observe ihe date of this
Declaration — August 27, 1791 — for upon the date
depends entirely the question whether France or the
Allied Powers were the authors and instigators of
the war. Up to this period the French were wholly
engrossed in their own internal reforms, and had
not given the slightest ground for suspecting that
they meditated an act of hostility against any foreign
power. " Whilst employed in the extension and
*' security of her liberties,'* says Mr. Baines, in his
able and candid history of these events, " amidst
" the struggle with a reluctant monarch, a discon-
" tented priesthood, and a hostile nobility, she was
25
" menaced at tlie same time by a sudden and por-
" tentcus combination of the two great military
" states — Prussia under the dominion of Frederic
" Wilh'am, and Austria under the Emperor Leo-
" pold, brother to Maria Antoinette, queen of
" France." The French were wholly unprepared
for war. Not only were their finances in a ruinous
state; the army had fallen into disorder; for wliilst
the common soldiers were enthusiastic partisans of
the revolution, the officers, who were all of the
class of nobles, were often its violent enemies, and
many of them had fled the kingdom. Great as
was at that time the dread of French principles, no
foreign power felt any fear of the physical force of
France ; for every body shared the opinion of
Burke, that that country had reduced itself to a
state of abject weakness by its revolutionary mea-
sures.
But the best proof that the French government
had not given any good ground of offence to foreign
powers, is to be found in the fact that the declara-
tion of the Allied Sovereigns contains no complaint
of the kind. Their sole object, as avowed by them
in this and subsequent manifestoes, was to restore
the king to the prerogatives of which he had been
deprived by his people. It needs no argument
now to prove that this threat of an armed interven-
tion in the internal aff'airs of France was tanta-
mount to a declaration of war. Compare this
conduct of the despotic powers in 1791 witli the
abstinence fiom all interference — nay, the puncti-
lious disavowal of all right to interfere — in the de-
26
inestic affairs of France in 1848, when the changes
in the government of that country were of a far
more sudden and startling character than those
which had taken place at the time of the De-
claration of Pilnitz.
These proceedings of the Allied Powers were not
sufficient to divert the French from the all-absorb-
ing domestic struggle in which they were involved.
No acts of hostility immediately followed. The wise
Leopold, who wished to support the authority of
the King of France by other means than war, now
exerted liimself to assemble a congress of all the
great powers of Europe, with a view to agree to a
form of government for France. Whilst busying
himself with this scheme, death put a sudden close
to his reign, and his less prudent and pacific suc-
cessor soon brought matters to extremities. In th(!
meantime Russia, Sweden, Sardinia and Spain,
assumed a more and more hostile attitude towards
France. It was, however, from the side of Ger-
many, where twenty thousand emigrant Frencli
nobles were menacing their native country witli
invasion, that the chief danger was apprehended ;
and it was to the Emperor that the French govern-
ment addressed itself for a categorical explanation
of its intentions. The Note in answer demande<l
the re-establishment of the French monarchy on
the basis which had been rejected by the nation
in 1789 ; it required the restoration of the Churcli
lands, part of which had been sold ; and it ignored
all that had been done by the Constituent Assem-
bly during the last two years. But I will give a
27
description of the Note by one whose leaning to
the French will not be suspected.* ^' The demands
" of the Austrian Court went now, when fully ex-
" plained, so far back upon the Revolution, that
" a peace negotiated upon such terms must have
" laid France and all its various parties (with the
exception of a few of the First Assembly) at the
" foot of the sovereign, and, what might be more
" dangerous, at the mercy of the restored emi-
" grants." The consequences of this Note may
be described in the language of the same author.
" The Legislative Assembly received these extrava-
" gant terms as an insult on the national dignity ;
" and the king, wdiatever might be his sentiments
" as an individual, could not, on this occasion, dis-
" pense with the duty his office as constitutional
" monarch imposed on him. Louis therefore had
" the melancholy task of proposing^ to an Assembly
" filled with the enemies of his throne and person,
" a declaration of war against his brother-in-law:|;
" the Emperor."
Thus began a war which, if not the longest, was
the bloodiest and most costly that ever afflicted
mankind. Whatever faults or crimes may be fairly
chargeable upon the French nation for the excesses
and cruelties of the Revolution up to this time
(April, 1792), it cannot be with justice made re-
sponsible for the commencement of the war. What
* Scott's Napoleon. f 20th April, 1 792.
X With his too common inaccuracy, the author has overlooked
the previous death of Leopold.
28
might liave happened if foreign governments had
abstained from all interference, has frequently been
a topic of speculation and hypothetical prophecy
with those who, whilst admitting that the French
were not the aggressors, are yet unwilling to allow
that war could have been avoided. If such specu-
lations were worth pursuing, surely the experience
we have since had in France and other countries
would lead to the conclusion that a nation, if un-
molested from without, is never so little prone to
meddle with its neighbours as when involved in the
difficulties, dangers and embarrassments of an in-
ternal revolution. But we have to deal with facts
and experience, and they prove that in the case
before us France was the aggrieved and not the
aggressive party.
It is true that France was the first to declare
war ; which is a proof that she had more respect for
the usages and laws of nations than her enemies ;
for they were making formidable preparations for an
invasion, under the plea of restoring order, and re-
establishing the king on his throne, wnth the view,
as they pretended, of benefiting the French people.
They would not have declared war against France,
but against the oppressors of France, as they chose
to term the Legislative Assembly. The resistance
they met with proved that they were opposed by the
whole French nation; and, therefore, the only plea
put forth in their justification fails them in the hands
of the historian.
On the 25th July following, the Duke of Bruns-
wick, when, on the eve of invading France, with an
29
army of 80,000 Austrian and Prussian troops, and a
formidable band of emigrant French nobles, issued
a manifesto, in the name of Austria and Prussia, in
which he states his conviction that " the majority of
" the inhabitants of France wait with impatience the
" moment when succour shall arrive, to declare
*' themselves openly against the odious enterprises
" of their oppressors." To afford a full knowledge of
the objects of the invaders, and of the atrocious
spirit which animated them, I give the following
extract from the 8th article of this manifesto: —
"The city of Paris and all its inhabitants, witli-
" out distinction, shall be called upon to submit in-
" stantly, and without delay, to the King, to set
'* that prince at full liberty, and to ensure to him
" and all the royal persons that inviolability and
" respect which are due, by the laws of nature and
"of nations, to sovereigns; their Imperial and
" Royal Majesties making personally responsible for
" all events, on pain of losing their heads, pursuant
" to military trials, without hopes of pardon, all the
" members of the National Assembly, of the Depart-
" ments, of the Districts, of the Municipality, and
•' of the National Guards of Paris, Justices of the
" Peace, and others whom it may concern. And,
" their Imperial and Royal Majesties further de-
" clare, on the faith and word of Emperor and King,
" that if the palace of the Tuilleries be forced or
" insulted, if the least violence be offered, the least
" outrage done, their Majesties, the King, the
" Queen, and the Royal Family, if they be not im-
mediately placed in safety, and set at liberty, they
(I
30
" will inflict on those who shall deserve it the most
" exemplary and ever memorable avenging punish -
" ment, hj giving up the city of Paris to military
" execution, and exposing it to total destruction.'*
In an additional declaration, published two days
later, after declaring that he makes no alteration in
the 8th article of the former manifesto, he adds, in
case the King, Queen, or any other member of the
Royal Family should be carried off by any of the
factions, that " all the places and towns whatsoever,
" which shall not have opposed their passage, and
" shall not have stopped their proceeding, shall
" incur the same punishments as those inflicted on
" the inhabitants of Paris; and the route which
" shall be taken by those who carry off the King
" and the Royal Famil}^, shall be marked with a
" series of exemplary punishments, justly due to the
" authors and abettors of crimes for which there is
*' no remission."
Let it be borne in mind that these proclamations,
worthy of Timoor or Attila, were issued at a mo-
ment when Louis XVL was still exercisino; the
&
functions of a Constitutional Sovereign in France ;
for it was not till the 10th of August that his palace
was assailed by the armed populace, and he and his
family were consigned to a prison. And, here, in
taking leave of the belligerents on the Continent —
for my task is confined to the investigation of the
origin, and not the progress of the war — let it be
observed that there is not a writer, whether French
or English, w ho, in recording historically the dismal
catalogue of crimes which from this time for a
31
period of three years disgraced the domestic annals
of France, does not attribute the ferocity of the
people, and the atrocities committed by them, in a
large degree, to the proclamation of the Duke of
Brunswick, and the subsequent invasion of the
French territory.
There is nothing so certain to extinguish the
magnanimity, which is the natural attribute of great
multitudes of men, conscious of their strength, as
the suspicion of treacher^^ on the part of tliose to
whom they are opposed. It is under the excitement
of this passion that the most terrible sacrifices to
popular vengeance have been made. The names of
De Witt and Artevelde are remarkable among the
victims to popular suspicion. But never was this
feeling excited to such a state of frenzy as in Paris
on the first news of the successes of the invading
armies. The king, the nobility, the clergy, and all
the opulent classes were suspected of being in cor-
respondence with the foreigner ; and the terrors of
the populace pictured the Austrians already at the
gates of Paris, and the royalists pouring forth to
welcome them and to offer their aid in the vengeance
which was to follow. It was under this impression
of treachery that the horrible massacre of the poli-
tical prisoners, on the 2nd of September took place.
But I prefer to give the testimony of a writer,
who will have little sympathy, probably, for the
main argument of this letter : —
«' No doubt," says Alison,* " can now exist that
" the interference of the Allies augmented the
* A^ol. V. p. 129.
32
*' horrors and added to the duration of the revolu-
" tion. All its bloodiest excesses were committed
*' during or after an alarming, but unsuccessful in-
" vasion by the allied forces. The massacres of
" September 2iid were perpetrated when the public
" mind was excited to the highest degree by the
" near approach of the Duke of Brunswick ; and
" the worst days of the government of Robespierre
" were, immediately after the defection of Dumou-
" rier, and the battle of Nerwinde threatened the
" rule of the Jacobins with destruction. Nothing
" but a sense of public danger could have united the
'* factions who then strove with so much exasperation
" against each other ; the peril of France, alone,
" could have induced the people to submit to the
" sanguinary rule which so long desolated its
" plains. The Jacobins maintained their ascen-
" dancy by constantly representing their cause as
" that of national independence by stigmatising
" their enemies as the enemies of the countr^'^ ; and
" the patriots wept and suffered in silence, lest by
" resistance they should weaken the state, and cause
*• France to be erased from among the nations.''
If facts have any logical bearing upon human
affairs, I think I have shewn that the war was pro-
voked by the allied powers. Let us now turn to
the part performed by England in the events wliich
followed.
From the moment of the appearance of Burke's
famous Reflections in 1790, the character, objects,
and proceedings of the Assembly in Paris occupied
every day, more intensely the attention of the
33
English public. The country took sides, and
politicians attacked or defended, according to their
own views and aspirations, the conduct of the
leaders of the revolution. Not only were the
columns of the newspapers occupied with this all-
engrossing topic, but the Press teemed with
pamphlets and volumes in support of, or in oppo-
sition to, Burke's production. The most masterly
of the latter class was the Vindkice GaUicce of Sir
James Macintosh, which advocated the fundamental
principles of freedom and humanity with a far
closer logic, and a style scarcely less attractive than
that of his great opponent. By degrees the cha-
racter of the liberal party, comprising the Whigs
and Dissenters, became involved to some extent in
the fate of the Revolution ; and their opponents
took care to heap upon them all the odium which
attached to the disorders and excesses of the French
people. When the Jacobins, as the ultra party
were nicknamed, became powerful in France, that
detestable name was assio;ned to the Enoflish
reformers, by their Tory enemies, who holding, as
they did, the stamp of fashion in their hands, could
give general currency to their damaging epithets.
But gradually, and almost imperceptibly, a
change came over the character of the controversy.
In a couple of years the tone of the dominant
classes had altered ; first, from cold criticism upon
the revolution, to fierce invective, then to menaces,
and finally, to the cry for war ; until at last the
Tories and Liberals, instead of being merely con-
tending commentators upon French politics, were
c
34
ittvolved in a fierce contest with each other upon
the question of peace or war with the Government
of France. From that time, all that remained of
the liberal party, thinned as it was by defection,
and headed heroically by Fox, ranged themselves on
the side of peace. " The cry of peace," said AVind-
ham,* (Secretary at War), " proceeded from the
Jacobin party in this country ; and although every
one who wished for peace was not a Jacobin, yet
every Jacobin wished for peace."
There is every reason to suppose that Pittf
* May 27, 1795.
t " No one more clearly than Mr. Pitt saw the ruinous con-
sequences of the contest into which his new associates, the
deserters from the A^Tiig standard, were drawing or were driving
him ; none so clearly perceived or so highly valued the blessings
of peace as the finance minister, who had but the year before
accompanied his reduction of the whole national estabhshment
with a picture of our future prosperity almost too glowing even
for his great eloquence to attempt. Accordingly, it is well
known, nor is it even contradicted by his few surviving friends,
that his thoughts were all turned to peace. But the voice of
the court was for war ; the aristocracy was for war ; the country
was not disinclined towards war, being just in that state of ex-
citable (though as yet not excited) feeling which is dependent on
the Government, that is, upon Mr. Pitt, either to calm down into
a sufferance of peace, or roused into a vehement desire of hos-
tilities. In these circumstances, the able tactician, whose genius
was confined to parliamentary operations, at once perceived that
a war must place him at the head of all the power in the State,
and, by uniting with him the more aristocratic portion of the
"Whigs, cripple his adversaries irreparably ; and he preferred
flinging his countiy into a contest which he and his great an-
tagonist by uniting their forces must have prevented ; but then
he must also have shared with Mr. Fox the power which he was
determined to enjoy alone and supreme." — Brougham's States-
men of George III. scries i. vol. i. p. 77-79.
35
would have individually preferred peace. By a
commercial treaty which he had entered into with
France, a few 3'ears previously, he had greatly
extended the trading relations of the two countries,
and it is known that he was bent upon some im-
portant plans of financial and commercial reform.
Upon the meeting of Parliament in 1792, he pro-
posed reduced estimates for our military establish-
ments, and nothing boded the approach of war.
The governing class in this country shared the
opinions of Mr. Burke as to the powerless condition
to which France had reduced herself by her internal
convulsion. A veteran army of nearly 100,000
men, under experienced generals, was preparing to
invade that country, which, torn by civil strife,
with a bankrupt exchequer, and with the court,
aristocracy, and clergy secretly favouring the enemy,
seemed to offer a certain triumph to its assailants.
Little doubt was felt that one campaign would
" restore order" to France.
But the Duke of Brunswick's atrocious procla-
mation had produced upon the French people an
effect very different from that which was expected.
It is thus described by Alison :* " A unanimous
" spirit of resistance burst forth in every part of
" France ; the military preparations were redoubled ;
•' the ardour of the multitude was raised to the
" highest pitch. The manifesto of the allied powers
" was regarded as unfolding the real designs of the
" Court and the emigrants. Revolt against the
* Vol. ii. p. 330.
c 2
36
" throne appeared the only mode of maintaining their
" liberties, or preserving their independence ; the
*' people of Paris had no choice between victory or
" death."
The campaign which followed proved disastrous
to the invaders; and in September the Duke of
Brunswick was in full retreat from the French ter-
ritory. Soon afterwards Dumourier gained tlie
battle of Jemmappes, and took possession of the
Austrian Netherlands. On the Rhine, and the
frontier of Savoy, the French armies were also suc-
cessful.
An instantaneous change of policy now took
place in England. The government had looked on
in silence, or with merely an occasional protesta-
tion of neutrality, whilst the allied armies were
preparing to invade, and as every body believed, to
occupy the French territory. But no sooner did
the news of French victories arrive than the tone
of our ministers instantly changed, and even Pitt,
with all his cautiousness, was so thrown off his
guard, that he disclosed the true object of the war
which followed : —
" Those opinions,'* said he,* " which the French
'* entertained, were of the most dangerous nature ;
" they were opinions professed by interest, inflamed
" by passion, propagated by delusion, which their
" success had carried to the utmost excess, and had
" contributed to render still more dangerous. For,
" would the Right Honourable Gentleman tell him
" that the French opinions received no additional
* Jan. 4, 1 793.
37
*' weight from the success of their armies ? Was it
" possible to separate between the progress of their
" opinions and the success of their armies ? It was
** evident that the one must influence the other,
*' and that the diffusion of their principles must
*' keep pace with the extent of their victories. He
*' was not afraid of the progress of French prin-
" ciples in this country, unless the defence of the
" country should be previously undermined by the
" introduction of those principles/'
And in the same speech he thus particularises the
objects of his solicitude : —
" They had seen, within two or three years, a
*' revolution in France, founded upon principles
*^ which were inconsistent with every regular go-
" vernment which were hostile to hereditary mo-
" narchy, to nobility, to all the privileged orders,
*' and to every sort of popular representation, short
" of that which would give to every individual a
" voice in the election of representatives."
The militia was now suddenly embodied, and
Parliament was summoned to meet on the 13th of
December. Before, however, we refer to this, the
closing scene of the peace, it is necessary for a cor-
rect understanding of our relationship with France
to take a review^ of the correspondence which was
at the same time going on between our foreign
secretary, and M, Chauvelin, the French ambassa-
dor. Here again, we must pay particular attention
to dates.*
* And here let me give an extract from Scott's Life of
Na]^oleon, illustrative of the looseness and inaccuracy with which
38
The correspondence commences witli a letter,
dated May 12, 1792, from M. Chauvelin to Lord
Grenville, explaining the cause of the war between
France and the Emperor, and complaining in the
name of the King of the French that the Emperor
Leopold had promoted a great conspiracy against
France.
On the 18th June, 1792, M. Chauvelin alludes
at greater length, in a letter to Lord Grenville, to
the coalition formed on the Continent against
France, and asks the British government to exert
its influence to stop the progress of that confederacy,
and especially *' to dissuade from all accession to
*' this project all those of the allies of England
*' whom it may be wished to draw into it !"
In reply to this letter, Lord Grenville declines to
interfere with the allies of this country, to put an
end to the confederacy against France, alleging
that '* the intervention of his counsels or of his good
history is sometimes written. I have explained the errors in
italics : —
" Lord Gower, the British ambassador, was recalled from
" Paris immediately on the King's execution." [He loas re-
called on the Kiuff's deposition in Avgust, his execution not
talcing place till January folloioing.'] '♦ The Prince to whom
" he was sent was no more ; and, on the same ground, the
" French envoy at the Court of St. James, though not dismissed
" by his Majesty's government, was made acquainted that the
" ministers no longer considered him as an accredited person."
[The French ambassador was peremptorily ordered to leave
this country in eight days, npon the news of the King^s death
reaching this country.'] And from these inaccurate data he
draws the conclusion that we are not the aggressors in the war
which immediately followed.
39
" offices cannot be of use unless they should be
" desired by all the parties interested." [In
direct contradiction to this, was the following pas-
sage in the King's speech, January 31^ of this very
year, 1792, on opening the session : — " Our inter-
'* vention has also been employed with a view to
" promote a pacification between the Empress of
" Russia and the Porte ; and conditions have been
'* agreed upon between us and the former of these
^^ powei's which we undertook to recommend to the
" Portcy as the re-establishment of peace on such
" terms appeared to be^ under all the circumstances,
" a desirable event for the general interests of
*' Europe.]
On the news of the dethronement of the King of
France in August, M. Chauvelin received notice,
as has been before seen, that he would no longer
be recognised by the English government in his
official character ; and there was an interval of
several months during which the correspondence
was suspended. On the 13th December, as before
stated, Parliament was hastily assembled : the
King's speech announced that the militia had been
embodied, and recommended an increase of the
army and navy ; it complained of the aggressive
conduct of the French, and their disregard of the
rights of neutral nations. [Not a syllable had
been said in disapproval of the conduct of the allied
powers when they began the unprovoked attack on
France, an attack the complete failure of which was
now known in England.] The speeches of the
ministers and the majority in Parliament in the
40
debate on the address were of a most warlike cha-
racter. On the 27th of December, 1792, after
these occurrences, (do not for a moment lose sight
of the dates) M. Chauvelin renews the corres-
pondence with Lord Grenville. He begins by
saying that he makes his communication at the
request of his own government. After adducing
the fact of his having remained in England since
August, notwithstanding the recall of our ambas-
sador Lord Gower from Paris, as " a proof of the
desire the French government had to live on
good terms with his Britannic Majesty," he pro-
ceeds to complain that " a character of ill-will to
which he is yet unwilling to give credit," has
been observable in the measures recently adopted
by the British government, and he asks whether
France ought to consider England as a neutral
power or an enemy. " But in asking from the
" ministers of his Britannic Majesty a frank and
" open explanation as to their intentions with
" regard to France, the Executive Council of the
*' French government is unwilling they should
" have the smallest remaining doubt as to the dis-
*' position of France towards England, and as to
" its desire of remaining at peace with her ; it has
** even been desirous of answering beforehand all
" the reproaches which they may be tempted to
" make in justification of a rupture.*' He then pro-
ceeds to offer explanations upon the three reasons
which he surmises might weigh with the English,
and lead them " to break with the French Re-
public." The first has reference to the decree of
41
the National Convention of the 19th November,
offering fraternity to all people who wish to recover
their liberty ; the next, the opening of the Scheldt,
consequent upon the conquest of the Austrian
Netherlands ; and thirdly, the violation of the ter-
ritory of Holland. With respect to the decree of
the 19th November offering assistance to all people
wishing for liberty, he said : " The National Con-
" vention never meant that the French Republic
" should favour insurrections, should espouse the
" quarrels of a few seditious persons, or in a word
" should endeavour to excite disturbances in any
" neutral or friendly country whatever." He
then proceeds to say — '* France ought to and will
" respect, not only the independence of England,
'* but even that of those of her allies with whom
" she is not at war. The undersigned has there-
" fore been charged formally to declare that she
" will not attack Holland so long as that power
" shall on its side confine itself towards her within
" the bounds of an exact neutrality.'* He then
refers to the only other question, the opening of the
Scheldt, " a question irrevocably decided by reason
" and justice, of small importance in itself, and on
" which the opinion of England, and perhaps of
" Holland itself, is sufficiently known to render it
*• difficult to make it seriously the single subject of
" war."
M. Chauvelin says, in conclusion, " He hopes
*' that the ministers of his Britannic Majesty will
" be brought back by the explanations which this
" note contains, to ideas more favourable to the
42
*' re-union of the two countries, and that they will
" not have occasion, for the purpose of returning to
*' them, to consider the terrible responsibility of a
** declaration of war, which will incontestably be their
" own work, the consequences of which cannot be
" otherwise than fatal to the two countries, and to
" human nature in general, and in which a gene-
" rous and free people cannot long consent to
*^ betray their own interests, by serving as an
" auxiliary and a reinforcement to a tyrannical
" coalition.*'
The reply of Lord Grenville, dated December
31, begins in the following haughty fashion:—" I
*' have received. Sir, from you a note, in which,
*' styling yourself minister plenipotentiary of France,
'* you communicate to me, as the King's secretary
" of state, the instructions which you state to have
" yourself received from the Executive Council of
" the French republic. You are not ignorant, that
" since the unhappy events of the 10th August, the
*' King has thought proper to suspend all official
" communication with France." The rest of the
letter repels with little ceremony the advances of
the French minister, and subjects his pleas and
excuses to a cold and incredulous criticism. It
reiterates the complaints respecting the Decree of
the 19th November, the opening of the Scheldt,
and the violation of the territory of Holland. " If
" France," said Lord Grenville, " is really desirous
" of maintaining friendship and peace with Eng-
" land, she must shew herself disposed to renounce
" her views of aggression and aggrandisement, and
43
" confine herself within her own territory, without
" insulting other governments, without disturbing
" their tranquillity, or violating their rights.*' [It
would have added much to the force of this remon-
strance if a similar tone had been taken a year
earlier, when the famous Declaration of Pilnitz was
published.]
M.Chauvelin, notwithstanding this repulse, again
addresses Lord Grenville, January 7, 1793, bringing
under his notice the Alien bill just introduced into
Parliament, and which contained, as he alleged,
provisions, so far as French citizens were concerned,
inconsistent with the letter and spirit of the treaty
of commerce entered into by France and England
in 1786 ; and he concludes by asking to be in-
formed whether, " under the general denomination
" of foreigners, in the bill on which the Houses are
" occupied, the government of Great Britain means
" likewise to include the French." This letter is
returned to the writer by Lord Grenville, the same
day, accompanied with a short note, declaring it to
be " totally inadmissible, M. Chauvelin assuming
" therein a character which is not acknowledged."
Unable to obtain a hearing in his official capacit}^,
M. Chauvelin abandons the former style of his
letters, which ran — the undersigned minister plenipo-
tentiary, Sfc, and now addresses a letter to Lord
Grenville, beginning " My Lord," and dropping all
allusion to his own diplomatic quality. In this
letter, he complains that several vessels in British
ports freighted with grain for the French govern-
ment had been stopped, contrary to law ; he states
that he has been informed by respectable autho-
44
rities that the custom-houses had received orders to
permit the exportation of foreign wheat to all ports
except those of France; and he goes on to say, " I
" should the first moment of my knowing it, have
" waited upon you, my Lord, to be assured from
" yourself of its certainty, or its falsehood, if the
" determination taken by his Britannic Majesty, in
*' the present circumstance, to break off all commu-
*' nication between the governments of the two
*' countries, had not rendered friendly and open
*' steps the more difiicult in proportion as they
" became the more necessary."
And he adds : — " But I considered, my Lord,
" that when the question of war or peace arose
" between two powerful nations, that which mani-
" fested the desire of attending to all explanations,
" that which strove the longest to preserve the last
" link of union and friendship, was the only one
*' which appeared truly worthy and truly great. I
" beseech you, my Lord, in the name of public
" faith, in the name of justice and of humanity, to
*• explain to me facts which I will not characterise,
'* and which the French nation would take for
" granted by your silence only, or by the refusal
" of an answer."
Lord Grenville*s answer, dated 9th Jan., 1793,
evades the question: — " I do not know," says he,
*' in what capacity you address me the letter which
" I have just received ; but in every case it would
" be necessary to know the resolutions which shall
'* have been taken in France, in consquence of what
" has already passed, before I can enter into any new
" explanations, especially with respect to measures
45
" founded, in a great degree, on those motives of
"jealousy and, uneasiness which I have ah'eady de-
*' tailed to you."
Nothing daunted, the indefatigable Frenchman
renews the correspondence on the 11th. But having
resumed the diplomatic style of " the undersigned
minister plenipotentiary," his letter, which states
that the " French Republic cannot but regard the
" conduct of the English government as a manifest
" infraction of the treat v of commerce concluded
" between the two powers, and that, consequently,
** France ceases to consider herself as bound by that
" treaty, and that she regards it from this moment
" as broken and annulled," was returned to him by
M7\ Aust, a clerk, probably, in the Foreign Office,
with the following note : —
" Mr. Aust is charged to send back to M.
" Chauvelin the enclosed" paper received yesterday
" at the office for Foreign Affairs."
Next, we have a letter from M. Chauvelin to
Lord Grenville, written in an unofficial form, dated
January 12th, stating that he had just received a
messenger from Paris, and soliciting a personal in-
terview ; which request is granted, on condition
that the communication be put upon paper. On
the following day M. Chauvelin communicates to
Lord Grenville a copy of a paper which he had re-
ceived from M. Le Brun, the foreign minister of
France. This despatch contains the strongest ex-
pressions of a desire to maintain amicable relations
with England. '' The sentiments of the French
*' nation towards the English," says the foreign
46
minister of France, ** have been manifested during
" the whole course of the revolution, in so constant,
" so unanimous a manner, that there cannot remain
" the smallest doubt of the esteem which it has
" vowed them, and of its desire of having them for
" friends." He then proceeds to discuss, at length,
the several topics in dispute between the two coun-
tries. As respects the obnoxious decree of the 19th
November, every effort is made to explain away its
offensive meaning, and it is at last admitted that
the object contemplated " might, perhaps, be dis-
'^ pensed with by the National Convention, that it
" was scarcely worth the while to express it, and it
" did not deserve to be made the object of a parti-
*' cular decree."
Assuming that the British Government is satisfied
with the declaration made on the part of the French,
relative to Holland, the paper proceeds, at length,
into the question of the opening of the Scheldt^
which is justified by an appeal to the rights of
nature and of all the nations of Europe. The
Emperor of Germany concluded the treaty for
giving the exclusive right of the navigation of the
Scheldt to the Dutch without consulting the Bel-
gians. " The Emperor, to secure the possession of
'* the Low Countries, sacrificed, without scruple,
" the most inviolable of rights." And, further,
" France enters into war with the House of Austria,
" expels it from the Low Countries, and calls back
" to freedom those people whom the Court of Vienna
" had devoted to slavery.'* The paper proceeds to
say that France does not aim at the permanent oc-
47
cupation of the Low Countries, and that after the
close of the war, if England and Holland still
attach some importance to the re-closing of the
Scheldt, they may put the affair into a direct ne-
gotiation with Belgium. If the Belgians, by any
motive whatever, consent to deprive themselves of
the navigation of the Scheldt, France will not op-
pose it.
Lord Grenville in his reply to this letter (January
18, 1793) begins by saying, '' I have examined,
" Sir, with the greatest attention, the paper
*' which vou delivered to me on the 13th of this
** month. I cannot conceal from vou that I have
" found nothing satisfactory in the result of that
" note." The rest of the letter is either a repeti-
tion of the former complaints, or an attempt to
extract fresh sources of dispute from the preceding
communication. After the exchange of two other
unimportant letters, we come to the denouement.
On the 24th January, on the news reaching London
of the execution of Louis XVI., Lord Grenville
transmits to M. Chauvelin the order of the Privy
Council, requiring him to leave the country in eight
davs.
I have given these copious extracts from this most
portentous of all diplomatic correspondence, not to
exonerate you from the trouble of reading the re-
mainder, for every word ought to be studied
by those who wish to understand the origin of the
war, but to enable you to form a correct opinion
of the animus which influenced the two parties.
Contrast the conciliatory, the almost supplicatory
48
tone of the one, with the repulsive and haughty style
of the other, and then ask — which was bent upon
liostilities, and which on peace ? Recollect that these
correspondents were the representatives respectively
of sixteen millions of British and twenty-four mil-
lions of French, and then say whether the insolent,
de-kaut-en-bas treatment received by the latter could
have been intended for any other purpose but to
provoke a war. Observe that the more urgent the
Frenchman became in his desire to explain away
the ground of quarrel the more resolute was the
English negotiator to close up the path to reconci-
liation ; — forcing upon us the conviction that what
the British government, really dreaded at that
moment was, not the hostility but, the friendship of
France.
And, now% a word as to the alleged grounds of the
rupture. It must be observed in the first place,
that there is no complaint on our part of any hos-
tile act, or even word being directed against our-
selves. The bombastic decree* of the National
Convention— one of the midnight declarations of
that excited body, was put prominently in the bill
of indictment, but it was never alleged that it was
specially levelled at this country. It was aimed at
* Decree of Fraternity. The National Convention declares in
the name of the French nation that it will grant fraternity and
assistance to all people who wish to recover their liberty ; and it
charges the Executive power to send the necessary orders to the
generals to give assistance to such people, and to defend those
citizens who have suffered or may suffer in the cause of liberty. —
19th November, 1792.
49
the governments of tlie Continent in retaliation for
their conspiracies against the French revolution.
" If you invade us with bayonets, we will invade
you with liberties/* — was the language addressed
by the orators of the Convention to the despotic
powers. That this decree was, however, a fair ground
of negotiation by our government cannot be denied,
and it is evident from the desire of the French
minister to explain away its obnoxious meaning,
going so far even as to admit that " perhaps" it
ought not to have been passed, that a little more
remonstrance in an earnest and peaceful spirit,
would have led to a satisfactory explanation on this
point. In fact, within a few months of this time
the decree was rescinded.
With respect to the Dutch right to a monopoly
of the Scheldt : — if that was really one of the objects
of the war, the twenty-two years of hostilities might
have been spared ; for if there was any one thing,
besides the abolition of the slave trade, which the
Congress of Vienna effected at the close of the war,
to the satisfaction of all parties, and with the hearty
concurrence of England, it was the setting free the
navigation of the great rivers of Europe. Nothing
need be said about the remaining question of the
inviolability of the territory of Holland, inasmuch
as the French minister offered to give us a satisfac-
tory pledge upon that point. I may merely add
that the Dutch government abstained from making
any demand upon England to sustain its claim
to the exclusive navigation of the Scheldt, and
wisely so: — for it probably foresaw what happened
D
50
in the war which followed, when the French having
taken possession of Holland, where they were wel-
comed by a large part of the population as friends,
and having turned the Dutch fleet against us^ in
less than three years, we seized all the principal co-
lonies of that country, and some of them (to our
cost) we retiain to the present day.
Whilst . through this official correspondence the
French government was endeavouring to remove
the causes of war, other and less formal means were
resorted tcf for accomplishing the same end. At-
tached to the French embassy were several indi-
viduals, selected for their popular address, their
familiarity with the English language, and their
talent in conversation or as writers, w'ho, by mixing
in society, and especially that of the Liberals, might
it was hoped influence public opinion in favour
of peace. Amongst these was one who played
the chief diplomatic part in the great drama which
was about to follow. ** The mission of M. de Tal-
" leyrand to London," says M. Lamartine,* " was
" to endeavour to fraternise the aristocratic prin-
" ciple of the English constitution with the demo-
" cratic principle of the French constitution, which
" it was believed could be effected and controlled
" by an upper Chamber. It was hoped to interest
" the statesmen of Great Britain in a revolution
*' imitated from their own, which, after having con-
" vulsed the people, was now being moulded in the
*' hands of an inteHie'ent aristocracy."
* History of Girondias, vol. i. p. 19".
51
Beyond the circles of the more ardent reformers,
however, or the society of a few philosophical
thinkers, these semi-official diplomatists made ver}''
little way. They were coldly, and sometimes even
uncivilly treated ; as the following incident, in
which Talleyrand played a part, will shew. " One
" evening all the members of the embassy, with
" Dumont, went to Ranelagh, which was then fre-
" quented by the most respectable classes of English
" society. As they entered, there was a murmur
" of voices — ' There is the French embassy !' All
'* eyes were fixed on them with a curiosity not
" mixed with any expression of good-will ; and pre-
*' sently the crowd fell back on both sides, as if the
*' Frenchmen had the plague upon them, and left
" them all the promenade to themselves.''* This
incident occurred before the dethronement of the
king in August ; and the writer from whom the
above is quoted in the Pictorial History of Eng-
land, after labouring through several pages to prove
tliat the French were the authors of the war, refutes
himself with great naivete by adding, " The public
" feeling which would have driven England into a
•' war in spite of any ministry, shewed itself in a
*' marked manner even before the horrors of the
" lOtli August and the massacres of September."
The feeling in France towards England was the
very opposite of this, up to the time when the hos-
tile sentiments of our government became known,
' and, even then, there was a strong disposition to
* Pictorial Hist, of England, vol. iii, p. 276.
D 2
52
separate the aristocracy from the people, and to
attribute to the former all the enmity which charac-
terised our policy towards them. Previously to the
revolution, English tastes had been largely adopted
in France ; and indeed so great was at one time
the disposition to imitate the amusements, dress,
equipage, &c. of Englishmen, that it had acquired
the epithet of Anglomania. When political reform
became the engrossing thought of the nation, what
so natural as that the French people should turn a
favourable eye to England, whose superior aptitude
for self-government, and more jealous love of per-
sonal liberty, they were ready then, as they are
now, to acknowledge. Never, therefore, was the
sympathy for England so strong as at the com-
mencement of their revolution. When the Decla-
ration of Pilnitz, and the hostile proceedings of the
emigrant nobles at Coblentz in 1791, drew fortli
the indignant denunciations of Brissot and other
orators, and induced some of them to call for war
as the only means of putting an end to the clan-
destine correspondence which was carried on be-
tween the " conspirators without and the traitors
within," uo such feeling was entertained towards
England ; and even after the breaking out of hosti-
lities with this country, so unpopular was the war,
that the strongest reproach that one unscrupulous
faction could throw upon another was in mutual
accusation of having provoked it. Tiiis fact was at a
subsequent period referred to by Lord Mornington,'^'
* January 21, 1794.
53
one of Pitt's supporters, as a proof that the
British governmeut at least did not provoke the
war. " Robespierre," said he, " imputes it to
** Brissot ; Brissot retorts it upon Robespierre; the
*' Jacobins charge it upon the Girondists; the Gi-
" rondists recriminate upon the Jacobins ; the
" mountain thunders it upon the valley ; and the
" valley re-echoes it back against the mountain."
^' All facts," said Sheridan, with unanswerable
force, in reply, " tending to contradict the assertion
" which the noble Lord professed to establish by
" them, and making still plainer that there was no
" party in France which was not earnest to avoid a
'* rupture with this country, nor any party which we
" may not at this moment reasonably believe to be
*' inclined to put an end to hostilities."
I have said sufficient probably to satisfy you that
France did not desire a collision with England ; and
that the pretexts put forward by Lord Grenville in
his correspondence with M. Chauvelin were not
sufEcicnt grounds for the rupture. But I will now
redeem my pledge, and prove to you, from the
evidence of the partisans of the war, that their real
motive was to put down opinions in France, or at
least to prevent the spread of them in this country.
Parliament, as I before stated, was hastily sum-
moned for the 13th December, 1792. The country
stood on the verge of the most fearful calamity
that could befall it. But the mass of the people,
whose passions and prejudices had been roused
against their old enemies the French, did not see
the danger before them, and tliey were ready for a
64
war, At the same time, to quote the words of Sir
Walter Scott,* " the whole aristocratic party, com-
" manding a very large majority in both Houses of
" Parliament, became urgent that war should be
" declared against France ; a holy war, it said,
" against treason, blasphemy, and murder, and a
" necessary war in order to break off all connexion
" betwixt the French government and the discon-
'* tented part of our own subjects, who could not
** otherwise be prevented from the most close, con-
** stant, and dangerous intercourse with them." To
add to the excitement, tales of plots and conspi-
racies were circulated; additional fortifications were
ordered for the Tower of London ; and a large
armed force was drawn round the metropolis.
Speaking of the efforts that were made to create a
panic in the public mind, Lord Lauderdale^ at a
later period observed: — " But is there a man in
*' Enoland io-norant that the most wicked arts have
*' been practised to irritate and mislead the multi-
** tude? Have not hand-bills, wretched songs, in-
" famous pamphlets, false and defamatory para-
*' graphs in newspapers been circulated with the
*' greatest assiduity, all tending to rouse the indig-
" nation of this country against France, with w^hom
" it has been long determined I fear to go to war ?
" To such low artifices are these mercenaries re-
*' duced, that they have both the folly and audacity
" to proclaim that the New River water has been
** poisoned with arsenic by French emissaries."
* Life of Napoleou, ch. xv. t February 12, 1/93.
55
It must not be forgotten that at the very mo-
ment when all this preparation was being made
ao-ainst an attack from the French, and when this
panic in the public mind was thus artfully created,
M. Chauvelin was besieging the Foreign Office
with proposals for peace, and, wlien denied admit-
tance at the front door, entering meekly at the back,
asking only to know on what terms, however hu-
miliating, war with England might be averted.
The public knew nothing of this at the time, for
diplomacy was then, as now, a secret art ; hut the
government knew it.
The King's speech, at the opening of the session,
began by saying, that having judged it necessary to
embody a part of the militia, he had, according to
law, called Parliament together. He then alluded
to seditious practices and a spirit of tumult and dis-
order, " shewing itself in acts of riot and insurrec-
tion, which required the interposition of a military
force." Then followed an allusion to "our happy
constitution," which seems a little misplaced in. the
midst of riot and insurrection ; but the King re-
lied on the firm determination of Parliament "to
" defend and maintain that constitution which has
" so long protected the liberties, and promoted the
*' happiness of every class of my subjects." Next,
there was a complaint against France for "exciting
disturbances in foreign countries, disregarding the
rights of neutral nations, and pursuing views of
conquest and aggrandizement." The speech then
announced an augmentation of the naval and military
force, as " necessary in the present state of affairs,
56
** and best calculated, both to maintain internal
" tranquillity, and to render a firm and temperate
" conduct effectual for preserving the blessings of
*' peace/'
The address, in reply to the speech, was
carried "without a division. The members who
^vere opposed to the war, spoke under the dis-
couraging consciousness that so far from having that
popular support and sympathy which could alone
make their opposition formidable, the advocates of
peace were in as small a minority in the country as
in Parliament. On the first night of the session,
after denouncing the panic which had been artfully
created, Mr. Fox said, " I am not so ignorant of the
*' present state of men's minds, and of the ferment
" artfully created, as not to know that I am nowad-
" vancing an opinion likely to be unpopular. It is
" not the first time I have incurred the same
" hazard." And, on a subsequent occasion, in a
still more dejected tone, he said,* — " I have done
" my duty in submitting my ideas to the House j
** and in doing this, I cannot possibly have had
" any other motives than those of public duty.
'* What were my motives ? Not to court the favour
" of ministers, or those by whom ministers are sup-
*' posed to be favoured ; not to gratify my friends,
♦' as the debates in this House have shewn ; not to
" court popularity, for the general conversation,
" both within and without these walls, has shewn
" that to gain popularity I must have held the op-
* December 15th, 1792.
57
" posite course. The people may treat my house
" as they have done that of Dr. Priestley— as it is
" said they have done more recently that of Mr.
" Walker.* My motive only vvas that they might
" know what was the real cause of the war into
" which they are likely to be plunged ; and that
" they might know that it depended on a mere
*' matter of form and ceremony."
It is impossible to read the speeches of Fox, at
this time, without feeling one's heart yearn with ad-
miration and gratitude for the bold and resolute
manner in which he opposed the war, never yielding
and never repining, under the most discouraging
defeats ; and, although deserted by many of liis
friends in the House, taunted with having only a
score of followers left, and obliged to admitf that
he could not walk the streets without being insulted
by hearing the charge made against him of carrying-
on an improper correspondence with the enemy in
France, yet bearing it all with uncomplaining man-
liness and dignity. The annals of Parliament do
not record a nobler struggle in a nobler cause.
It may naturally be asked, why, with the popular
opinions running thus strongly against " French
principles," did the government resort to such arts
* A highly respectable inhabitant of Manchester, -whose bouse
was assailed by a "church and king" mob, upon the charge of
being a " Jacobin," or " Republican and Leveller." His son, who
inherits his liberal principles, but whose good fortune it has been
to live in times when popular intelligence can discriminate be-
tween friends and foes, is an alderman and magistrate of that city.
f. February 7th, 1793.
58
as have been described, for creating a still greater
panic in men's minds, or where was the motive for
going to war with the French RepubHc ? But " the
wicked fleeth when no man pursueth." The
vaunted " Constitution " of that time was, so far
as the House of Commons was concerned, an insult
to reason, an impudent fraud, which would not bear
discussion ; and the " boroughmongers," as they
were afterwards called, were trembling lest its real
character might be exposed, if people were left at
leisure to examine it. What that character was, we
have been, with infinite naivete^ informed by one of
its admirers. " The government of Great Britain,"
says Alison,* " which was supposed, by theoretical
" observers, to have been, anterior to the great
" change of 1832, a mixed constitution, in which
" the Crown, the Nobles, and the Commons mu-
" tually checked and counteracted each other, was
*' in reality an aristocracy, having a sovereign for
" the executive, disguised under the popular forms
" of a republic." Although this government of
false pretences had the two extremes of society, the
interested few and the ignorant many on its side,
yet there was a small party of parliamentary re-
formers who, though stigmatised as "Jacobins,"
" Levellers," and '^ Republicans," were active, ear-
nest, and able men, comprising in their body much
of the intellect of the age ; and it was from the
chimerical fear that these men would put themselves
under the influence of French politicians that the
* Vol. iii. p. 101.
59
two countries were to be rent asunder by war.
Upon this point we have the ingenuous avowal of a
young statesman, who lived to fill the highest office
in the state. Mr. Jenkinson* (afterwards Lord
Liverpool), said,— "He had heard it frequently
' urged that this was a period particularly un-
' favourable to a war with France, on account of
' the number of discontented persons amongst us
' in correspondence with the seditious of that
' country, who menaced and endangered our go-
' vernment and constitution. That there was a
' small party entertaining such designs he had very
' little doubt ; and, from their great activity, he
• also considered them as dangerous ; but he con-
' fessed that this very circumstance, so far from de-
' terrins: him from war, became a kind of induce-
' ment. They might be troublesome in times of
' peace — they might be tranquil in time of war ; for
* as soon as hostilities were commenced, the corres-
' pondence with the French must cease, and all the
< resource they had would be to emigrate to that
' country, which would be a good thing for this ;
' or, remaining where they are, to conduct thcm-
' selves like good citizens, as that correspondence
' which by law was not punishable now, would in
' time of war be treason.'*
The same motive for the war was at last avowed
by him who had performed the part of Peter the
Hermit, in rousing the warhke spirit of the nation.
Edmund Burke, who from the year 1789, was pos-
* December lotb, 1792.
60
scssed by a species of monamaiiia upon the Frcncli
revolution, took a prominent part in these discus-
sions; indeed whatever was the subject before the
House, if called upon to discuss it, he was pretty
certain to mount his favourite hobby before he re-
sumed his seat. " Let the subject, the occasion, the
* ' argument be what it may," said Mr. Francis,* " he
" has but one way of treating it. War and peace,
" the repair of a turnpike, the better government of
" nations, the direction of a canal, and the security
" of the constitution are all alike in his contempla-
" tion : the French revolution is an answer to every-
" thing; the French revolution is his everlasting
*' theme, the universal remedy, the grand specific,
*' the never failing panacea, the principal burden of
" his song ; and with this he treats us from day
" to day ; a cold, flat, insipid hash of the same
*' dish, perpetually served up to us in diflerent
" shapes, till at length with all his cookery the taste
" revolts, the palate sickens at it.*'
At length, on the discussion of the Alien Bill,t
Burke's powers of reason and judgment seemed to
be entirely overborne by a frenzied imagination.
Drawing forth a dagger and brandishing it in the
air, he cast it with great vehemence of action on
the floor : " It is my object," said he, " to keep the
" French infection from this country ; their princi-
'' pies from our minds, and their daggers from our
*' hearts ! 1 vote for this bill, because 1 believe it
*' to be the means of saving my life and all our lives
* May 7, 1793. t Dec. 28, 1792.
" from the Innds of assassins; I vote for it because
'• it will break the abominable system of the mo-
" dern pantheon, and prevent the introduction of
** French principles and French daggers. When
*' they smile I see blood trickling down their faces ;
" I see their insidious purposes, — I see that the
*' object of all their cajoling is blood ! I now
" warn my countrymen to beware of these execrable
**' philosophers, whose only object it is to destroy
" everything that is good here, and to establish im-
" morality and murder by precept and example ! !"
And on a subsequent occasion,* immediately
after the declaration of hostilities, he declared his
fixed opinion that " if we continued at peace with
" France, there would not be ten years of stability
" in the government of this country." Thus did
lie who first sounded the toscin of war, and led the
public mind through each successive phase of hos-
tility, until he triumphed in the deadl}^ struggle
which had now begun, avow that the object he
sou2;ht was to avert the danorer with which French
principles menaced the institutions of this country.
But it is at a somewhat later period that we dis-
cover more clearly the real motives of the war as
acknowledged by its authors. In 1795, when hos-
tilities had been carried on for two years, with but
little impression upon the enemy, and when the cry
for peace became general, there was less reserve in
avowing the objects for which we had entered upon
war. In a speech in favour of peace, Mr. Wilber-
* Feb, 18, 1793.
62
force* said : " With regard to the probable conse-
" quences of pursuing the war, he considered thein
" to be in their nature uncertain. Heretofore it
" might justly be said to he carried on in order to
" prevent the progress of French principles ; but
" now there was much more danger of their being
" strengthened by a general discontent, arising from
•' a continuance of the war, than from any impor-
" tation of the principles themselves from France."
On a subsequent occasion, after the government
of France had undergone a change, and had
passed into the hands of the Directory, and when
the British ministry was constrained by the general
discontent, to make a profession of willingness to
negotiate for peace, they were obliged, in order to
justify themselves for having formally advocated
war, to point to the altered, and as they alleged
more settled state of the French government, as
the cause of the change in their policy. Mr. Pittf
said — '' I certainly said that the war was not like
" others, occasioned by particular insult, or the
" unjust seizure of territory, or the like, but under-
" taken to repel usurpation^ connected with principles
" calculated to subvert all government, and which
" while they flourished in their original force and
malignity, were totally incompatible with the
accustomed relations of peace and amity. We
" professed also that many persons in that country
" felt the pressure of the calamities under which it
" laboured, and were ready to co-operate for the de-
" struction of the causes which occasioned them."
* May 27, 1795. t Dec. 9, 1795.
(<
((
63
In the debate in the House of Lords, which fol-
lowed this pacific message from the King, a more
undisguised statement was made by one who, as a
cabinet minister, had the fullest opportunity of
knowing the motives of those who entered upon
the war. Earl Fitzwilliam* said : — '* The present
*' war was of a nature different from all common
" wars, It was commenced, not from any of the
*' ordinary motives of policy and ambition. It
" was expressly undertaken to restore order in
France^ and to effect the destruction of the abo-
minable system that prevailed in that country.
Upon this understanding it was that he had sepa-
" rated from some of those with whom he had long
" acted in politics, and with other noble friends had
" lent aid to his Majesty's ministers. Upon this
" understanding he had filled that situation which
" he some time since held in the Cabinet. Know-
" ing then on such authority the object of the war to
" have been to restore order in France, he was some-
" what surprised at the declaration in the message
" that his Majesty was now prepared to treat for
** peace."
The Fitzwilliams have always had the habit of
plain-speaking, though not of invariably foreseeing
all the logical consequences of what they say.
Their honesty has however been proverbial ; and as
in this case the speaker went to the unusual length
of giving evidence as a cabinet minister against his
former colleagues, and vpas not contradicted, we
* December 14, 1/95.
61
may take his statement as conclusive proof upon
the question in hand. But what must we think of
the conduct of the government, hnd especially of
Mr. Pitt and Lord Grenville, in having thrown the
responsibility of the war upon France upon such
pretences as the closing of the navigation of the
Scheldt, whilst at the same time we have over-
whelming evidence to shew that they were deter-
mined to provoke a collision for totally different
objects ? What will be said of it when our history
is written by some future Niebuhr ? I could mul-
tiply quotations of a similar tendency to the above,
but I forbear from a conviction that nothing further
of the kind is required to prove my case.
But there is one ac^ of our government, illustra-
tive of its motives in entering upon the war, which
I must not omit to mention. Shortly after the
commencement of hostilities (November 1793) our
naval forces took possession of Toulon, when
Admiral Hood and the British Commissioners
published a proclamation in the name of the
King of England to the people of France, in
which they declared in favour of monarchy in
France in the person of Louis XVII. But not a
word did they say about the opening of the naviga-'
tion of the Scheldt, or the pretended objects of the
war. And about the same time* the King of Eng-
land published a declaration to the French nation,
in which he promises the " suspension of hostilities,
** friendship, and security and protection to all
* October 29, 1793.
65
'* those who by declaring for monarchical govern-
" ment shall shake off the yoke of a sanguinary
" anarchy." It is strange that our government
did not see that this was as much an act of inter-
vention in the internal concerns of another people
as any thing which had been done by the French
Convention, and that, in fact, it was affording a jus-
tification for every act of the kind perpetrated on
the Continent, from the Declaration of Pilnitz to
that moment.
In drawing this argument to a close, I have done
nothing but prove the truth of a statement made
by a writer who has devoted far more time, labour,
and learning to the investigation of the subject
than it is in my power to bestow. Considering
that he is a partisan of the war, and an admirer of
the political system which it was designed to
uphold, I cannot but marvel at his candour, which
I should the more admire if I were sure that he has
fully appreciated the logical consequences that flow
from his admissions. The following are the re-
marks of Sir A. Alison upon the origin of the
war: —
•' In truth, the arguments urged by government
*' were not the only motives for commencing the
*' war. The danger they apprehended lay nearer
** home than the conquests of the republicans : it
" was not foreign subjugation so much as domestic
*' revolution that was dreaded if a pacific inter-
*' course were any longer naintained with France.
^' ' Croyez-moi,' said the Empress Catherine to
£
66
" Segur, in 1789, * uiie guerre seule pent changer
" ' la direction des esprits en France, les reunir.
" ' donner un but plus utile aux passions et re-
" ' veiller le vrai patriotisme.'* In this observation
" is contained the true secret, and the best vindica-
" tio?i of the revolutionary war. The passions were
*' excited ; democratic ambition was awakened ; the
" desire of power under the name of reform was
" rapidly gaining ground among the middle ranks,
" and the institutions of the country were threatened
" with an overthrow as violent as that which had
*' recently taken place in the French monarchy. In
" these circumstances^ the only mode of checking
" the evil was by engaging in a foreign contest, by
•' drawing off the ardent spirits into active service,
" and, in lieu of the modern desire for innovation,
" rousing the ancient gallantry of the British
" nation."!
Of the moral sense which could permit an ap-
proval of the sentiments of the imperial patroness
of Suwarrow, 1 would rather not speak. But I
wish that a copy of this extract could be possessed
by every man in England, that all might under-
stand the *' true secret" of despots, which is to
employ one nation in cutting the throats of another,
so that neither may have time to reform the abuses
in their own domestic government. I would say on
* Believe me, a war alone can change the direction of men's
minds in France, re-unite them, give a more useful aim to the
passions, and awaken true patriotism.
f Vol. iv. p. 7.
(3?
the contrary, tlie true secret of tlie people is to
remain at peace : and not only so, but to be on
their guard against false alarms about the intended
ao-p-ressions of their neiohbours, which when too
credulously believed, give to government all the
political advantages of a war, without its risks ; for
they keep men's minds in a degrading state of fear
and dependence, and afford the excuse for conti-
nually increasing government expenditure.
One word only upon the objection that the
French were the first to declare war. In the pre-
sent case, as in that of tlie Allied Powers on the
continent, to which we before alluded, we were
o-ivino- to ourselves all the advantao-es of a belli-
gerent power by our warlike preparations, without
affording to the French the fair warning of a decla-
ration of war. The government of France acted
more in accordance with the recognised law of
nations in publishing the reasons why they were,
contrary to their own wishes, at war with England.
The language and acts of Mr. Pitt were a virtual
declaration of war. Half as much said or done by
a prime minister now would be enough to plunge
all Europe in flames. We have seen that the
militia was embodied, and the Parliament suddenly
assembled on the 13th December, 1792, when
the King's speech recommended an augmentation
of the army and navy. On the 28th January,
1793, upon the arrival of the news of the execution
of the French king, not only was M Chauvelin,
the French minister, ordered to leave the kingdom
in eight days, but the King's message, which was
E 2
G8
sent to the House of Commons announcing this fact,
recommended a further augmentation of the land
and sea forces. This increased armament was not
now wanted, as was professed to be the case on the
13th December, for " preserving the blessings of
peace," but, to quote the words of the Message, " to
" enable his Majesty to take the most effectual mea-
*' sures, in the present important conjuncture, for
" maintaining the security and rights of his own
" dominions ; for supporting his allies ; and for op-
" posing views of aggrandisement and ambition on
" the part of France, which would be at all times
" dangerous to the general interests of Europe, but
" are peculiarly so, when connected with the pro-
" pagation of principles which lead to the violation
" of the most sacred duties, and are utterly subver-
" sive of the peace and order of all civil society."
Once more I must beg your attention to dates. This
message was delivered on the 28th January, 1793.
Up to this time the French government had given
undeniable proofs of desiring to preserve peace with
England. And it was not till after the delivery of
this message to Parliament, after a peremptory order
had been given to their ambassadoi" to leave Eng-
land ; after all these preparations for war ; and after
the insulting speeches and menaces uttered by Mr.
Pitt and the other ministers in Parliament, which,
as will be seen by referring to the debates of this
time, were of themselves sufficient to provoke hosti-
lities, that the French Convention, by a unanimous
vote, declared war against England on the 1st
February, 1793.
69
On the lltli February the King sent a message
to Parliament, in which he said he " relied with
" confidence on the firm and effectual support of the
" House of Commons, and on the zealous exertions
" of a brave and loyal people in prosecuting a
" [when was war ever acknowledged to be other-
*' wise?] just and necessary war."
The wisdom of the advice of the Czarina Cathe-
rine was exemplified in what followed. The war
diverted men's minds from every domestic griev-
ance. Hatred to the French was the one passion
henceforth cultivated. All political ameliorations
were postponed ; Reform of Parliament, a question
which had previously been so ripe that Pitt him-
self, in company with Major Cartvvright, attended
public meetings in its favour, was put aside for forty
years ; and even the voice of Wilberforce, pleading
for the slave, was for several successive sessions
mute, amidst the death struggle which absorbed all
the passions and sympathies of mankind.
And now, my dear Sir, if you have done me the
honour to read this long letter, I will conclude with
an appeal for your candid judgment upon the merits
of the question- between us. Recollect that we
are not discussing the professional claims of the
Duke of Wellington to our admiration. He and
his great opponent were brought forth and educated
by the war of the Revolution. They were the
accidents, not tlie cause of that mio-htv strua-o-le.
The question is — was that war in its origin just and
necessary on our part ? Was it so strictly a defen-
70
sive war that we are warranted in saying that God
raised up the Duke as an instrument for our pro-
tection ? I humbly submit that the facts of the
case are in direct opposition to this view ; and that
it is only by pleading ignorance of the historical
details whicli 1 have narrated that we can hope to
be acquitted of impiety in attributing to an all-wise
and just Providence an active interposition in favour
of a war so evidently unprovoked and aggre.-sive.
And I remain faithfully yours,
RiCHD. COBDEN.
To the Eev. .
71
LETTER [II.
MR. COBDEN TO THE REVEREND
January, 1853.
My dear Sir,
I AM afraid you very much understate the
case in saying that not one in a thousand of the
population of this country has ever doubted the
justice and necessity of our last war with France.
There is all but a unanimous sentiment upon the
subject; and it is easily accounted for. The present
generation of adults have been educated under cir-
cumstances which forbade an impartial judgment
upon the origin of the war. They were either born
during the strife of arms, when men's hopes and
fears were too much involved in the issue of the
strusforle to find leisure for a historical inquiry into
the merits of the quarrel, or after the conclusion of
the peace, when people were glad to forget every
thing connected with the war, excepting our victo-
ries, and the victors. There are no men now living,
and still engaged in the active business of life, who
were old enough to form an opinion upon the ques-
tion, and to take a part in the controversy, when
peace or war trembled in the balance in 1792 : and
our histories have been written too much in the in-
terest of the political party which was at that time
in power to enable our youth to grow up with sound
72
opinions upon the conduct of the authors of the
war.
But the truth must be told to the people of this
country. I have no fear that they will refuse to
hear it. Even were they so disposed, it would not
aifect the final verdict of mankind upon the ques-
tion. The facts which I have narrated, together
with many more leading to the same conclusion, to
say nothing of the reserve of proofs which Time
has yet to disclose, will all be as accessible to the
German and American historians as ourselves. Mr,
Bancroft is approaching the epoch to which we
refer, and can any one who has followed him thus
far in his great historical work, and observed his
acute appreciation of the workings of our aristocra-
tic system, doubt, that, should he bring his industry
and penetration to the task, he will succeed in
laying bare to the light of day all the most
secret motives which impelled our government to
join the crusade against the revolution of 1789 ?
But the whole truth must be told, and the public
mind thoroughly imbued with the real merits of
the case, not as the solution of a mere historical
problem, but in the interest of peace, and as the
best and, indeed, only means of preparing the way
for that tone of confidence and kindness which every
body, excepting a few hopelessly depraved spirits,
believes will one day characterise the intercourse
of France and England. For if in science and
morals a truth once established be fruitful in
other truths, and error, when undetected, be cer-
tain to multiply itself after its own kind, how
73
surely must the same principle apply to the case
before us.
If England be under the erroneous impression
that the sano;uinary feud of twenty-two years,
which cost her so many children, and heaped upon
her such a load of debt and taxation, was forced
upon her by the unprovoked aggression of France,
it is, 1 fear, but too natural that she should not
only cherish feelings of enmity and resentment
against the author of such calamities, but that there
should be always smouldering in her breast dark
suspicions that a similar injury may again be in-
flicted upon her by a power which has displayed so
great a disregard of the obligations of justice. The
natural result of this state of feeling is that it leads
us to remind the offending party pretty frequently
of the disastrous results of their former attacks, to
thrust before their eyes memorials of our prowess,
and to warn them from time to time that we are
preparing to repel any fresh aggressions which they
may be meditating against us.
If, on the other hand, the real origin of the war
be impressed upon the mind of the present genera-
tion, and it be known, popularly known, that far
from having been, as we are told it was, undertaken
in behalf of liberty, or for the defence of our own
shores, it was hatched upon the Continent in the
secret counsels of depotic courts, and fed from the
industry of England by her then oligarchical go-
vernment ; that its object was to deprive the French
people of the right of self-government, and to place
their liberties at the disposal of an arbitrary king.
74
a corrupt church, and a depraved aristocracy ; then
the opinion of the country, and its language and
acts will be totally different from what we have just
described. Instead of feelings of resentment, there
will be sentiments of regret; far from suspecting
attacks from the French, the people of England,
seeing through, and separating themselves from the
policy by which their fathers were misled, will be
rather disposed to level their suspicion at those who
call upon them again, without one fact to warrant
it, to put themselves in an attitude of defiance
against their unoffending neighbour ; and in lieu
of constantly invoking the memory of their own
exploits, or the reverses of their opponents, the
English people will, under the circumstances which
I have supposed, be anxious only for an oblivion of
all memorials of an unjust and aggressive war.
Can any doubt exist as to which of these condi-
tions of public opinion and feeling is most likely to
conduce to peace, and which to war?
But, moreover, the truth must be known in order
that the people of England may be the better able
to appreciate the feelings of the French towards
them. The precept ' do unto others as ye would
that others should do unto you,' is applicable to
thought as well as act. Before we condemn the
sentiments entertained by the people of France with
resjjcct to our conduct in tlie last war, let us en-
deavour to form an opinion as to what our own feel-
ings would be under similar circumstances. To do this
we must bear in mind that whilst our historians
give us a flattering and partial account of the con-
75
duct of our government at the breaking out of the
last war, the French writers, as may naturally be
supposed, lose no opportunity of recording every
fact which redounds to our disadvantage. I have
abstained from giving quotations from these au-
thorities, because they would be open to the charge
of being partial and prejudiced. But it ought to be
knov/n to us that not only do these writers make the
European powers who conspired against the liberties
of France responsible for the war, they invariably
assign to England the task of stimulating the flag-
ging zeal of the Continental despots, and of bribing
them to continue their warlike operations when all
other inducements ffiiled. The least hostile of these
writers, M. Thiers, the favourite of our aristocracy,
in speaking of our preparations for the campaign of
1794, says—" England was still the soul of the
coalition, and urged the powers of the continent
to hasten to destroy, on the banks of the Seine, a
revolution at which she was terrified, and a rival
which was detestable to her. The implacable son
of Chatham had this year made prodigious efforts
for the destruction of France.'' It is to the energies
of Pitt, wielding the power of England, that France
attributes the tremendous coalitions which again
and again brought nearly all Europe in hostile
array against her. Thus does M. Thiers describe
the spirit which animated him. " In England a
revolution which had only half regenerated the
social state, had left subsisting a crowd of feudal in-
stitutions which were objects of attachment for the
court and aristocracy, and of attack for the opposi-
76
tion. Pitt had a double object in view ; first to
allay the hostility of the aristocracy, to parry the
demand for reform, and thus to preserve his ministry
by controlling both parties; secondly— to overwhelm
France beneath her own misfortunes, and the hatred
of all the European governments."
These quotations afford but a faint idea of the
tone in which the historical writers of that country
deal with the subject. We are held up generally
to popular odium as the perfidious and machiavel-
lian plotters against the liberties of the French
people.
But it will probably be asked — and the question
is important — ^what are the present opinions of the
French people of their own Revolution out of which
the war sprung? There is nothing upon which we
entertain more erroneous views. When lue speak of
that event, our recollection calls up those occurrences
only, such as the Reign of Terror, the rise and fall
of Napoleon, the wars of conquest carried on by
him, and the final collapse of the territory of France
within its former boundaries, which seem to stamp
with failure, if not with disgrace, the entire character
of the Revolution. The Frenchman, on the con-
trary, directs his thoughts steadily to the year 17S9.
He finds the best excuse he can for the madness of
1794 ; he will point, with pride, to the generous
magnanimity of the populace of Paris, in 1830, and
1848, as an atonement for the Reign of Terror ; he
throws upon foreign powers, and especially upon
England, the responsibility for the long wars which
desolated so many of the countries of Europe; but
77
towards the Constituent Assembly of 1789, and the
principles which they established, his feelings of
reverence and gratitude are stronger than ever ; he
never alludes to them but with enthusiasm and
admiration. This feeling is confined to no class,
as the following extract from a speech addressed by
M. Thiers on the 29th June, 1851, to that most
conservative body, the National Assembly, and the
response which it elicited, will show. It is taken
verbatim from a report published by himself: —
" M . Thiers. Let us do honour to the men who
have maintained in France, since 1789, real civil
equality — equality of taxation, which we owe to our
admirable and noble revolution, (notre belle et
honorable revolution.)— (Assent and agitation.)
A voice on the left. Settle that with your friends.
(Oh, oh I murmurs.)
A voice on the right. Don't mistake; it is not the
revolution of 1848 that is referred to.
M. Thiers. I speak of the revolution of 1789,
and I trust we are all of one mind upon that. (The
left. Yes ! yes ! laughter.)
M. Charras. Talk to the right.
M. Thiers. I have a better opinion than you of
my country, and of all our parties, and I am con-
vinced that no one will encounter coldness or dis-
approbation from any quarter when praising the
revolution of 1789. (Marks of approbation from a
great number of benches.")
There is no greater proof of the predominant
favour in which any opinions are held in France
than to find them advocated by M. Thiers. But
78
\vhilst employed upon this letter, a recent pro-
duction from the pen of my accomplished friend,
M. Michel Chevalier, has met my eye, in which he
speaks of "the immortal principles" of "our
glorious Constituent Assembly of I789." Where
two men of such eminent authority, but of such
diametrically opposite views upon economical
principles, agree in their admiration of a particular
policy, it is a proof that it must have irresistible
claims upon public approbation. Men of the
highest social position in France — even they whose
fathers fell a sacrifice to tlie Reign of Terror,
admit that to the measures of 1789 (they were in
substance described in my last letter) which have
elevated the millions of their countrymen, from a
condition hardly superior to that of the Russian
serf, to the rank of citizens and proprietors of the
soil, France is indebted for a more rapid advance
in civilization, wealth, and happiness, than was ever
previously made by any community of a similar
extent, within the same period of time.
This feeling, so universally shared, has not been
impaired by the recent changes in France, for it is
directed less towards forms of government, or poh"-
tical institutions, than to the constitution of society
itself. And here let me observe again upon the
erroneous notions we fall into as to the state of
public opinion in France, because we insist upon
judging it by our own standard. Assuredly, if the
French have the presumption to measure our habits
and feelings by theirs, they must commit as great
blunders. Our slorv is that the franchises and
79
charters gained by our forefathers have secured us
an amount of personal freedom that is not to be
surpassed under any form of government. And it
is the jealous patriotic unselfish love of this free-
dom, impelling the whole community to rush to
the legal rescue of the meanest pauper if his
chartered personal liberties be infringed by those
in power, that distinguishes us' from all European
countries ; and I would rather part with every sen-
timent of liberty we possess than this, because, witli
it, every other right is attainable.
But the French people care little for a charter of
habeas corpvs, else, during their many revolutions,
when power has descended into the streets, why
has it not been secured ? and the liberty of the
press, and the right of association, and public meet-
ing, have been violated by universal suffrage almost
as much as by their emperors and kings. That
which the French really prize, and the English
trouble themselves little about, is the absence of
privileged inequality in their social system. Any
violation of this principle is resisted with all the
jealousy which we display in matters of individual
freedom. It was this spirit which baffled the
design of Napoleon, and Louis the XVIIIth, to
found an aristocracy by the creation of entails.
Now the Revolution of 1789, besides securing
liberty of worship, and establishing probably the
fairest system of government taxation (apart from
the protective policy of the nation) at present to be
found in the world, has divided the rich land of
France amongst its whole population. It is these
80
measures, coupled with the abolition of hereditary
rank, and of the law of entail, which have chiefly
contributed to gain for the Constituent Assembly
the gratitude of a people so jealous of privilege,
and so passionately attached to the soil. Yet it
cannot be too strongly impressed upon our minds
that it was against the principles of this very
Assembly that Burke, in 1790, launched his fiery
declamation, in which we find the following
amongst many similar invectives ; — " You would not
" have chosen to consider the French as a people of
" yesterday, as a nation of low-born servile wretches,
" until the emancipating year of 1789;" and we
are equally bound to remember that it was with the
intention of overthrowing the system of government
established by that Assembly that the despotic
powers marshalled their armies for the invasion of
France, and when, upon the failure of the attack, we
threw the weight of England into the scale of des-
potism. Having fully realised to ourselves the case
of the French people, let us ask — what would be
our feelings under their circumstances ?
Why, I fear, in the first place, we should, like
them, still remember with some bitterness the un-
provoked attack made upon us by the nations of
Europe, and that we should be sometimes tempted
to call that country in particular " perfidious,"
which, whilst professing to be free itself, and to have
derived its freedom from a revolution, yet joined
the despots of the Continent in a coalition against
the liberties of another people: we who have just
paid almost pagan honours to the remains of a
81
general who fought the battles of that unrighteous
coalition — what would we have done in honour of
those soldiers who beat back from our frontiers con-
federate armies of literally every nation in Chris-
tian Europe, except Sweden, Denmark, and Swit-
zerland ? Should we not, if we were Frenchmen,
be greater worshippers of the name of Napoleon, if
possible, than we are of Wellington and Nelson —
and with greater reason ? Should we not forgive
him his ambition, his selfishness, his despotic
rule? would not every fault be forgotten in the
recollection that he humbled Prussia, who had
without provocation assailed us when in the
throes of a domestic revolution, and that he dic-
tated terms at Vienna to Austria, who had
actually begun the dismemberment* of our own
territory ? Should not we in all probability still
feel so much under the influence of former dano-ers
and disasters as to cling for protection to a large
standing army;— and might not that centralised
government which alone enabled us to preserve our
independence still find favour in our sight ? And
should we not indulge a feeling of proud defiance
in electing for the chief of the state the next heir
to that great military hero, the child and champion
of the Revolution, whose family had been espe-
cially proscribed by tlie coalesced Powers before
whom he finally fell? Yes, however wise men
might moralize, and good men mourn, these would,
under the circumstances, I am sure, be the feelings
* At Valenciennes and Concle.
F
82
and passions of Englishmen, aye, and probably, in
even a stronger degree than they are now cherished
in France.
What then are the results which I anticipate
from the general diffusion of a true knowledge of
the origin and character of the last French war ?
In the first place, a more friendly and tolerant
feeling towards the French people. The maxim of
Rochefoucault, that we never forgive those we have
injured, if it be not unjust as applied to individuals,
does not certainly hold good with respect to com-
munities. Great nations may be proud, and even
vain, but they are ever magnanimous ; and it is
only meanness which could lead us to visit upon
our victim the penalty of our own injustice. Besides,
the maxim is not intended to apply, even in indivi-
duals, to generous natures, and generosity is the
invariable attribute of great masses of men.
But, in the next place, I should expect from a
more correct knowledge of our error of sixty years
ago, that we shall be less likely to repeat it now.
Is it certain that the lesson will not be required ?
Are there no symptoms that we have spirits
amongst us who want not the will, if the power and
occasion be afforded, to play the part of Burke in
our day ? He excited the indignation of his coun-
trymen against a Republic which had decapitated a
King ; now our sympathies are roused in behalf of
a Republic which has been strangled by an Emperor.
However inconsistent, in other respects, our conduct
at the two epochs may be, we seem in both cases
likely to fall into the error of forgetting that the
83
French nation are tlie legitimate tribunal for dis-
posing of the grievance. To forget this is indeed a
more flagrant act of intervention on our part than
was that of our forefathers, inasmuch, as whilst
they usurped the functions of twenty-four millions
of French only, we are now in danger of treating
thirty-six millions with no greater considera-
tion.
I have said that we are not without imitators of
the Reflections, A small volume of " Letters of
* an Englishman,^ on Louis Napoleon, the Empire,
and the Coup cVEtat, reprinted with large addi-
tions from The Times,'' is lying before me. I
know a cynical person who stoutly maintains the
theory that we are not progressive creatures ; that,
on the contrary, we move in a circle of instincts ;
and that a given cycle of years brings us back
again to the follies and errors from which we
thought mankind had emancipated itself. And,
really, these Letters are calculated to encourage him
in his cynicism. For here we have the very same
invectives levelled at Louis Napoleon which were
hurled at the Constituent Assembly sixty years
ago — the style, the language, the very epithets are
identically the same. Take a couple of morsels by
wa}' of illustration — the one speaking of the Con-
stituent Assembly of 1789 ; and the other of Louis
Napoleon in 1852 :
BURKE, 1790. ENGLISHMAN, 1852.
" How came the Assembly " The banquets to the sub-
by their present power over the officers, the champagne, the
army? Chiefly, to be sure, by toasts, and the reviews, dis-
F 2
84
debauching the soldiers fronj
their officers."
closed a continuity of purpose,
and a determination to de-
bauch the soldiery, calculatecl
to open the eyes of all."
So much for a specimen of specific accusation.
Now for a sample of general invective: —
ENGLISHMAN, 1852,
Speaking of Louis Napoleon.
" A self-convicted perjurer,
an attainted traitor, a conspi-
rator successful by the foulest
treachery, the purchase of the
soldiery, and the butchery of
thousands, he must, if not cut
short in his career, go all length
of tyranny. For him there is
no halt, for his system no
element] of 'either stabiHty or
progress. It is a hopeless and
absolute anachronism."
BURKE, 1790,
Bpealcing of the Constituent
Assembly.
" When all the frauds, im-
postures, violences, rapines,
burnings, murders, confisca-
tions, compulsory paper cur-
rencies, and every description
of tyranny and cruelty em-
ployed to bring about and to
uphold this Revolution, have
their natural effect, that is, to
shock the moral sentiments of
all virtuous and sober minds,
the abettors of this philosophic
system immediately strain their
throats in a declamation against
the old monarchical government
of France."
Considering that the result of Burke's declama-
tion was a war of twenty-two years, first to put
down the French Republic, and afterwards Napoleon
Bonaparte, both in the interest of the Bourbons,
that the war cost us some five hundred millions of
debt, and that the result is, this present year 1 853,
a Bonaparte, whose family we proscribed, sitting
upon the French throne, and the Bourbons, whom
we installed at the Thuilleries, fugitives from the
soil of France — remembering these things, and be-
85
holding this not altogether unsnccessful attempt
at an imitation of the " Reflections," it does cer-
tainly afford a triumph to my cynical acquaintance,
so far at least as to raise a doubt whether progres-
sive wisdom be an element of our foreign policy. I
could give many specimens of declamatory writing
from the LetterSy not inferior to Burke in style, and
some of them surpassing him in the vigour of their
invective. Take the following as an illustration
of the lengths to which the writer's vehemence
carries him, and let it be borne in mind that these
letters have had a far wider circulation than
Burke's great philippic with all its popularity could
boast of; I invite attention to those passages
marked by me in italics. " The presidential chair
or the imperial throne is set upon a crater — the
soil is volcanic, undermined and trembling — the
steps are slippery with blood — and the darkening
steam of smouldering hatred, conspiracy and ven-
geance — is exhaling round it. Each imrty can fur-
nish its contingents for tyrannicide; the assassin dogs
him in the street ; and even at the balls or banquets
of the Ely see he may find the fate of Gustavus. He
who has been false to all must only look for false-
hood, and is doomed to daily and to nightly fears
of mutinies, insurrections, and revenge. Conscience
cannot be altogether stifled, and will sometimes
obtrude, in her horrible phantasmagoria, the ghastly
corpses of the Boulevards."
Nobody will suppose that I would deny to any
one the right of publishing his views upon
86
French or any other politics. So far am I from
wishing to restrain the liberty of the press^ it
is my constant complaint that it is not free
enough. The press, in my opinion, should be
the only censor of the press ; and in this spirit I
would appeal to public opinion, against the evil
tendency of these and similar productions. We all
know how the strictures of Burke began with criti-
cism, grew into menace, and ended in a cry for
war. The " Englishman's'* Letters are here again
an exact counterpart of their great original. The
volume contains ten letters : the two first, penned
in a style of which I have given specimens, are
furious attacks upon Louis Napoleon, and his
government ; with passing condemnations of the
majority of the Legislative Assembly, the Orleanists,
the bourgeoisie, the peasantry, the soldiers, and the
priests; in fact there is hardly any party in France
which escapes his brilliant vituperation. Next
comes letter the third, headed, most appropriately,
after all this provoking abuse, *' The National
Defences;' which subject he discusses with his
telling style, and, upon the whole, with great good
sense. Having thus provided against accidents,
and ascertained that he was ensconced in something
better than a "glass house," he resumes his voca-
tion of pelting with the hardest and sharpest words
he can find, in his copious vocabulary of invective,
Louis Napoleon in particular, and all sorts of men
in general, at home and abroad. After indulging
himself in this way through four more letters, we
87
come to the eighth, which bears the title — somewhat
out of place in such company — of " Peace at all
price '^ It would seem that Mr. Burritt, and Mr.
Fry, having taken alarm at the hostile tone of the
English press, had set on foot a scheme for counter-
acting the mischief. Addresses^ containing assu-
rances of friendship and peace^ were drawn up in
several of our towns, signed by the inhabitants, and
forwarded to various places in France. This move-
ment, than which nothing could be more amiable,
and certainly nothing more harmless, draws down
upon the heads of poor Messrs. Burritt, and Fry, and
the Peace party generally, such a volley of vituperative
epithets, that they might almost excite the jealousy
of M. Bonaparte himself — speaking of the peace ad-
vocates — '* They require," says he, " keepers, not
reporters — their place is Han well, not the London
Tavern — and their Chairman should be Doctor
Conolly !"
Now, in the course pursued by the " Englisli-
man," we have an epitome of the conduct of all
such writers : — they begin with denunciations of the
French government ; they then call for more " de-
fences" as a protection against the hostility which
they instinctively feel such language naturally
excites ; and they end in an onslaught upon the ad
vocates of peace because they do not join in the cry.
Before indulging this expensive propensity for
scolding, this determination to grumble not only
for ourselves but also for thirty-six millions of
Frenchmen, it behoves us to ask, not only whether
any benefit will arise, but whether positive injury
88 •
may not be done, even to the people we wish to
serve, by our uncalled for interference. It is
hardly necessary that I should declare, that, were
Louis Napoleon an Englishman, or I a Frenchman,
however small a minority of opponents he might
have, I should be one of them :— that is all I have
to say in the matter ; for anything more would in
my opinion be mere impertinence towards the
French people, who, for reasons best known to them-
selves, acquiesce in his rule. But admitting for the
sake of argument that all that is said of the tyranny,
treachery, and wickedness of Louis Napoleon be
true ; those are precisely the qualities in despotic
monarchs, to which we are indebted for our liber-
ties. Why should not the French be allowed the
opportunity of deriving some of the advantages
■which we have gained from bad sovereigns ?
Where would our charters and franchises have been,
if our John's and James's had not reigned, and mis-
governed ? Nobody pretends that the French em-
peror is quite so bad as our eighth Henry ; yet we
contrived to owe to him our Protestantism. If half
that is alleged against Louis Napoleon be true, the
French people will have him at a great disadvantage
in any controversy or struggle they may be engaged
in with him. One thing alone could prevent this
— the popularity which will assuredly follow from
continued attacks in the English press, such as I
have just quoted.
But here let me warn you against the belief into
which so many fall, that the hostile tone adopted by
writers of this country towards the French govern-
89
ment, and the cry of an invasion, liave reference to
the present despotic ruler of France only. That is
one of the many shapes which the cry has assumed.
But it was first heard when Louis Philippe, the
" Napoleon of Peace," was on the throne. The
letter of the Duke of Wellington, to Sir John Bur-
goyne, which has been made the text-book for
panic-mongers ever since, was written when the
King of the French had given seventeen years proof
of his pacific policy, and when that representative
form of government, which we are now told was the
guarantee of peace, was still subsisting in France :
it made its appearance in 1847, when we were
\lready spending more upon our warlike arma-
nents than in any of the previous thirty years ; more
by two millions of money than the most terrified
invasionist now proposes to expend : and yet at that
time, and under those circumstances, the cry for
more defences against the French was as active,
and the clamour against the peace party who re-
sisted it, as strong, as at any later time; and the
very same parties who now advocate increased ar-
maments to protect our shores against Louis Napo-
leon, were amongst the loudest of those who swelled
the panic cry in 1847.
An allusion to the infirmities of a great mind,
however painful at the present moment, is rendered
absolutely necessary by those who quote the autho-
rity of the Duke of Wellington's declining years in
favour of a policy, which, in my opinion, tends
neither to the peace, nor the prosperity of the coun-
try. At the time of penning his letter to General
90
Burgoyne, tlie Duke was vergino- upon his eightieth
year. Now, no man retains all his faculties unim-
paired at fourscore. Nature does not suspend her
laws, even in behalf of her favourite sons. The
Duke was mortal, and therefore subject to that
merciful law which draws a veil over our reason,
and dims the mental vision as we approach the
end of the vista which terminates with the tomb.
But the faculties do not all pay this debt of nature
at once, or in equal proportion. Sometimes the
strongest part of our nature, which may have been
subjected to the greatest strain, declines the first.
In. the Duke's case, his nervous system, his " iron"
characteristic gave way. He who at forty was inca-
pable of fear, at eighty was subject to almost infan-
tine alarms. This was shewn on several public
occasions ; but on none so strongly as in the provi-
sion made by him against an insurrection or a revo-
lution during the Great Exhibition of 1851, when,
as is known to those who were in authority, or in
connexion with that undertaking, he was haunted
with terrors which led him to change the entire
disposition of the army for the year, to refuse to the
household regiments the usual retreat to summer
quarters, and to surround the metropolis with
troops. No one in the full possession of a vigorous
intellect could have possibly fallen into the error of
supposing that the moment, when all people's
minds were wound up by a year's previous agita-
tion to the highest pitch of interest in a holiday
exhibition, would be chosen for a great and com-
bined political demonstration. Human nature, and
91
especially English nature, is never liable to be pos-
sessed by two such absorbing ideas at the same
time. In fact, such a diversion of men's minds
from public affairs as the Great Exhibition afforded
is precisely that which despots have employed for
escaping the scrutiny of their own misgovernment.
But, as is well known, at that moment universal
political contentment reigned throughout England,
If, however, as was supposed the Duke's prepa-
rations were levelled at the foreigners who were
attracted to London, the absence of a calm and
vigorous reason is still more apparent. For at that
time political propagandism was dead even on the
Continent; their revolutions had failed; universal
reaction had succeeded to democratic fever; and
England was regarded as the only great country in
Europe where political freedom was " holding its
own." Besides, a moment's clear reflection would
have suggested the obvious answer to such fears, —
that the red republicans and revolutionists of the
continent were not the persons likely to find the
money for paying a visit in great numbers to Eng-
land. In fact, so great an obstacle did the expense
present, that during the whole year scarcely fifty
thousand foreigners, European and American,
above the average of annual visitors, reached our
shores : and it must be evident, that, against any
dangers, whether of mischief, or spoliation, contem-
plated by foreigners, or English on that occasion, a
good police force, which was most amply provided
by the Commissioners, and not an army, was the
only rational provision.
92
But I apjDeal from the Duke's advice in 1847, to
his own example, when in complete possession of
his mental powers, in 1835. He was a member of
Sir Robert Peel's government in the latter year,
which is memorable for having witnessed the lowest
military expenditure since the peace. The Esti-
mates of that year are always quoted by Financial
Reformers as a model of economy. The Duke was
consulted by Sir Robert Peel, and became an as-
senting party to those estimates. What was the
change of circumstances which warranted so great
a revolution in his views in 1847? His letter
might lead us to suppose that steam navigation had
in the mean time been discovered. Does any one
whose memory is unimpaired forget that in 1835
our coasts and narrow seas swarmed with steamers,
that our sailing vessels were regularly towed to sea
by them, and that we were then discussing the
merits of the ports in Ireland from which steam-
ships should start for America ? The Duke never
afterwards acknowledged that he neglected the
defence of the country when he was in power.
Nobody has made such a charge against him. But
I and others who have advocated a return to the
expenditure of 1835 have been denounced for
wishing to leave the country defenceless. I must
leave my opponents to reconcile their conduct with
the reverence they profess to feel for the authority
of the Duke of Wellington.
The Duke's letter has been followed by a shoal
of publications, all apparently designed to tempt
the French to make a descent upon our shores ; for
93
all are, more or less, full of arguments to prove how
easily it might be effected. Some of them give
plans of our ports, and point out the nearest road to
London ; others describe, in seductive phrases, the
rich booty that awaits them there. Foremost of
these is Sir Francis B. Head, who has given us a
thick volume under the title of " The Defenceless
state of Great Britain; " then we have '* Thoughts
on National Defence,^' by Vice- Admiral Boicles ;
" On the Defence of England,'* by Sir Charles J.
Napier, who tells us that he " believes that our
young soldiers pray night and day " for an inva-
sion ; *' A Plan for the formation of a Maritime
Militia,'' hy Captain Elliot ; ^^ National Defences,'*
by Montagne Gore, Esq. ; " Memorandum on the
necessity of a Secretary of State for our Defences,
Sfc.,*' hy Robert Carmichael Smith ; " The Defence of
our mercantile Sea-ports,'' by a Retired Artillery
Officer ; and amongst a host of others is " The Peril
of Portsmouth," by James Fergusson, Esq., with a
PLAN ; commencing most portentously :— "Few per-
" sons are perhaps aware that Portsmouth, which
" from its position and its extent, is by far the most
'' important station of the British Navy, is at pre-
" sent in so defenceless a state, that it could easily
'* be taken by a coup-de-main, either from the sea
*' or by land. Yet such is the undoubted state of
" the case, and it is further easy of proof that if it
" were to fall into the hands of an enem}^ the navy
" of England would, from that very circumstance,
" be crippled, as a defenceless element at least, to
94
*' the extent of one-lialf its power ; while the hostile
" occupation of Portsmouth would render the inva-
" sion of England as simple and as easy a problem
" as ever was submitted to the consideration of any
" military man, &c. &c." Surely the French must
have lost all pretensions to their character for po-
liteness, or they would have long ago accepted these
pressing invitations to pay our shores a visit !
There are two assumptions running through
nearly all these productions. First, that we have
made no provision for our defence, and, therefore,
offer a tempting prey to an invader ; and, next, that
the French are a mere band of pirates, bound by no
ties of civilization, and ready to pounce upon any
point of our coast which is left unprotected.
The first assumption may be disposed of with a
few figures : — we expend every year from fifteen
to sixteen millions in warlike preparations ; and we
have been, ever since the Duke of Wellington's
Estimates of 1835, constantly augmenting the
number of our armed forces. In that year tliey
amounted altogetlier to 145,846 — at the close of the
last Parliament they stood at 272,481;* thus shewing
an addition since 1835 of 126,635. The following
is a detailed list of the increase from official
sources: —
* In addition to this, the army in India amounts to 289,529
men, making altogether 562,010 men. The cost of the Indian
army is ten millions, which added to our fifteen millions, makes
.£25,000,000— the largest sum paid by any nation for a peace
establishment.
95
Amount and description of all the Fo7'ces added since 1835.
Cavalry and Infantry added ... ... ... 20,GG()
Ordnance Corps ... ... ... ... 7,263
Sailors and Marines ... ... ... ... 12,095
Enrolled Pensioners ... ... ... ... 18,500
Dockyard Battalions (armed and drilled) ,., ... 9,200
Coast Guard (organised and drilled to the use of
Artillery since 183.5) ... ... ... ... 5,000
Irish Constabulary, increase ... ... ... 4,627
MiUtia increase voted ... ... ... ... 54,049
131,400
Deduct decrease of Yeomanry ... 4,765
Total increase since 1835 up to June 1852 ... 126,635
Thus stood matters at the close of the last Parlia-
ment, in June. But the cry was still " they come."
The *' invasionists" renewed their annual autumn
clamour ; and no sooner had the new Parliament
assembled in November, for the short session, than
there was a proposal for a further increase of our
" defences." The money was voted without a
division. Mr. Hume, who had seen many of the
popular organs of public opinion joining in the cry,
contented himself with a protest; and then, in
despair of any other corrective, left the cure of the
evil to the tax-gatherer : — and I confess for the
moment to have shared his sentiments.
The other argument of the invasionists, — that
France is ready to assail us upon any vulnerable
point, will be successful in proportion only to our
ignorance of the character and condition of the
French people, and of the origin and history of the
last war. Everything in that country is viewed by
96
us through a distorted and prejudiced medium.
We regard France as the most aggressive and war-
like country on the Continent, because we have all
read of her invasions of other countries, without
recollecting that the)' were in retaliation for an un-
provoked attack upon her : — we view with alarm
the enthusiasm of the French people for their army,
but we cannot so far enter into their feelings as to
know that it springs from gratitude, because " it was
the army," to use the words of tlie conservative and
peace-loving Journal des Debats^ " which repre-
sented her with admirable eclat on fields of battle — •
that is to say, on the spot to which it was neces-
sary that the whole of France should repair in
order to defend the new life which she held from
1789." Doubtless there is danger to be feared
from this predominance of the military spirit, how-
ever created, a danger most to be dreaded by
France herself: — but let it not be forgotten that we
helped to plant and water the upas tree, and have
no right to charge with our sins those who are
destined to live under its shade.
Besides, we must bear in mind that the strength
of the army of France is only in proportion to that
of other continental states; and that her navy is
always regulated with reference to our own, gene-
rally about in the ratio of two- thirds of our force :
"We pay England the compliment," said M.
Thiers in the Chamber of Deputies in 1846, "of
thinking only of her when determining our naval
force ; we never heed the ships which sally forth
from Trieste or Venice — we care only for those that
97
leave Portsmouth and Plymouth." "Oil, but," I
sometimes hear it very complacently said, " every
body knows that England is only armed in self-
defence, and in the interest of peace." But when
France looks at our 500 ships of war, our 180 war
steamers, and hears of our great preparations at
Alderney, Jersey, and other points close to her
shores, she has very different suspicions. She re-
calls to mind our conduct in 1793, when, within a
twelvemonth after the commencement of hostilities,
we had taken possession of Toulon (her Portsmouth)
and captured or burnt a great part of her fleet ; and
when we landed an expedition on the coast of
Brittany, and stirred up afresh the smouldering
fires of civil war. If we are so alarmed at the idea
of a French invasion, vvhich has not occurred for
nearly eight hundred years, may we not excuse the
people of France if they are not quite free from a
similar apprehension, seeing that not a century has
passed since the Norman conquest in which Me
have not paid hostile visits to her shores? The
French have a lively recollection of the terrible
disasters they suffered from the implacable enmity
of our government during the last war. They
found themselves assailed by a feudal aristocracy,
having at its command the wealth of a manufac-
turing and mercantile people, thus presenting the
most formidable combination for warlike purposes
to be found recorded in the world's history ; and
knowing as they do that political power in this
country is still mainly in the hands of the same
class, some allov. ancc must be made for ihcm if
G
98
they have not quite made up their minds that
peace and non-intervention are to be our invariable
pohcy for the future. Taking this candid view of
the case, we shall admit that the extent of the
preparations in France must be in some degree
commensurate with the amount of our own warlike
armaments.
I will add a few remarks upon the present state
of France, as compared with her condition in 1793,
and endeavour to form an estimate of the proba-
bilities of a war between her and this countr}' ; or
rather, I should say, of the prospect of an invasion
of England by France ; for I will assume the writers
and declaimers about this invasion to be in earnest ;
I will suppose that they really mean an invasion of
England, and not a march upon Belgium, or any
other continental state; I will take for granted
that we have not now, as was the case in 179^, to
deal with false pretences, to cover other designs,
and that, in this discussion of a French invasion, we
are not witnessing a repetition of the bold dissimu-
lation on the one side, and gross credulity on the
other, which preceded the war of 1793. I will for
the sake of argument admit the good faith of those
who predict a war with France, and a consequent
descent upon our shores ; nay, I will go further, and
even not call in question the sincerity of that party
which foretells an invasion of England without any
previous declaration of war.
What are the circumstances of Europe calculated
to produce a war ? There is one, and only one
danger peculiar to our times, and it was foreseen
&9
by the present Prime Minister, when he thus ex-
pressed himself:
"He was disposed," Lord Aberdeen*'' said, " to dis-
sent from the maxims which had of late years received
very general assent, that the best security for the
continuance of peace, was to be prepared for war.
That was a maxim which might have been applied
to the nations of antiquity, and to societ^un a com-
paratively barbarous and uncivilised state, when
warlike preparations cost but little, but it was not
a maxim which ought to be applied to modern
nations, when the facilities of the preparations for
war were very different. Men, when they adopted
such a maxim, and made large preparations in time
of peace that would be sufficient in the time of war,
were apt to be influenced by the desire to put their
efficiency to the test, that all their great prepara-
tions, and the result of their toil, and expense,
might not be thrown away. He thought, therefore,
that it was no security to any country against the
chances of war, to incur great expense, and make
great preparations for warlike purposes. A most
distinguished statesman! of France had lately em-
phaticiilly declared in the French Chamber his
desire for peace, but he added that to maintain it
he must have an army of 800,000 men. And what
he (the Earl of Aberdeen) would ask, could be ex-
pected from the raising of such a force but war, or
national bankruptcy ? He therefore dreaded the
intention of those who desired such extensive arma-
ments, notwithstanding the pacific professions they
* Hansard, vol. 107, p. 704. f M. Thiers.
G 2
100
made ; and lie could not be at case as regarded
the stabilit}^ of peace until he saw a great reduction
in the great military establishments of Europe.
Such should be the great object of all governments,
and more especially of the government of this
country."
Thus spoke Lord Aberdeen in 1849. The evil
has not diminished since that time. Europe has
almost degenerated into a military barracks. It is
computed by Baron Yon Reden, the celebrated Ger-
man statistical writer, that one half of its population
in the flower of manhood are bearing arms. It is
certain that in the very height of Napoleon's wars,
the effective force of the Continental armies was
less than at present. For a long time the cuckoo-
cry was repeated " to preserve peace, prepare for
war," but the wisest statesmen of our age have con-
curred with the Peace party, that the greater the
preparation the more imminent is the risk of a col-
lision, ov\ing to the preponderance which is thereby
given in the councils of nations to those who by
education, taste, and even interest must be the least
earnestly disposed for peace. At this moment a
martial tone pervades the Courts and Cabinets, as
well as the most influential classes of the Conti-
nental States ; and never, even in England, since
the war, was the military spirit so much in the as-
cendant in the higher circles as at the present
time. To what then are we to attribute the pre-
servation of peace and the present prospect of its
continuance, in spite of this dangerous element, but
to the fact that, whilst governments are making iin-
101
precedcntcd preparations for hostilities, all the signs
and symptoms of the age tend more than ever in the
opposite direction ? Let us see what are the facts
which warrant this conclusion : — ■
The first safeguard against the emplo;^'ment of
these enormous standing armies in foreign wars, is
that they are indispensable at home to repress the
discontent caused in a great degree by the burden
which their own cost imposes on the people. Sir
Robert Peel foresaw this result in 1841, when he
said that — " the danger of aggression is infinitely
less than the danger of those sufferings to ichich
the present exorbitant expenditure must give rise*'
Their growing intelligence will render the people
every year more dissatisfied with the yoke imposed
on them; and athwart these armed and drilled
mechanical tools of despotism may be often heard
low mutterings, which will assuredly swell some
day into a shout of defiance. Internal revolutions
may be safely predicted of every country whose
government rests not upon public opinion, but the
bayonets of its soldiers. Those internal convulsions
are however no longer to be feared as the causes
of vTar ; — for the world has wisely resolved (and it
is one of the lessons learned from the last war) that
henceforth every nation shall be left to regulate its
own domestic affairs, free from the intervention of
strangers. It is true that, whilst during the late
revolutionary period, this rule was scrupulously ob-
served towards the Great Powers, it was flagrantly
outraged in the case of Hungary, Italy, and Hesse-
Cassel, against which acts of injustice to the smaller
States, the public opinion of tlic civilized world
i02
ought to be brought to bear, unless we are to sit
down and acknowledge tliat the weak are to have
no rights, and the strong to be bound by no law.
In this change of policy, however, which will cer-
tainly be observed towards France, we have a secu-
rity against a repetition of the offence which led
to the last war.
There are not a few persons, especially of the
military class, who, ever since the peace, have been
haunted with the apparition of tlie late war, and
have advocated a state of preparation calculated to
meet as great efforts on the part of France as those
put forth by Napoleon himself. They will even go
so far as to predict the exact latitude where future
Trafalgars or Saint Vincents are to be fought, and
call for the construction of harbours and basins,
where our crippled ships may be repaired, after
their imaginary engagements.* Now, without laying
myself open to the charge of foretelling perpetual
peace — for nothing appears to be more offensive to
certain parties — 1 must say that I think the very
fact of the wars of the Frencli Revolution having
happened is an argument against their soon recur-
ring again. For even if I take no credit for the
lesson wliich that bloody and abortive struggle
affords, if I admit the unteachable character of
nations, still Nature has her own way of proceeding,
and she does not repeat hei'self every generation in
extraordinary performances of any kind. Alexan-
ders, Caesars, Charlemagnes, and Napoleons are
* Such arguments have been gravely urged in the House of
Commons by naval men ; and, what is still worse, they have been
acted upon.
103
happily not annual, or even centennial, productions ;
and, like the exhausted eruptions of our physical
globe, they have never been reproduced upon the
same spot. Nowhere is the husbandman more safe
against a convulsion of nature than when he plants
his vines in the crater of an extinct volcano. The
very magnitude of the operations of Bonaparte, by
forbidding all attempts at rivalry, is rather calcu-
lated to check than invite imitation. "The death
"of Napoleon," says Chateaubriand, " inaugurated
" an era of peace ; his wars were conducted on so
" mighty a scale (it is perhaps the only good that
" remains of them) that they have rendered all
" future superiority in that career impossible. In
" closing the temple of Janus violently after him,
" he left such heaps of slain piled up behind the
" door that it cannot be opened again.'* But I
must refrain from these flights of a humane imagi-
nation, in deference to those who, whilst hoping and
desiring universal and perpetual peace, are yet im-
patient of any arguments which promise the fulfil-
ment of their aspirations.
Let us then, whilst agreeing upon the possibility
of such an occurrence, confine ourselves to a notice
of those circumstances in the present condition of
France which render a war on her part less likely
in 1853 than in 1793. Fortunately she would, in
common with every other European state, encounter
at the first step all but an insuperable obstacle in
the want of money. It is true that, in proportion
to her resources, the debt of France is less now than
it was in 1793. But, at the latter epoch, she had
104
vast masses of landed pro})erty available for the
expenses of the war. 'j'lie church lands, which
by some writers were estimated at a fourth of the
soil of France ; the confiscated estates of the emi-
grant nobles ; the national domains, and the
national forests: this immense property, altogether
valued by different writers at from five hundred
millions sterling to double that sum, fell in the
course of four years into the hands of the revolu-
tionary Government, and was made by them the
basis of a paper money, denominated assiynats, with
wdiich they paid their soldiers, and were enabled
to make those gigantic efforts which astonished and
terrified the despotic governments of Europe.
There is no doubt that for a time this creation of
paper money gave to the French Government all
the power which would have been derived from a
foreign loan, or the most productive taxes. It
seemed in the eyes of the wild theorists of Paris,
who were at that time trampling each other down
in quick succession in the death struggle for power,
that they possessed an inexhaustible mine of riches,
and each one resorted- to it more freelv than his
predecessor. For every new campaign, fresh issues
of assujnats were decreed. When war was declared
aeainst Enoland, eio-bt hundred millions of francs
were ordered to be created. The result is known
to everybody. The more plentiful the assignats
were, the less became their value, or in other words
the dearer grew all commodities; bloody decrees
followed, to keep down prices ; but markets were
not to be permanently regulated, even by the Reign
105
of Terror. Ultiinately when seven hundred millions
sterling of ass'ujnats had been issued, they fell to
one and a half per cent of their nominal value;
and a general at the head of an army in 1795, with
a pay of four thousand francs a month, was in the
actual receipt of eight pounds only in gold or silver.
But paper money had, in the mean time, enabled the
oovernment to overcome Pitt's first coalition.
But, in case of a war, in 1853, the French Go-
vernment would have none of these temporary re-
sources. The domains of the church, the crown^
and the aristocracy, divided, and subdivided, have
passed into the hands of the people. There re-
main no great masses of landed property to seize for
the benefit of the state. The very name of assignat
conjures up visions of confiscation. In no country
in the world is there so great a distrust of paper
money as in France. To raise the funds necessary
for entering upon a war the government of France
must now impose taxes on the eight millions of pro-
prietors amongst whom the land is parcelled, and
by whom the great bulk of the revenue is contri-
buted. As a declaration of war would be followed
by an immediate falling off in the receipts of indi-
rect taxes from customs and excise, this defalcation,
as well as the extra demand for warlike purposes,
must fall upon the land. The peasant proprietors
of France, ignorant as they are in many respects,
know instinctively all this, and they are, therefore,
to a man opposed to a war ; and, hence it is, that in
all Louis Napoleon's addresses to them (and they in
the ultimate appeal really govern France), whether
106
as candidate for the Assembly, tho Presidency, or
the Empire, he lias invariably declared himself in
favour of peace.
But, 1 think, I liear it objected that the French
often made war pay its own expenses. It is true,
and to a great extent, the foregoing statement ex-
plains how it was accomplished. Wherever the
French armies went, thev carried with them the
doctrine of liberty and equality^ and they were re-
ceived less as concpierors than deliverers by the
mass of the people ; for the populations of the in-
vaded countries, like the French themselves previous
to the revolution, were oppressed by the privileged
classes, and ground down to the earth by inordinate
and unjust taxation. Everywhere the invaders
found great masses of property belonging to the
government, the church, and exclusive corpora-
tions ; and, in some cases, the monastic orders were
still revelling in their pristine wealth and luxury.
These great accumulations of property were confis-
cated for the use of the armies of the "Republic."
In some cases considerable sums were transmitted
to Paris, for the service of the Home Government.
Napoleon sent home two millions sterling during
his first campaign in Italy ; and it is stated that the
large amount of specie found by the French in the
coffers of the frugal aristocratic government of
Berne was of essential service in fitting' out the ex-
pedition to Egypt.
But how changed is all this at the present time !
An invading army instead of finding governments
with a stock of bullion to tempt their cupidity, or a
107
good balance at their bankers, would encounter
nothing but debt and embarrassment, which the
first shock of war would convert into bankruptcy
and ruin ; they would find church lands, and go-
vernment domains parcelled among the people ;
and as any attempt to levy contributions must
bring the invaders at once into collision with the
mass^ of the population, it would be found far
cheaper and wiser to pay their own expenses, than
attempt to raise the money by a process which
w^ould convert hostilities between governments into
a crusade against individuals, where every house
would be the battle s^round in defence of the most
cherished rights of home, family, and property.
And, to increase the difficulty, war itself, owing
to the application of greater science to the process
of human destruction, has become a much more
costly pursuit. So great has been the impi^ovement
in the construction of horizontal shells, and other
contrivances in gunnery, that even Sir Howard
Douglas, who could recount with the utmost com-
placency the capabilities of Congreve rockets,
Shrapnell shells, grape, and canister, seems struck
with compunction at the contemplation of this last
triumph of his favourite science. But a still
greater discovery has been since announced by Mr.
Nasmyth, who offers to construct a monster mortar
for marine warfare, which shall lie snugly ensconced
in the prow of a bomb-proof floating steam vessel,
.and on being propelled against a ship of war, the
concussion shall cause an explosion with force suffi-
cient to tear a hole in her side " as big as a church-
108
door." Now, I attach little importance to the ar-
gument that these murderous contrivances will dis-
incline men to war, from fear of being killed. When
cross-bows were first brought into use, the clergy
preached against them as murderous. Upon the
introduction of the " sight," to assist the eye in
taking aim with a cannon, on board ship, the old gun-
ners turned their quids, looked sentimental, and pro-
nounced the thinof no better than " murder." But
war lost none of its attractions b}'^ such discoveries ;
it is at best but gambling for "glory;" and whatever
be the risk, men will always take the long odds
against death. But I have great hopes from the
expensiveness of war, and the cost of preparation ;
and should war break out between two great nations,
1 have no doubt that the immense consumption of
material, and the rapid destruction of property,
would have the effect of verv soon brino-ino^ the
combatants to reason, or exhausting their resources.
For it is quite certain that the Nasmyths, Fair-
bairns, and Stephensons, would play quite as great
a part as the Nelsons and CoUingwoods, in any Ai
future wars ; and we all know that to give full scope ^
to their engineering powers involves an almost
unlimited expenditure of capital.
Besides, war would now^ be felt as a much greater
interruption and outrage to the habits and feelings
of the two countries, than sixty years ago, owing to
the more frequent intercourse which takes place
between them. There is so much cant about the
tendency of railways, steam boats, and electric tele-
graphs, to unite France and England in bonds of
109
peace, uttered by those who are heard, almost iri^
the same breath, advocating greater preparations
against war and invasion, that I feel some hesitation
in joining in such a discordant cliorus. But when
we recollect that sixty years ago it took from four
to six days to communicate between London and
Paris, and that now a message may be sent in as
many minutes, and a journey be made in twelve
hours ; — that at the former time a mail started
twice a week only for the French capital, whilst
now letters may be dispatched twice a-day ; and
that the visiting intercourse between the two
countries has multiplied more than twenty-fold : —
recollecting all this, it cannot be doubted that it
would be more difficult now than in 1793 to tear
the two countries asunder, and render them inac-
cessible to each other by war. But these are moral
ties which I will not dwell upon. I come at last
to the really solid guarantee which France has
given for a desire to preserve peace with England.
If you had the opportunity, as I had, of visiting
almost daily the Great Exhibition, you must have
observed that whilst England was unrivalled in
those manufactures which owed their merit to great
facilities of production, and America excelled in
every effort where a daring mechanical genius could
be rendered subservient to purposes of general
utility, there was one country, which, in articles re-
quiring the most delicate manipulation, the purest
taste, and the most skilful application of the laws of
chemistry and the rules of art to manufacturing
purposes, was by universal consent allowed to
no
hold the first rank : that country was France. And
it must not be forgotten that her preparation for
this world-wide competition was made at the time
when her trade and manufactures were suffering-
great depression and discouragement, owing to the
want of confidence produced by the recent revolu-
tion. And yet, notwithstanding this disadvantage,
she carried awav the hiii'hest honours for that class
of manufactures requiring the greatest combination
of intelligence and skill on the part of the
capitalist and artizan, and the production of which
is possible only in a country which has reached
the most advanced stao-e of civilization. Yet this
is the people* who, we are told, will, without pre-
* It cannot be too strongly impressed upon the mind of the
reader^that this cry of ' invasion without notice^ was raised when
Louis Philippe was still on the throne, — as the following extract
from a letter of remonstrance, addressed by Sir William Moles-
worth, Jan. J 7th, 1848, to the Editor of the Spectator, London
Newspaper, will plainly shew : —
"You say that 'the next attack on England will probably be
without notice' — ' Five thousand (Frenchmen) might inflict dis-
grace on some defenceless post ; 500 might insult British blood
at Heme Bay, or even inflict indelible shame on the empire at
Osborne House ! !' Good God ! can it be possible that you
whom I ranked so high among the public instructors of this
nation — that you consider the French to be rufiians, Piudarees,
freebooters — that you believe it necessary to keep constant watch
and ward against them, as our Saxon forefathers did against the
Danes and the Nordmen, lest they should burn our towns,
plunder our coasts, and put our Queen to ransom ? Are you
not aware that the French are as civilized as ourselves — in some
respects intellectually our superiors ? Have you forgotten that they
have passed through a great social revolution, which has equa-
Ill
vious declaration of war, make a piratical attack
upon our shores, with no more regard for the re-
tributive consequences to their own interests, than
if they were a tribe of ancient Scandinavians, who
when they made a hostile expedition, carried all
their worldly goods to sea in their war boats with
them.
Let me repeat it— if for the dozenth time — such
an opinion would never be put forth, unless by writers
and speakers who presume most insultingly upon
the ignorance of the public. It really should be a
question with the Peace party, whether they could
do a better service to their cause than by giving
popular lectures upon the actual state of the popu-
lation of France. And let them not forget, when
dealing with this invasion cry, how the people were
told in 1792 that the French were coming to burn
the Tower, and put arsenic in the New River, to
lized property, abolished privilege, and converted the mass of
the people into thrifty and industrious men, to whom war is hate-
ful, and the conscription detestable? Are y on not aware that
they j)Ossess a constitutional government, loith the forms and
practice of which they are daily becoming more and more con-
versant ; that no measure of importance can he adopted without
heing first debated and agreed to in the Chambers ; and that the
love of peace, and the determination to preserve peace, have
given to the King of the French a constant majority in those
Chambers, and kept him in peaceable possession of his throne ?
Can you controvert any one of these positions?"
These writers must be judged, not by what they now say of
Louis Napoleon's designs, but what they said of the French
nation when Guizot- was Prime Minister, under a constitutional
king, and when we were spending tico millions more on our arma-
ments than anybody now proposes to spend.
112
poison the metropolis, at the very moment when,
as we know noiu, the Frencli ambassador was humbly
entretiting our government not to go to war. May
not the historian of sixty years hence have a similar
account to give of the stories now put forth re-
specting the intentions of the French people ? But
I promised to give credit to those writers for sin-
cerity, and I i^roceed to answer them in that spirit.
Begging pardon of every Frenchman who may read
my pages for dealing seriously with such a topic.
France as a manufacturing country stands second
only to England in the amount of her productions,
and the value of her exports ; but it is an impor-
tant fact in its bearings on the question before us
that she is more dependent than England upon the
importation of the raw materials of her industry;
and it is obvious how much this must place her nt
the mercy of a power having the command over
her at sea. This dependence upon foreigners ex-
tends even to those right arms of peace, as well as
war, iron and coal. In 1851 her importation of
coal and coke reached the prodigious quantity of
2^841,900 tons : of course a large portion of itis
imported over-land from Belgium ; of this, 78,900
tons are specially entered in the official returns as
being for tJie steam navy ; a frank admission, in
reply to our alarmists, that the discovery of steam
navigation has given us an advantage over them.
The coal imported into France in 1792, the year
before the war, amounted to 80,000 tons onlv.
Now in this enormous increase, during the last
sixty years^ we have a proof of the great develop-
113
ment of niauufacturino- indiistrv ; but in conse-
qiience of steam power having been applied to
manufacturing purposes since the latter date, the
importation of coal has increased in a far greater
I'atio than anv otiier rav/ material. Whilst cotton
wool, for instance, has increased seven-fold since
1792, coal has augmented more than thirty- fold.
This is a most important fact when comparing the
two countries ; for whilst the indigenous coal and
iron of England have attracted to her shores the
raw materials of her industry, and given her almost
a European monopoly of the great primary ele-
ments of steam power, France, on the contrary,
relying on her ingenuity only to sustain a compe-
tition with England, is compelled to purchase a
portion of hers from her great rival.
in the article of iron we have another illustration
to the same effect. In 179"2 pig iron does not
figure in the French tariff; but the importation of
iron and steel of all kinds^ wrought and unwrought,
amounted in that year to 6,000 tons. In 1851
(which was a very low year compared with the
years previous to the revolution of 1848) the im-
portation of pig iron amounted to 33,700 tons.
And when it is remembered that very high duties
are levied upon this article for the protection of
the home })roducer, it must be apparent that its
scarcity and high price impose serious disadvan-
tages upon all descriptions of manufactures in
France. But the point to which I wish to draw-
attention is that so large a quantity of this prime
necessary of life of every industry is imported from
H
114
abroad ; and in proportion as the quantity for
which she is thus dependent upon foreigners has
increased since 1792, in the same ratio has France
given a security to keep the peace.
But there is one raw material of manufactures,
which, in the magnitude of its consumption, the
distant source of its supply, and its indispensable
necessity, possesses an importance be3"ond all others.
Upwards of two and a half millions of bales of this
material are annually attracted across the Atlantic,
from the Indian ocean, or the remotest ports of the
Mediterranean, to set in motion the capital and
industry of the most extensive manufactures ever
known in the world ; upon which myriads of
people are directly and indirectly employed, who
are more dependent for their subsistence upon the
punctual arrival in Europe, on an average, of seven
thousand bales of this vegetable fibre a day, than
they would be if their bread were the produce of
countries five thousand miles distant from their
doors. Tainted as this commodity is to a large
extent in its origin, it is undoubtedly the great
peace-preserver of the age. It has placed distant
and politically independent nations in mutual
dependence, and interested them in the preservation
of peace, to a degree unknown and undreamed of
in former ages. To those who talk glibly of war, I
would recommend a visit not merely to thai dis-
trict of which Manchester is the centre, but to the
valley of the Seine from Paris to its embouchure,
and having surveyed the teeming hive employed
upon the cotton manufacture, let them ask
115
what proportion did the capital and labour of
those regions bear in 1793 to their present amount
and numbers, and what would now be the effect of
an interruption to their prosperity, by putting an
end to that peace out of which it has mainly grown?
Is there any object that could possibly be gained by
either country that would compensate for the loss
occasioned by one month's suspension of their
cotton trade?
The importation of this raw material into France
amounted in 1851 to 130,000,000 lbs. In 1792 it
was 19,000,000 lbs.; the increase being nearly
seven-fold. The consumption of that country
is about one-fifth to one-sixth of our own, and it
ranks second amongst the manufacturing states of
Europe. But the quantities of cotton wool con-
sumed in the two countries afford but an imperfect
comparison of the number of people employed, or
the value of the manufactures produced ; for it is
well known that whilst we spin a great part of our
cotton into yarns for exportation, and our manu-
facturers are largely employed upon common
qualities of cloths, the Frencli convert nearly all
their material into manufactures, a considerable
portion of which is of tlie finest quality. It was
stated by M. Thiers,* in his celebrated speech upon
the protective system, that " tlie cotton industry
which in 1786 represented about a million per
annum represents now twenty-five millions." (I
have converted his figures from francs into pounds
* National Assembly, 27 June, 1851,
H 2
116
sterling). If this be a correct statement, the value
of the French production will be one-half of our
own, whilst the raw material consumed is less than
one-fifth. I confess I think there is some exaoo-era-
tion or error in the estimate ; but no doubt can
exist of the vital importance of the cotton industry
to the prosperity of France ; nor need I repeat that
it is wholly dependent upon the supply of a raw
material from abroad, the importation of which
would be liable to be cut off, if she were at war with
a nation stronger than herself at Sea.
The woollen and worsted trades of France are of
startling magnitude. I confess I was not aware of
their extent ; and have had some difl&culty in ac-
cepting the official report, which makes the impor-
tation of sheep's wool to amount, in 1851, to
101,201,0001bs, whilst, in 1792, it reached only
7,860,000lbs,, being an increase of more than
twelve-fold. M. Thiers, in his speech before
quoted, estimates the annual value of the woollen
cloth made in France at sixteen millions sterling.
But if the rivalry between the two countries in
worsted and woollen manufactures leaves a doubt
on which side the triumph will incline, there is no
question as to the superiority of the French in
the next manuf^icture to which I vill refer, and
which forms the glory of their industrial greatness ;
I allude, of course, to the silk trade, on which the
ingenuit}'', taste, and invention of the people, are
brought to bear with such success, that Lyons and
Saint Etienne fairly levy contributions upon the
whole civilized world ; I sa}^ fairly, because when
1
117
all nations, from Russia, to the United States, bow
down to the taste of France, and accept her
fashions as the infallible standard in all matters of
design and costume, there can be no doubt that it
is a homage offered to intrinsic merit. Nothing is
more difficult to agree upon than the meaning of the
word civilization ; but, in the general accej)tation of
the term, that country whose language, fashions,
amusements, and dress, have been most widely
adopted and imitated, have been held to be the
most civilized. There is no instance recorded in
history of such a country suddenly casting itself
down to a level with Malays, and New Zealanders,
by committing an unprovoked act of piracy upon a
neighbouring nation. Yet we are told to prepare
ourselves for such conduct in the case of France I
Judging by the increase in the importation of the
raw material, the French have maintained as great
a progress in the silk as any other manufacture.
The raw silk imported in 1851 amounted to
2,291,500lbs., against 136,800lbs. in 1792, showing
an increase of seveiiteen-fold. In 1792, thrown
silk did not figure in the tariff, but it was imported
to the amount of l,336,8601b3. in 1851. These
large importations, added to the supply from her
own soil, furnish the raw material for^ by far, the
largest silk manufacture in the world.
Instead of singling out any other articles I will
put them in a tabular form, including the fore-
going, for convenience of reference, drawing your
attention to the enormous increase in the importa-
tion of linen thread. I regret that I cannot in-
118
elude dye-woods ; for, owing to the account having
been kept in value in 1792, and quantity in 1851,
no comparison can be instituted.
Imports into France in 1792 and 1851.
1792.
1851.
Cotton wool
19,000,000 lbs.
130,000,000 lbs.
Olive oil
[16,000 tons.
31,000 tons.
Sheep's wool
7,860,000 lbs.
101,201,000 lbs.
Lead
1,010 tons.
26,100 tons.
Liueu thread
601,500 lbs.
9,421,000 lbs.
Coal
80,000 tons.
2,574,000 tons.
Ditto for steam
uavy „ „ ,,
78,900 „
Coke
« j> »>
189,000 „
Total 2,841,900 tons.
Pig iron
nil.
33,700 tons.
(wrought iron'and
steel)
6,000 tons.
Sulphur
3,876 „
28,315 „
Saltpetre
270 „
8,673 „
Zinc
10 „
13,480 „
Raw silk
136,800 lbs.
2,291,500 lbs.
Thrown silk
nil.
1,336,860 lbs.
I have confined myself, in the foregoing accounts,
to the imports of those articles which are required
for manufacturing purposes, because I wish to
point out the extent to which France is an indus-
trial nation, and also the degree of her dependence
on foreio-n trade for the raw material of her manu-
factures. I have said, elsewhere, that whilst go-
vernments are preparing for war, all the tendencies
of the age are in the opposite direction ; but that
which most loudly and constantly thunders in the
119
ears of emperors, kings, and parliaments, the stern
command, "you shall not break the peace," is the
multitude which in every country subsists upon
the produce of labour applied to materials brought
from abroad. It is the gigantic growth which this
manufacturing system has attained that deprives
former times of any analogy with our own ; and is
fast depriving of all reality those pedantic displays
of diplomacy, and those traditional demonstrations
of armed force, upon which peace or war formerly
depended.
The above tabular statement shews that France
has entered upon this industrial career with all the
ardour which she displayed in her military enter-
prises, and with the prospect of gaining more
durable and useful triumphs than she won in the
battle field. I have given the quantities imported,
in preference to the prices, because the mode of
valuation frequently makes the price a delusive
index to quantity. I may add, however, that the
statistical summary of the trade of France for 1851,
published by authority, makes the declared value
of the imports and exports amount together to
2614 millions of francs, or £104,560,000; of
which the exports are put down at £60,80,000,
and the imports £48.760,000. But, that which I
would particularly allude to, is the fact, that, of all
the countries to which their exports are sent, Eng
land stands first. " Pour I'exportation, L'Angl
terre se presente en premiere ligne." It appears
that the exports of all kinds (French and foreign
produce) to England amounted to 354 millions of
120
francs, or £14,160,000; \vliilst the exports of
French produce were 278 millions of francs, or
£11^120,000, being 20 per cent increase upon the
previous year. I do not know the mode of valuing
the French exports : it is evident that their prices
do not correspond with the valuation at our Custom
House.* That, however, does not affect the ques-
tion of proportions ; and it appears that of a total
of £60,800,000 of exports in 1851, England took
£14,160,000, or nearly one fourth It might be
worth while to ask the honest people who sold us
so large an amount of commodities, what they would
have to say to the five or ten thousand French
marauders, who, we are told, are to precipitate
themselves upon our shores some morning, and for
the sake of a few hours plunder, to convert twenty-
eight millions of people from their best customers
into formidable and aveno^ino* enemies ?
But I must not omit to notice the part performed
by the capital of France, in the great industrial
movement of that country. A most interesting
report upon the manufactures of Paris, by my es-
teemed friend M. Horace Say, has been published,
and for which he has received the statistical medal
of the Academy of Sciences. It appears that its
population has doubled since 1793, and that, in-
cluding its faubourgs, it contains at present
1,200,000 inhabitants. Few people are aware
that Paris contains a greater number of manufac-
turing operatives than any other city in the world. It
* Our official value of French exports to this country for 1851
is ^8,033,112.
1-21
appears that there are employed altogether in the
various processes of manufacture in that city
407,344 persons, of whom 64,816 are employers of
labour, or persons working- on their own account,
and 342,530 in the receipts of wages ; of the latter,
205,000 are men, and 137,530 women and children ;
and the annual produce of their labour amounts to
£58,000,000 sterling. It is estimated by M. Say
that 40,000 of these work-people are employed in
producing articles directly for exportation. A war
with England would not only interrupt the labour
of these last, but, by intercepting the supply of
raw materials, such as the wood used in cabinet
making, &c,, and obstructing the export of their
productions, would plunge the whole of that ex-
citable metropolis into confusion and misery. It is
fortunate for humanity that the interests of so in-
fluential a community are on the side of peace, and
we may safely leave the blouses of Paris to deal
with the 500 French pirates who in the imagina-
tion of the Spectator were to carry off the Queen
from Osborne.
Having thus seen that France is, with the sole
exception of ourselves, the greatest manufacturing
country in the world, and that in some branches
she excels us, — having also seen that in so far as
she requires a supply from abroad of coal and
iron, she is in greater dependence upon foreigners
for the raw materials of her industry than even
ourselves, I now come to her navigation ; and here
in the facts of her mercantile tonnage, we shall find
a remarkable contrast to the great development of
122
her manufactures ; a fact wliich ought to give ample
assurance to a maritiaie state like England or
America against a wanton attack at her hands.
I give below an account of the Navigation of
France to all parts of the world, and to the fisheries,
in 1792 and 1851 :—
1792.
Arrivals,
8229 Ships . . 799,458 Tons
Together
Departures. { 1,412,129 Tons.
7688 Ships . . 642,671 Tons
1851.
Arrivals.
9175 Ships . .942,465 Tons ^^ 1,974,968 Tons.
Departures. f Increase about -10
9735 Ships . . 1,032,503 Tons j percent.
Tlius, whilst, as we have seen, the importations
of raw materials for her manufactures have in-
creased in some cases twenty-fold, her mercantile
lonnage has not augmented more than 40 per cent,
or less than one-half. Tiie increased tonnage, re-
quired for this large additional supply of commodi-
ties, has chiefly gone to swell the mercantile marines
of other countries ; as the foUowino; fio-ures will
shew: —
Foreign Tonnage engaged in the French Trade,
Departures.
*1787 . . . 532,687 Tons
1851 — 12,720 Ships . 1,510,403 Tons
Increase about ISO per cent.
* This is the only report near this date wliich I can find.
123
It will be here seen how much greater the in-
crease of foreign than French tonnage lias been
in the trade of France ; a fact which, I may add,
ought to make her statesmen doubt the wisdom of
the protective system, by which they have sought
to cherish their mercantile navy.
The return of the Tonnage of British vessels
entering inwards and clearing outwards in 1851, is
as follows : —
Inwards. Outwakds.
1851 — 4,388,245 Tons. 4,147,007 Tons.
Our Custom-house records for 1792 were destroyed
by fire. But it appears that our Tonnage has
doubled since 1803. It is however in our steam
vessels that we have made the greatest relative
progress as compared with the French. It was
stated by Mr. Anderson, in the House of Com-
mons, that for every horse-power possessed by the
French we had twenty ; and yet we are told that
the discovery of steam navigation has conferred a
great advantage upon France.
The strength of a people at sea has invariably
been measured by the extent of their mercantile
marine. Judged by this test, there is not even a
doubt as to whether England or France be the first
naval jjower. In fact, the French themselves do
not question it. It is frankly acknowledged in our
favour by M. Thiers, in his speech to the Assembly
from which I have before quoted. Nobody in that
country has ever pretended that they can, or ought
to, keep more than two-thirds of our force at sea.
124
Their public men never believed in the sincerity
of our cry of invasion. One of the most eminent
of them wrote to me in 1848, and after a frank con-
fession of the deplorable state of their mercantile
tonnage, as compared with ours, complained of the
cry as a cruel joke, *' une mauvaise plaisanterie."
Intelligent men in that country cannot believe that
we think them capable of such folly, nay madness,
as to rush headlong, without provocation, and
without notice, into a war with the most powerful
nation in the world ; before whose very ports the
raw materials of their manufactures pass, the supply
of which and the consequent employment and sub-
sistence of millions of their population, would be
immediately cut off, to say nothing of the terrible
retribution which would be visited upon their
shores, whilst all the world would be calling for
the extermination of a community which had ab-
dicated its civilized rank, and become a mere band
of lawless buccaneers ; no, they cannot think so
badly of tliemselves as to believe that otliers, whose
opinion they respect, would ever give them credit
for such wickedness or insanity.
But I shall be told that the people of France are
entirely at the mercy of one man, and that public
opinion is now powerless in that country. There
is notliino; about which we make such mistakes as
in passing judgment upon our next neighbour.
Public opinion is as omnipotent there as in the United
States, upon matters with which it interests itself;
but it takes a different direction from our own, and
therefore we do not appreciate it. But it is quite
125
necessary that the people, I mean the mass of our
people, should be better informed as to the cha-
racter and circumstances of the population of
France. Teach Englishmen to despise another
nation, and you have goue far towards making them
quarrel ; and there is nothing so sure to evoke
our contempt as to be told that a people have not
spirit to maintain their rights against the arbitrary
will of a usurper. Now no people have ever
clung with more tenacity to the essential principles
and main objects of a Revolution than have the
French. The chief aim of the Constituent As-
sembly of 1789 was to uproot feudalism ; to found
an equal system of taxation ; and to establish re-
ligious equality and freedom of worship, by ap-
propriating to the State the lands and tithes of the
Church, and making all religions a charge upon
the public revenues : very many other reforms were
effected by that body, but these were its leading
principles. The abolition of the monarchy was
never contemplated by the Constituent Assembly.
The death of Louis (which I attribute to the in-
terference of foreign powers) was decreed by the
National Convention three years later.
Now, the principles of 1789 have been main-
tained, and maintained by public opinion only,
with more jealousy than we have shewn in guarding
our Bill of Rights, or Habeas Corpus Act ; for the
latter has been suspended, whenever it suited the
convenience of Tory or even Whig Governments.
But Napoleon at the head of his victorious legions,
the Bourbons with a reactionary priesthood at their
126
back, and the present ruler with all the advantages
of a Socialist hobgoblin to frighten people into his
arms have been compelled to own allegiance to these
principles. Insidious attempts have been made to
plant anew the genealogical tree, by the creation of
majorats, but the schemes were nipt in the bud by
public opinion, and public opinion only.
When told that the present Emperor possesses
absolute and irresponsible power, I answer by citing
three thino-s which he could not, if he would, ac-
complish : he could not endow with lands aitd
tithes one religion as the exclusively paid religion
of the State, although he selected for the privilege
the Roman Catholic Chnrch, which comprises more
than nine-tenths of the French people : he could
not create an hereditary peerage, with estates en-
tailed by a law of primogeniture : and he could
not impose a tax on successions, which should apply
to personal property only, and leave real estate
free. Public opinion in France is an insuperable
obstacle to any of these measures becoming law ;
because they outrage that spirit o^ equality, which is
the sacred and inviolable principle of 1789. Now,
if Louis Napoleon were to declare his determination
to carry these three measures, which a -e all in full
force in England, as a part of his Imperial regime,
his throne would not be worth twenty-four hours'
purchase ; and nobody knows this better than he
and they who surround him. I am penning these
pages in a maritime county. Stretching from the
sea, right across to the verge of the next county, and
embracing great part of the parish in which I sit,
127
are the estates of three proprietors, which extend in
almost unbroken masses for upwards of twenty
miles. The residence of one of them is surrounded
with a walled park ten miles in circumference. Not
only could not Louis Napoleon create three such
entailed estates in a province of France, but were he
to declare himself favourable to such a state of
things, it would be fatal to his popularity. Public
opinion, by which alone he reigns, would instantly
abandon him. Yet this landed system flourishes
in all our counties, without opposition or question.
And why ? The poorest cottager on these estates
feels that his personal liberty is sacred, and he cares
little for equality : and here I will repeat, that I
would rather live in a country where this feeling in
favour of individual freedom is jealously cherished,
than be, without it, in the enjoyment of all the
principles of the French Constituent Assembly.
Let us, however, learn to tolerate the feelings and
predilections of other people, even if they are not
our own ; and, recollect, we require the same consi-
deration at their hands, for I can vouch from actual
experience that the intelligent natives of France,
Italy, and other countries, where the Code Napo-
leon is in force, and where, consequently, the land
is divided amongst the people, are very much puz-
zled to understand how the English submit to the
feudal customs which still find favour here. But I
have never found with them a disposition to dog-
matize, or insist upon making their system our
model. I must^ however, say that we are egre^
giously mistaken if we fall into the belief, so much
128
inculcated by certain parties, that we are the ad-
miration and envy of surrounding nations. Tell
the eight millions of landed proprietors in France
that they shall exchange their lot with the English
people, where the labourer who cultivates the farm
has no more proprietary interest in the soil than the
horses he drives, and they will be stricken with
horror; and vain will it be to promise them, as a
compensation, Habeas Corpus Acts, or the right of
public meetings — you might as well ask them to
exchange their little freeholds for a bon-mot, or a
song. Let us then spare our pity where people are
contented ; and withhold our contempt from a
nation who hold what they prize by the vigilant
exercise of public opinion.
But the point to which I wish to bring the fore-
going argument is, as you will at once see, that
where public opinion is thus able to guard great
principles which make war upon privilege of every
kind, it is surely not to be despised in such a ques-
tion as entering upon hostilities v/ith England.
Nobody, I believe, denies that Louis Napoleon re-
ceived the votes of a majority of the French people.
In the election which took place for the presidency,
when he was supported by three-fourths of the
electors, his opponent General Cavaignac had
possession of the ballot boxes, and there could be
no fraud to account for the majority. With what
view did the French people elect him Emperor ?
To maintain, in the first place, as he is pledged to
do, the principles of 1789 : and, in the next, to pre-
serve order, keep the peace, and enable them to
129
prosper. Nobody denies that these are the objects
desired by France. Yet we are told that he will,
regardless of public opinion, plunge the country
into war. The same parties who make this charge
accuse him of keeping up the 4^ per cents to 105,
by all sorts of nefarious means, in order to main-
tain an artificial show of prosperity. And this
same person, we are told, will make a piratical
attack upon England, which would in twenty-four
hours bring the 4|- per cents down to 50, in three
months to 30, and in three years to nothing ! Last
year, we are told, was very inimical to the mental
health of the country, owing to the want of electri-
city : are these invasionist writers under the in-
fluence of this meteorological phenomenon ?
But the army ! the army, we are told, will com-
pel the Emperor to make war upon somebody. I
should humbly submit, if they wish to fight, and
are not particular about a quarrel, or a declaration
of war, that they had better march upon Holland,
Prussia, or Belgium, inasmuch as they could march
there, and, what is equally important, in the com-
binations of a good general, they could march hack
again. If our Government had any fear of the
kind, it is quite evident that they would bring to
our shores that immense fleet which is amusing
itself in the Mediterranean, and which it would
take at least a month to recal. There can be no
doubt, if an invasion took place, and it could be
proved that the Government had expected it, that
the Ministers would be impeached. But they keep
a fleet, more powerful than the whole American
I
130
navy, a thousand miles otf at Malta, and therefore
we may be sure at least that they have no fears.
Now, as I have already said, the army of France,
about which we hear so much, is not larger, in
proportion to her population, than the armies of
the other powers of Europe, with which she is
surrounded, and, inasmuch as that country was
invaded, without provocation, by Prussia and
Austria, within the memory of man, it is rather
unreasonable to ask her to be the first and only
country to disarm. Besides, a large part of her
army is in Algiers, surrounded by hostile tribes j
and, by the way, when that colony was first seized,
w^e used to console ourselves that owing to that part
of the army being liable to be cut off by sea, and
offered as a sacrifice to the neighbouring tribes, we
had obtained a great security for peace. But, in a
word, every body who is acquainted with France
(and they are unhappily in this country but few in
number) knows that the army is not like ours,
fished out of the lees of society, but that it fairly
represents the people. It is, in fact, 400,000 of the
young men taken 80,000 a year from the farms,
shops, and manufactories, and to which they return
at the end of their service; and, such being their
origin and destination, their feelings and opinions
are identical with those of their countrymen.
The French soldier is anxious for the time of his
service to expire, that he may return to his little
family estate ; the discipline and morale of the
army is perfect ; but the conscription is viewed with
disfavour as may be known by the price (from £60
131
to £80), whicli is paid for a substitute ; and any
thing which tended to prolong the period of ser-
vice, or increase the demand for men, v.'ould be
regarded as a calamity by the people. I have never
heard but one opinion — that the common soldiers
share in the sentiments of the people at large, and
do not want a war. But then the officers, — Surely
after Louis Napoleon's treatment of the African
generals, stealing them out of their warm beds in
the night, he will not be any longer supposed to be
ruled by the officers. His dependence is mainly
upon the peasant proprietors, from whom the mass
of the army is drawn.
But I must draw this long Letter to a close. —
What then is the practical deduction from the fticts
and arguments which I have presented? Why,
clearly, that conciliation must proceed from our-
selves. The people of this country must first be
taught to separate themselves in feeling and sym-
pathy from the authors of the late war, which was
undertaken to put down principles of freedom.
When the public are convinced, the Government
will act ; and one of the great ends to be attained,
is an amicable understanding, if not a formal con-
vention, between the two Governments, ivhatever
their form may be, to prevent that irrational rivalry
of warlike preparations which has been lately and
is still carried on. One word of diplomacy ex-
changed upon this subject between the two coun-
tries will change the whole spirit of the respective
Governments. But this policy, involving a reduc-
tion of our warlike expenditure, will never be in-
132
augurated by an aristocratic Executive, until impel-
led to it by public opinion. Nay, as in the case of
the repeal of the Corn Law, — no minister can do it,
except when armed by a pressure from without.
I look to the agitation of the Peace party to ac-
complish this end. It must work in the manner of
the League, and preach common sense, justice, and
truth, in the streets and market places. The advo-
cates of peace have found in the Peace Congress
movement a common platform, to use an Ameri-
canism, on which all men who desire to avert war,
and all who wish to abate the evil of our hideous
modern armaments, may co-operate without com-
promising the most practical and " moderate " poli-
tician, or wounding the consciences of my friend
Mr. Sturge, and his friends of the Peace Society —
upon whose undying religious zeal, more than all
besides, I rely for the eventual success of the Peace
agitation. The great advance of this party, within
the last few years, as indicated most clearly by the
attacks made upon them, which, like the spray
dashed from the bows of a vessel, mark their
triumphant progress, ought to cheer them to still
greater efforts.
But the most consolatory fact of the times is the
altered feeling of the great mass of the people since
1793. There lies our great advantage. With the
exception of a lingering propensity to strike for the
freedom of some other people, a sentiment partly
traceable to a generous sympathy, and in some small
degree, I fear, to insular pride and ignorance, there
is little disposition for war in our day. Had the
133
popular tone been as sound in 1792, Fox and his
friends would have prevented the last great war.
But, for this mistaken tendency to interfere by force
in behalf of other nations, there is no cure but by
enlightening the mass of the people upon the actual
condition of the continental populations. This will
put an end to the supererogatory commiseration
which is sometimes lavished upon them, and turn
their attention to the defects of their own social
condition. I have travelled much, and always with
an eye to the state of the great majority, who every-
where constitute the toiling base of the social py-
ramid ; and I confess I have arrived at the conclu-
sion that there is no country where so much is
required to be done before the mass of the people
become what it is pretended they are, what they
ought to be, and what 1 trust they will yet be, as
in England. There is too much truth in the pic-
ture of our social condition drawn by the Travelling
Bachelor* of Cambridge University, and lately
flung in our faces from beyond the Atlantic, to
allow us any longer to delude ourselves with the
idea that we have nothing to do at home, and may
therefore devote ourselves to the elevation of the
* Mr. Kay, in his valuable work on the education and social
condition of the people of the Continent, offers this sad reflection
in speaking of the state of things at home : — " Where the aristo.
cracy is richer and more powerful than that of any other coun-
try in the world, the poor are more oppressed, more pauperised,
more numerous in comparison to the other classes, more irreli-
gious, and very much worse educated than the poor of any other
European nation, solely excepting uncivilized Russia, and Turkey,
enslaved Italy, misgoverned Portugal, and revolutionized Spain."
134
nations of the Continent. It is to this spirit of in-
terference with other countries, the wars to which
it has led, and the consequent diversion of men's
minds (upon the Empress Catherine's principle),
from home grievances, that we must attribute tlie
unsatisfactory state of the mass of our people.
But to rouse the conscience of the people in
favour of peace, the whole truth must be told them
of the part they have played in past wars. In every
pursuit in wliich we embark, our energies carry
us generally in advance of all competitors. How
few of us care to remember, that, during the first
half of the last century, we carried on the slave
trade more extensively than all the world besides ;
that we made treaties for the exclusive supply of
negroes ; that ministers of State, and even Royalty
were not averse to profit by the traffic. But when
Clarkson (to whom Fame has not yet done jus-
tice), commenced his agitation against this vile
commerce, he laid the sin at the door of the na-
tion ; he appealed to the conscience of the people^
and made the whole community responsible for the
crimes which the slave traders were perpetrating
with their connivance ; and the eternal principles
of truth and humanity, which are ever present in
the breasts of men, however they may be for a time
obscured, were not appealed to in vain. AVe are
now with our characteristic energy, first and fore-
most in preventing, by force, that traffic which our
statesmen sought to monopolize a century ago.
It must be even so in the agitation of the Peace
Party. Tliey M'ill never rouse the conscience of the
135
people, so long as tliey allow them to indulge the
comforting delusion that they have been a peace-
loving nation. We have been the most combative
and aggressive community that has existed since
the days of the Roman dominion. Since the Revo-
lution of 1688 we have expended more than fifteen
hundred millions of money upon wars, not one of
which has been upon our own shores, or in defence
of our hearths and homes. "For so it is," says a
not unfriendly foreign critic,* "other nations fight
on or near their own territory ; the English everv
where." From the time of old Froissari, who,
when he found himself on the English coast, ex-
claimed that he was among a people who " loved war
better than peace, and where strangers were well
received,"' down to the day of our amiable and
admiring visitor, the author of the Sketch Book,
who, in his pleasant description of John Bully has
portrayed him as always fumbling for his cudgel
whenever a quarrel arose among his neighbours,
this pugnacious propensity has been invariably re-
cognized by those who have studied our national
character. It reveals itself in our historical favourites,
in the popularity of the mad-cap Richard, Henry
of Agincourt, the haughty Chatham, and those
monarchs and statesmen who have been most famous
for their warlike propensities. It is displayed in
our fondness for numerous monuments to warriors,
even at the doors of our marts of commerce ; in the
frequent memorials of our battles, in the names
* A Residence at the Court of London, by Richard Rush,
Minister from the United States.
136
of bridges, streets, and omnibuses : but above all
in the display which public opinion tolerates in
our metropolitan catliedral, whose walls are deco-
rated with bas-reliefs of battle scenes, of storming
of towns, and charges of bayonets, where horses
and riders, ships, cannon, and musketry, realise by
turns, in a Christian temple, the fierce struggle of
the siege, and the battle field. — I have visited, I be-
lieve, all the great Christian temples in the capitals
of Europe ; but my memory fails me, if I saw any-
thing to compare with it. Mr. Layard has brought
us some very similar works of art from Nineveh,
but he has not informed us that they were found in
Christian churches. •
Nor must we throw upon the aristocracy the
entire blame of our wars. An aristocracy never
governs a people by opposing their ruling in-
stincts. In Athens, a lively and elegant fancy
was gratified with the beautiful in Art ; in Genoa
and Venice, where the population were at first
without territory, and consequently where com-
merce was the only resource, the path to power was
on the deck of their merchantmen, or on 'Change.
In England, where a people possessing a powerful
physical organization, and an unequalled energy of
character, were ready for projects of daring and
enterprise, an aristocracy perverted these qualities
to a century of constantly recurring wars. The
Peace party of our day must endeavour to turn
this very energy to good account, in the same spirit
in which Clarkson converted a nation of man-
stealers into a Society of determined Abolitionists.
137
Far from wishing to destroy the energy, or even the
combativeness which has made us such fit instru-
ments for the battle-field, we shall require those
qualities for abating the spirit of war, and correcting
the numberless moral evils from which society is
suffering. Are not our people uneducated ? juve-
nile delinquents uncared for ? does not drunkenness
still reel through our streets ? Have we not to
battle with vice, crime, and their parent ignorance,
in every form ? And may not even Charity display
as great energy and courage in saving life, as was
ever put forth in its destruction?
A famine fell upon nearly one-half of a great
nation. The whole world hastened to contribute
money and food. But a few courageous men left
their homes in Middlesex and Surrey and pene-
trated to the remotest glens and bogs of the west
coast of the stricken island, to administer relief
with their own hands. They found themselves, not
merely in the valley of the shadow of death — that
would be but an imperfect image — they were in the
charnel-house of a nation. Never, since the lltli
century, did Pestilence, the gaunt handmaid of Fa-
mine, glean so rich a harvest. In the midst of a scene,
which no field of battle ever equalled in danger,
in the number of its slain, or the physical sufferings
of the living, these brave men walked as calm and
unmoved as though they had been in their own
homes. The population sunk so fast that the living-
could not bury the dead ; half-interred bodies pro-
truded from the gaping graves ; often the wqfe
died in the midst of her starving children, whilst
K
138
the husband lay a festering corpse by her side.
Into the midst of these horrors did our heroes pene-
trate, dragging the dead from the living with their
own hands, raising the heads of the famishing
children, and pouring nourishment into parched lips
from which shot fever-flames more deadly than a
volley of musketry. Here was courage ! No music
strung the nerves j no smoke obscured the immi-
nent danger; no thunder of artillery deadened
the senses. It w^as cool self-possession and resolute
will; calculated risk and heroic resignation. And
who were these brave men ? To what " gallant"
corps did they belong ? Were they of the horse, foot
or artillery force ? They were Quakers, from Clap-
ham, and Kingston ! If you would know what
heroic actions they performed, you must inquire
from those who witnessed them. You will not find
them recorded in the volume of Reports published
by themselves: — for Quakers write no bulletins of
their victories.
Will you pardon me if, before I lay down my
pen, I so far presume upon your forbearance as to
express a doubt whether the eagerness with which
the topic of the Duke of Wellington's career was
so generally selected for pulpit manifestations was
calculated to enhance the influence of ministers
of the Gospel, or promote the interests of Chris-
tianity itself. Your case and that of public men
are very dissimilar. The mere politician may
plead the excuse, if he yields to the excitement of
the day, that he lives, and moves, and has his
being, in the popular temper of the times. — Flung
139
as he is in the mid-current of passing events, he
must swim with the stream, or be left upon its
banks ; for few have the strength or courage to
breast the rising wave of public feeling or passion.
How different is your case ! Set apart for the
contemplation and promotion of eternal and un-
changing principles of benevolence, peace, and
charity, public opinion would not only tolerate but
applaud your abstinence from all displays where
martial enthusiasm, and hostile passions, are called
into activity. But a far higher sanction than
public opinion is to be found for such a course.
When the Master whom you especially serve, and
whose example and precepts are the sole creden-
tials of your faith, mingled in the affairs of this
life, it was not to join in the exaltation of military
genius, or share in the warlike triumphs of nation
over nation, but to preach '* Peace on Earth and
good will toward Men." Can the humblest layman
err, if, in addressing the loftiest dignitary of the
Christian Church, he say, " Go thou, and do
LIKEWISE ?"
I remain, yours,
R. COBDEN.
To the Rev.
P.S. From a 'great number of extracts which I
had thrown aside, I must add one from a speech
delivered by Mr. Windham, the leading man of
140
the Whig seceders, who became Pitt's Secretary-
at-War. It was delivered on the 1st February
1793, the day on which war was declared by
France, but before that event was known here. —
" He agreed that in all probability the French had
no wish at this moment to go to war with this country,
as they were not yet ready to do so ; their object
seemed to be to take all Europe in detail, and we
might be reserved to be the last." Here the whole
case as against ourselves is fully admitted by one
of the most determined advocates of the war. It
is needless to add, that if we were justified in goino-
to war because we predicted that France would go
to war at some future time, there never need be a
want of justification for a war.
THE END.
9 08S
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