UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 A 
 
 WHIG's APOLOGY 
 
 FOR 
 
 HIS CONSISTENCY; 
 
 IN 
 
 A LETTER 
 
 FROM 
 
 A MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT 
 
 TO 
 
 [HIS FRIEND 
 
 IN THE BOROUGH OP * * * *. 
 
 ' _____' 
 
 Lontion: 
 
 Printed for J, DEBRETT, oppofite Burlington 
 Houfe, Piccadilly. 
 
 '795- 
 9682: i 6
 
 Jtf 
 
 A WHIG's APOLOGY, &c. &c. 
 
 SIR, 
 
 THE intelligence you send me 
 
 >: From **** is by no means unexpected. 
 S Popularity has seldom been attached to the 
 ^ sentiments of a Whig. Whether he ads in 
 a party, or individually pursues the dictates 
 of his conscience, the true, consistent Whig 
 never steps aside from his purpose to close 
 in with the prevailing politics of the day. 
 og Educated in this way of thinking, I have 
 ^ always, as you know very well, entertained 
 JJ a great dislike for schemes which profess 
 a: to please all parties. No man succeeds at 
 SE this game who holds any serious opinions 
 of his duty. Wise, or honest politicians 
 never try it. In the awful period of our af- 
 fairs which we have now reached, where 
 scarcely a choice is left except between the 
 worst extremes, perhaps it is not easy to 
 g please ourselves. Yet more difficult is it 
 g so to shape and fashion our opinions, as to 
 ^ produce a common sentiment among any 
 B 
 
 301085
 
 Considerable number of persons. But at 
 once to satisfy those who may be disposed 
 to agree, to conciliate those who differ, and 
 to preserve our own consistency, seems a 
 young and sanguine hope with little except 
 its benevolence to recommend it. You must 
 not, therefore, expecl from me testimonies 
 of any stronger feeling than regret, on hear- 
 ing that several of my constituents at ****, 
 yourself among the number, have expressed 
 dissatisfaction in regard to some parts of my 
 late conduct in Parliament. To your sense 
 and candour I am now about to submit an 
 explanation of its motives, and entreat that 
 through your means it may receive the same 
 advantages of circulation and publicity which 
 have not, I find, been denied to the calum- 
 nies that were meant to ruin me in your 
 esteem. 
 
 You will acknowledge by this proceeding, 
 as I hope you will soon discover by the sen- 
 timents it is intended to convey, how little 
 I am disposed to quit that middle path in 
 which, as your representative, and in uni- 
 son with your wishes, I have journeyed on 
 for so many years. You will see that I 
 have neither the expectation of improving 
 our own state of things by any infusion of 
 the new principles, nor think the mischief 
 with which we are threatened by their pre- 
 valence to be averted by the dereliction of 
 those on which I have conceived the whole
 
 ( 3 ) 
 
 of my public pretensions to rest : that I can 
 neither soften the inveteracy of opinions 
 imbibed from the earliest times, and con- 
 firmed by the observation of every day, 
 which compel me to look to the system on 
 which government is administered as the 
 source of every ill that has befallen us, nor 
 change the habits by which my conduct has 
 been regulated to a moderate indeed, but to 
 a decided course, in compliance with any 
 modern superstitions, or with the terrors 
 they inspire. Strengthened and supported 
 by these habits, they did in effect determine 
 my choice in the hour of doubt which first 
 divided us, and must govern and guide me 
 through the tempest when .doubt and deli- 
 beration shall be no more. I know that it 
 will be far from an easy task to keep our 
 balance. Extreme liberty and extreme 
 law, anarchy and arbitrary power, and all 
 the evils of both, will alternately be danced 
 before our eyes, as it may suit the purpose 
 of eloquence to persuade, or of artifice to 
 puzzle us. All that we, plain unrefining 
 men, have been labouring to settle in our 
 minds under the impression of a stationary 
 duty, will be assailed through our fears, 
 through our hopes, and possibly through 
 our affections. Wje must endeavour to re- 
 sist them all. Alike unwilling and unable 
 to investigate the subtlety of contending 
 theories, we know that there is one safe, 
 
 B2
 
 ( 4 ) 
 
 easy track in which, while we are corn 
 tent to tread, we can never miss our way. 
 Where imagination is likely to mislead, or 
 passion to disturb, or sagacity to fail, we 
 must have recourse to our memories and 
 experience. 
 
 I own to you Sir, that I look upon these 
 times, big as they seem with events too 
 mighty for our speculations, with infinitely 
 less apprehension as far as my own actions 
 may be concerned in them, from having, 
 as I must think, begun at the right end, and 
 impressed my mind very early with a per- 
 suasion that the Whig doctrine I was em- 
 bracing was true, wise, practicable, and 
 would be serviceable to me in all difficul- 
 ties : that it was a doctrine from which no 
 circumstances of convenience could justify 
 my departure, as it was itself formed very 
 much upon a principle of convenience, and 
 even had in it something of foresight into 
 the perilous extremities with which we are 
 threatened. I had imagined it to be one 
 great quality of these principles, in the 
 doubtful crisis of public ferment when all 
 things else are fluctuating and insecure, to 
 keep the mind of him who should profess 
 them collected and unshaken ; nor was it 
 wholly without a view to such a time thatl 
 confirmed and invigorated myself in them ; 
 in order not to be caught unawares, and in 
 the midst of confusion and trouble to have
 
 ( 5 ) 
 
 that to seek which chiefly in such a moment 
 I should want to use. To be ever pressing 
 as far as they will go, discussions upon obe- 
 dience and responsibility ; to be even limi- 
 ting, and distinguishing, and defining where 
 submission should end, and resistance begin ; 
 to be habitually putting cases upon the sup- 
 posed ruin of the constitution, I hold to be 
 a most unwise practice ; but perhaps it is as 
 bad to make no provision in our own minds 
 for these disastrous possibilities. Indeed 
 there passes not a day which does not dis- 
 cover to him who has gained it, the full va- 
 lue of such dangerous knowledge. 
 
 You will neither find me therefore in 
 -what I offer you, making use of " princi- 
 ples too big for my purpose," nor compro- 
 mising, I hope, in one single thought or 
 expression the fair cause of liberty, in what- 
 ever corner of the world she displays her 
 banner. Ill would he deserve to be your 
 representative who proves recreant to that 
 cause. But the liberty I most love, is that 
 by which I have most been benefitted, a 
 plain, pra&ical liberty, such as she is to be 
 found in the British constitution, where 
 she resides, and through which she a&s. 
 Very warmly disposed towards the liberty 
 of other countries, I acknowledge my chief 
 solicitude to be for that of my own. I can 
 support no government therefore, which 
 does not both in its construction and in its
 
 ( 6 ) 
 
 march, discover the inclination and the 
 means of providing for, and securing this 
 liberty, not agreeable to vague and capri- 
 cious fancies, but according to the pro- 
 visions of known law, the long received 
 interpretations of custom, and the exam- 
 ples of the best men in the best times. 
 Every attempt to administer government 
 in any other manner, every system that ei- 
 ther from some error in its plan, or some 
 great depravity in the persons chosen to 
 give it enecl, is not capable of being made 
 to harmonize with these principles, I hold 
 to be vicious, destructive, and such as to 
 call for our opposition to it by all lawful 
 methods. If upon the occurrence of any 
 extraordinary emergency, there should 
 arise a necessity of co-operating with those 
 who for the time being are entrusted with 
 the direction of the public force, it will be 
 incumbent upon all Persons who think in 
 general as I do, upon the subjecl of go- 
 vernment, carefully to distinguish a casual 
 support, which necessity rather extorts 
 than preference bestows, from that per- 
 sonal confidence which arises from the opi- 
 nion that power is in the hands of those 
 who deserve it most, and can use it best. 
 But the duty of general mistrust remains 
 unaltered. It is of a severe., vigilant, ac- 
 tive quality ; and any suspension of it de- 
 mands, prima facie, an explanation, which
 
 ( 7 ) 
 
 I will not deny may either be found in the 
 notoriety of imminent danger, or deduced 
 from the reasonable probability of it. I 
 have ever been of the number of those who 
 rejecl the do6lrine of agency, and deny 
 that members of parliament are bound at 
 all times, and indiscriminately, to obey 
 what are called instructions from their con- 
 stituents. But if you admit (as I think you 
 do) to me that, as members of parliament, 
 we are not in a state of servile depen- 
 dence which precludes in what we do for 
 your service all exercise of our discretion, 
 we must concede, on our side, that in charg- 
 ing ourselves with so heavy a trust we make 
 ourselves parties to a cause the very first 
 obligation of which is to see it to its end: 
 not to abandon the conclusion of it on any 
 sudden caprice of ours, or in obedience to 
 any foreign impulse whatever. Taking 
 upon us to judge of what is best for those 
 who send us hither, they surely will have 
 just ground of complaint against us if we 
 are led off from the practical duties of the 
 public life we have embraced by wbims and 
 fancies, or driven into the arms of what we 
 think in our consciences a corrupt, an in- 
 capable, and a treacherous administration, 
 by the dread, forsooth, that our persever- 
 ance in hostility to it will afford aid to 
 some silly projectors. They must think us 
 mere triflers indeed if we suffer these ter-
 
 ( 8 ) 
 
 rors not only to disarm our vigilance, but 
 to invade our dearest attachments, and tri- 
 umph over formed and solid friendships, 
 the growth of many years, and many tri- 
 als. For myself I will frankly acknow- 
 ledge that I would rather obtain the cha 
 rafter of a diligent member of parliament, 
 constantly aud assiduously in his place, 
 watching the conduct of ministers, than be 
 the author of any one of those contrivan- 
 ces which is to perfect our crazy system, 
 and drive away strife and wickedness from 
 the world, or even the most renowned of 
 those dissertations in which alone the me- 
 mory of such projects will live by the elo- 
 quence with which they are reprobated. 
 In these narrow trammels your represen- 
 tative is content to walk, nor is he dis- 
 gusted with the humility of his pursuits by 
 the consideration that to execute their ob- 
 jecls with fidelity has hitherto been found 
 sufficient to employ the largest faculties of 
 the human mind during the longest period 
 alloted to human existence, is a scope for 
 the most a&ive benevolence, and the high- 
 est virtue, and the proudest genius that 
 ever illuminated the earth. 
 
 If such feelings unfit me for an associa- 
 tion either with those lofty spirits who 
 would regenerate, or those who would en- 
 slave mankind, they suit at least the sphere 
 in which it has been your will that I should
 
 ( 9 ) 
 
 move. They have taught me to be content 
 with the good within my reach, and to 
 preserve for you and defend to the utmost 
 that which I have ever esteemed a sys- 
 tem of real and substantial liberty. What 
 shall be our course hereafter, perhaps it is 
 in the sagacity of few to discern, and in 
 the power of none to determine. We are, 
 indeed, in a situation the dangers of which 
 lean limit to no description, or degree: a 
 situation in which the ills we know not, 
 scarcely can suppress the ills we have; one 
 from which if ever we escape we shall owe 
 more to chance and patience than I fear 
 either to our wisdom or our virtue. Mi- 
 nisters themselves have told you that it 
 can no longer be dissembled. I write to 
 you Sir, indeed, under the most awful im- 
 pressions. I conceive myself to be taking 
 a solemn and a last leave of all that from 
 my infancy I have held dear in the political 
 establishment of my country. This con- 
 test has generated a way of thinking on 
 the topics of ordinary life so intirely its 
 own that whatever may be the end of our 
 present troubles I see little hope of reviv- 
 ing any one genuine constitutional feeling 
 among us. I know not how it may strike 
 you and the generality of those for whom 
 this letter is meant, but for myself I have 
 the sad consolation of reflecting that it 
 does not come upon me by surprize. For 
 C
 
 this day of death I have been long prepar- 
 ing. Early and continued adversity has 
 taught me in what posture to receive the 
 blow. Take it not amiss therefore, that, in 
 this temper of mind, I think lightly of the 
 value of any defence or apology whatever; 
 or that what I offer should be rather in the 
 spirit of warning to you, than vindication 
 of myself. I am far from indifferent to 
 the good opinion of my fellow-citizens in 
 general : least of all to your's, to whom 
 have been dedicated the labours of my life : 
 but we have now reached that state from 
 which all factitious relations must disap- 
 pear. The reward of honest service, or 
 the punishment of guilty versatility must 
 wait the decision of an age yet too distant 
 from our own to be swayed by any com- 
 mon reciprocations of esteem or flattery 
 between us. He that is thoroughly im- 
 pressed with a sense of this as of a truth he 
 is about to experience, feels himself in a si- 
 tuation in which, if he cannot be silent, it is 
 easiest for him to be sincere. Nothing re- 
 mains to divert his attention from the scene 
 that is closing upon his eyes. Nothing on 
 this side society to interest his hopes or 
 alarm his fears. His exertions have been 
 given to his country ; his accounts are rea- 
 dy ; the rest is for his fame. 
 
 Had I therefore no better hold upon 
 your good opinion, I should expeft some
 
 Credit fbr my motives from having under- 
 taken to explain them to you at a moment 
 in which no dissimulation can avail me. 
 Which ever of the two mischiefs by which 
 this isle is frighted from her propriety shall 
 become prevalent, there is equally an end 
 of all the service you can receive from 
 men of my principles. The habits of our 
 whole lives have confirmed us so much in 
 enmity to both, that we must hope for as 
 little lenity from those they call jacobins, 
 as we receive from those by whom jaco- 
 binism is imputed to us. As we still think, 
 and mean, while we have the power, to aft 
 upon the persuasion, that between jacobin- 
 ism, (as the phrase runs, and the system of 
 those who have undertaken to cure it, 
 there is a medium, and that medium our 
 constitution, proscription and persecution 
 are the mildest destinies that await us from 
 either. By the first of these factions we 
 are called the advocates of slavery : the 
 second already prepares its fire and faggot 
 to cure us of republicanism. All this is in 
 order. Let me add, such are precisely the 
 sort of accusations, I would wish to come 
 from .such quarters. From me therefore, 
 as they deter me from no duty, they shall 
 draw no complaint. Who indeed, from 
 such adversaries ever hopes for plain deal- 
 ing? Why should I expe6l that Ministers, 
 with whom we are first at issue on a ques- 
 
 C 2
 
 tion of immediate preservation, would de- 
 part from their usual practice, and disco- 
 ver towards men who think as I do, any 
 of the mercy of a fair and liberal hostility? 
 To desist from misrepresentation were to 
 confess themselves conquered. At present 
 it is some proof of spirit, at least among* 
 those who have taste to admire such mi- 
 nisters, that misfortunes which have bowed 
 down the pride of their country, possess 
 no power over the stubborn malice of their 
 defamation, or lower their tone to one sin- 
 gle sentiment of truth or reason. Who 
 shall undertake for such men that they will 
 learn moderation from adversity? They 
 over whose heads the American war has 
 passed without instructing them in any 
 thing but the tricLs by which wars are sup- 
 ported, may well calculate upon putting off 
 the hour of repentance and retribution. 
 These are the spoiled children of a credu- 
 lous dotard people who encourage their 
 froward malice to rail at and scold at their 
 pleasure all the old faithful servants of the 
 mansion. But we shall receive our dismis- 
 sion from no hands but your's : we shall 
 take none of their insolent warnings, or 
 leave them to the bent of their own mis- 
 chevious inclinations. Then let them call 
 jacobin till the very echo is hoarse. 
 
 Do me the justice to believe, that if I 
 have so long deferred submitting these
 
 ( 13 ) 
 
 matters to you, as certainly it was known 
 to n?e long ago that we had ceased to 
 think alike upon publick affairs, I have 
 been actuated neither by disregard to 
 your wishes, nor by any desire of shunning 
 enquiry. All of you remember and la- 
 ment the separation of the Whig party. 
 With no means of averting that misfor- 
 tune beyond the influence of my indivi- 
 dual voice, it happened to me to be near 
 enough to witness the origin of many of 
 those measures which brought it about. 
 Yet although withheld from participating 
 in them by a mixed sentiment of regret 
 and distaste, I could not avoid taking my 
 share, as a servant of the publick, in the 
 consequences to which they led. Thus 
 circumstanced, and knowing that the jus- 
 tification of ourselves is often mistaken for 
 an attack on those who differ from us, I 
 carefully abstained from any step which 
 might tend to throw impediment in the 
 way of conciliation. While there was a 
 chance that time, reason, the magnitude of 
 events, and the impending dangers of our 
 country, could heal our divisions, and 
 bring men, in spite of artifice and refine- 
 ment, to a6l upon some acknowledged 
 view of our situation, I was willing to lee 
 matters quietly take their course, and 
 risque my vindication with you upon the 
 general settlement of our party difference?
 
 ( 14 ) 
 
 with each other. Long, therefore, did I 
 watch their progress, in mute restraint and 
 painful expectation. That period is pas- 
 sed. Nothing now remains but to per- 
 form the last sad offices, and give to the 
 grave all the fond hopes with which our 
 long union and consistency had inspired 
 me. Released from this sweet bondage, ill 
 exchanged for the barren freedom of indi- 
 viduality, I can now fully go into the par- 
 ticulars of my conduct during three years 
 of as sharp and trying difficulty as it ever 
 fell to the lot of man to struggle with. 
 What that conducl is, how it accords with 
 that which preceded it, what promise it 
 offers for the future, if the future shall yet 
 be ours, these are questions which I can 
 now desire you to sift, and probe to the 
 bottom, with as little fear for others as I 
 ever entertained for myself. Not that I 
 can yet promise to trace with a steady hand 
 the story of our unfortunate divisions. 
 Who that remembers the proud party 
 assembled under the auspices of the mar* 
 quis of Rockingham, and whose objeft it 
 was to form a balance against even the 
 crown itself in favour of the people, and 
 the popular part of our constitution- who 
 that has to boast a share in its immortal 
 afts, can contemplate without sorrow, or 
 describe without shame, the spectacle of 
 ruin and degradation it now exhibits ; dis
 
 ( '5 > 
 
 persed and dishonoured, its chiefs in 
 hopeless bondage to the power they had 
 combined to limit, and that haughty in- 
 strument of its will from whose hands they 
 would have torn its symbols ? For one, I 
 am wholly unfit for this task. I cannot 
 begin a fresh conflict while the wounds are 
 yet green which were dealt me in the last, 
 from little less than a brother's hand. I 
 think that I know as well as any man what 
 it is to aft from a sense of duty. Severe 
 and inflexible, it forces us to keep our 
 ground, and bear up against the public 
 evils brought on by the ill considered mea- 
 sures often of our best friends. But more 
 is not to be exj>e6ted. Nature and our 
 hearts are beyond its jurisdiction. Pardon, 
 Sir, these infirmities, if such they are, and 
 think not the worse of my defence if it 
 spare them all reproach, and confine itself, 
 as far as they may be concerned, to sugges- 
 tions for their own prudence. 
 
 Indeed, with every sentiment of pre- 
 ference for the side I have chosen, I am 
 not disposed to push my condemnation of 
 others further than the circumstances 
 themselves demand. You would not have 
 me rake in the filth and mire of accusa- 
 tions which I have a thousand times repro- 
 bated when in the mouths of their worst 
 enemies, for the sake of a discovery which, 
 if true, must destroy all future confidence
 
 16 
 
 in man, by degrading human nature in 
 some of its fairest examples. It is to my 
 shame, perhaps, but I own that my way 
 of feeling is quite the reverse. Instead of 
 searching for common places against the 
 former Whigs in the old magazines of 
 scurrility, first collected by the malignant 
 activity of their present associates, I con- 
 fess that the separation from persons in 
 whose society I have passed a long and 
 toilsome period of life with little sense of 
 its cares, never recurs to me without re- 
 newing the most painful emotions. Possi- 
 bly it is the size of this misfortune that im- 
 poses silence on all the fretful feelings 
 which beget complaint and its correspond- 
 ing animosities. The great national ad- 
 versity which this separation has brought 
 home to us, a&s upon me as adversity 
 ought, by subjugating the minor passions 
 to its mighty law, arid cleansing them from 
 the feculence of uncharitableness and re- 
 venge. No, Sir, it was not a paltry ea- 
 gerness for power, or place, which rent 
 asunder this generous combination of ta- 
 lents and virtues. Never shall the just 
 resentments of abjured friendship teach me 
 thus to calumniate the services of so many 
 trying years. The whole of their conduct 
 who have separated from us, (I speak with 
 the exception of a very few) originates in 
 a sincere, but in my opinion, ill-founded
 
 { '7 ) 
 
 alarm. I think by mistaking the proximity 
 of their own description of danger, they 
 mistook the nature and true species of our 
 danger itself. In fa6l the point from which 
 the two branches of our party diverged, 
 was so near to the sentiments and princi- 
 ples of each, that many persons who have 
 been able to contemplate without passion 
 the events which brought it about, have 
 wondered why it ever happened. It may 
 sound somewhat paradoxical to those who 
 look only to things as they find them but 
 to me it seems, and this aggravates the 
 misfortune an hundred fold, -that we se- 
 parated with no difference of principle, 
 properly so called, under the influence of 
 nothing corrupt or disreputable, and with 
 every disposition in the world to keep to- 
 gether. Those causes which produce dis- 
 union among common men, in the com- 
 mon affairs of the world, were here sup- 
 plied first, by a great and generally admit- 
 ted pressure of circumstances, and se- 
 condly, by a system of well-contrived, me- 
 thodized cunning, which called up by turns 
 to its aid, with a dexterity scarcely credi- 
 ble even in the highest finisher of small 
 frauds, the angry vehemence of some, the 
 honest prejudices of others, and the fat, 
 idiot imbecility of the people at large. 
 Let me not be thought to lessen the impor- 
 tance of those points on which we differed. 
 D
 
 Alas! the world is bearing bloody testi- 
 mony to it at this hour. We owe to this 
 strange, and perverted way of seeing the 
 same subject, and the obstinate pursuit of 
 the measures it has suggested, the miseries 
 of a dreadful war, and the still increasing 
 bitterness of our domestic dissentions. 
 You will understand me therefore as speak- 
 ing of the character of our differences 
 when I venture to class them rather with 
 those which are derived from considera- 
 tions of policy and prudence, than with 
 those which flow from opposing principle. 
 Such I think you will find them to be in 
 general. Wide, deep, irreconcileable in 
 their present state, but in their origin so 
 nice and narrow, as to be traceable to a 
 co-incidence of principle, and in many 
 things even to a similarity, as to means, in 
 some of the most essential articles of nati- 
 onal interest. 
 
 Yielding thus at last to a necessity I al- 
 ways acknowledged, of submitting to those 
 who have, through me, an interest so im- 
 mediate and particular in the public trans- 
 actions, a full explanation of my share in 
 them, I come to demand judgment at your 
 hands. Impressed, however, with a sense of 
 the extreme delicacy of this subject, as well as 
 of its importance, since possibly the course 
 of our future lives may receive its bent and
 
 ( '9 ) 
 
 dire6lion from our conduct now as ex- . 
 plained by our motives, I cannot, Sir, think 
 of trusting this task out of my own hands. 
 As little can I undertake it for any one 
 else. I must beg you, therefore, to con- 
 sider the sentiments you may meet with 
 here, as those for which I alone am res- 
 ponsible ; and for that same reason, with 
 the exception of one single document, thus 
 put in my early claim to be bound by no 
 other. I am in doubt, however, whether 
 the piece alluded to can be stated as an ex- 
 ception. It is history. It is authority. It 
 rests upon the same foundation that en- 
 sures stability to doftrine, and obedience to 
 government itself. It is a memorial which 
 if every other title of its great author to ce- 
 lebrity were obliterated, would alone fix 
 that high character by one common suffrage 
 bestowed upon him in whatever corner of 
 the world his name is pronounced. Even 
 this sober age is not without its prophets; 
 but it is the triumph of reason that she is 
 copied by superstition. The latest poste- 
 rity to which the story of this day shall 
 descend, will recognize that intuitive mind 
 with which he looked through the dark 
 times before him at a glance, and discerned 
 in their embryo the evils of which in vain 
 he warned mankind. Mr. Fox's letter to 
 his constituents was written in December, 
 1792. In stating the motives of his con- 
 
 b 2
 
 ( 20 ) 
 
 du6l on his three motions early in that ses- 
 sion, his sagacity has traced an outline so 
 clear and definite, that there is no flying off 
 from it except by the denial of demon- 
 strated truth. Taking, therefore, that do- 
 cument for my guide, and grounding upon 
 it the whole of what I shall trouble you with 
 in the way of exculpation, I desire no bet- 
 ter than to go to trial upon the whole ques- 
 tion of our present state ; of the justice, 
 necessity, and wisdom of this war ; of its 
 effect upon your national honour ; and of 
 the security your government derives from 
 it, and from the system of administration 
 which it has created. 
 
 That which I find has been chiefly re- 
 proached to me by some of my most valu- 
 able friends, is an inconsistency, as they 
 call it, between my known opinions both 
 with regard to foreign policy, and our do- 
 mestic government, and my conducl in 
 Parliament of late whenever these subjects 
 have come under discussion. They think, 
 it seems, that a man so antigallican as I, 
 one who so much reprobates both the crimes 
 and the principles on which France has esta- 
 blished her republic, and who confesses him- 
 self so much alarmed at her victories, should 
 have given his support to the war quite as 
 a thing of course. They profess to be as 
 much surprised that, with my notions about 
 reforms of parliament, and other popular
 
 topics, I should have opposed any of those 
 measures which ministers have adopted to 
 discourage them. While these impressions 
 have gained ground against me in some 
 quarters, a very different language is held 
 in others. Little credit is given to my op- 
 position by persons who, mistaking the 
 whole spirit of that in which my principles 
 have engaged me, conceive that it ought ne- 
 cessarily to have embraced all those cir- 
 cumstances of accident which help to cap- 
 tivate light and giddy minds. How can he 
 be sincere, it is asked, in his dislike of this 
 war, who sticks to the notions of the old 
 school, and in spite of the revolution which 
 philosophy has accomplished in France, 
 feeds and nurses up his ancient prejudices 
 against her power, and jealousy of her am- 
 bition ? Of what value are those preten- 
 sions to patriotism, which instead of keep- 
 ing pace with the discoveries of an enlight- 
 ened age, obstinately rejecl all invitation to 
 improvement, and although equally detest- 
 ing persecution, assist its advocates to dis- 
 countenance every rising effort of liberty ? 
 Assailed in this manner by both sides, and 
 pressed by each alike with the nature and 
 urgency of the times, I have yet been hardy 
 enough to persevere in a middle course. 
 The result is what I have expecled. No 
 one is content. Really, Sir, under a full 
 conviftion of having done the best for
 
 C 22 ) 
 
 your service, I cannot discommend the 
 zeal with which men, living as you do at a 
 distance from the scene, are apt to canvass 
 these-sort of questions. I do feel that there 
 is much to be said in excuse for those, who 
 calling out in such a moment for decision, 
 which they are unable to see in any thing 
 that looks like an endeavour to preserve a 
 medium, have ,eproached me on some oc- 
 casions with fear, at others with much 
 worse. I have long observed that it is 
 with the greatest difficulty you ever acquire 
 a knowledge of the commonest fafts. For 
 the opinions of our parliamentary leaders, 
 your very best authority is a news-paper. 
 Opinions arising from facls, you are not 
 likely therefore to hear at any time ; but 
 when you reflect upon the sort of transac- 
 tions which are passing our doors every 
 da^, and the corresponding, commensurate 
 opinions they must necessarily beget, to 
 what a distance are you not thrown in 
 every attempt to come at unadulterated 
 truth? Indeed, I scarcely know how truth 
 is to get to you. All ordinary methods of 
 conveying a full idea of our situation since 
 France has become the leading topic, must 
 fall infinitely short of it. You can learn it 
 by no statement of facls alone, however 
 faithfully detailed. That situation, I fear, 
 is too nearly connected with our passions ! 
 These you must have the means of develop-
 
 ing and combining with fafts before the 
 clouds which obscure your sight can effec- 
 tually be dispersed. You must travel back 
 with me a great way to reach the true origin 
 of our misfortunes ; back to the sessions of 
 1791, and to that day, ever to be marked 
 with a black stone, on which Mr. Burke 
 declared in parliament his final separation 
 from Mr. Fox. 
 
 That was, indeed, a day of mourning 
 to the Whig cause. Then began to 
 rush in upon us, through the yawning 
 chasm left by this convulsion in our system, 
 the full tide of those waters qf bitterness of 
 which we have so largely tasted. The 
 more I reflect upon this event, the more 
 am I inclined to refer the whole of our pre- 
 sent misfortunes to that first variance in 
 our party. A very superficial view of pub- 
 lic affairs since the close of the war with 
 America, will be sufficient to shew the vast 
 ^influence which these two celebrated men 
 have possessed over the conduct of go- 
 vernment. Authority has great weight 
 with the people of this country ; trick and 
 contrivance go a considerable way ; cor- 
 ruption almost every where is welcome ; 
 and all things considered, government, in 
 times of peace, is, in all its practical parts, 
 a tolerably easy task among us. But still 
 something is wanted for shew. With all 
 these facilities, we require a pretext. I
 
 ( 24 ) 
 
 know there are many ways of depriving 
 talents and integrity of their proper ascen- 
 dancy ; and perhaps it is true, what is often 
 reproached to us, that the most eloquent 
 speech in parliament never gains an additi- 
 onal vote. Yet with all these bad propen- 
 sities, enough remains of the popular spirit 
 of our government to ensure to eloquence 
 and distinguished abilities a degree of in- 
 fluence on the general conduct of affairs, 
 sufficient to operate, surely, although im- 
 perceptibly, great public benefits. The 
 treasures that are scattered are rarely lost. 
 If sometimes they are thrown before swine, 
 and trodden down in the mire, they are 
 not unfrequently gathered up by the pro- 
 vident foresight of the minister himself, 
 and thus brought into circulation by a 
 shorter cut. Whoever has taken the pain? 
 to study the two great men of whom I am 
 speaking, must have observed the truth of 
 this. It cannot have escaped him that not- 
 withstanding their proscription from court, 
 and those official situations which give the 
 immediate means of service, they had in 
 their union, even under circumstances of 
 considerable popular odium, often discon- 
 certed and held in check the wild pro- 
 jects, and wasteful phrenzy of its ministers. 
 They led the opinion of the country often 
 against its knowledge, always against its 
 will. Such for many years was their joint
 
 efficacy and force ; but not until that evil 
 hour which called them forth in opposition 
 to each other, was properly seen the whole 
 compass of their mighty powers. Very 
 early in the French revolution we that were 
 the nearest began to tremble at their giant 
 play. I think it was about the beginning of 
 the year 1790, that an observation of Mr. 
 Fox on the conduct of the French soldiery 
 in a riot at Paris, drew from Mr. Burke 
 some very severe strictures upon the lead- 
 ers of that revolution. From that moment 
 the question was thrown open to disputants 
 of all sides : and here were discovered the 
 first symptoms of a difference which was 
 soon to shake society to its centre. It could 
 be no less. Men of their size could not 
 break company without dividing the world 
 between them. The party they belonged 
 to was not to be dissolved like a partner- 
 ship in trade ; neither could they, or either 
 of them, quit that party, without risquing its 
 destruction, and with that, the destruction 
 of those public objects which it embraced. 
 These lordly oaks, the pride of the forest, 
 had struck root into the constitution itself, 
 and could not be torn from its bosom with- 
 out loosening the whole earth around, and 
 withering the lesser plants that flourished 
 beneath their shade. 
 
 To lead in this great conflict of opinion 
 formed no part of the ambition of Mr. 
 E
 
 ( 26 ) 
 
 Pitt. Who talks of his sentiments upon 
 the French revolution ? Who ever heard 
 them ? Strange as you may think it, he who 
 pretends to the chief office in the British 
 councils, and to stand at the head of Eu- 
 rope in a war of opinions, never on this 
 most interesting subje6l has ventured one 
 single opinion himself, which, by any 
 chance, has excited common curiosity. It 
 was not possible however that the conduft 
 of a man in. his very eminent station could 
 be a matter of indifference to the world. 
 I do not censure him, Sir, for not taking 
 a part at once, and declaring in favour of 
 the French revolution as an example. As- 
 suredly it was right to see what would come 
 of it, before any thing similar should be 
 recommended to us. I am no enthusiast in 
 these matters. As far as I know of their 
 first constitution my dislike to it is very 
 great. But to leave France to the trial of 
 her experiment, was always in the power 
 of an honest politician, and I think would 
 have been the choice of a wise one. If 
 they who governed the British councils had 
 been disposed to aft in the fair, bond fide 
 meaning of such a determination, they 
 would have discovered no shyness of speak- 
 ing to foreign nations, in firm and becom- 
 ing language, their sense, not of the ex- 
 periment, but of the effort. This was the 
 utmost that could be required of any mi
 
 ( 27 ) 
 
 nister ; but so much, let me add, was re- 
 quired from any man holding that office 
 with the views of a statesman. Unhappily 
 Mr. Pitt had another use for it. If no opi- 
 nions of his were worth a dispute, his in- 
 terests were not a little concerned in pro- 
 moting the disputes of others. What sig- 
 nified it to such a first lord of the treasury, 
 busied as he was with his revenue regula- 
 tions and details, whether France should 
 succeed or perish in the attempt to limit 
 her monarchy? This was a point he left to 
 be settled among his adversaries. They 
 differed. So much the better. The time 
 would soon corne which by making him 
 the arbiter of their differences, must neces- 
 sarily leave him the master of their fate,. 
 Sensible of the vantage ground he occu- 
 pied, and that it was one from which he 
 should bf^able, in any crisis, to guide the 
 current of men's opinions just into what 
 channel he pleased, he found himself de- 
 riving strength as a minister from that very 
 circumstance which took away all consider- 
 ation from him as a politician. By the 
 part he should adopt, when a part was to 
 be adopted at all, he found himself enabled 
 to decide on no less a question than the 
 existence of the country, connected with 
 the perpetuity of his own power. To give 
 away such an advantage for the barren 
 purpose of doing good, never was dreamt 
 E 2
 
 of in his philosophy. A great party in the 
 House of Commons had long opposed his 
 measures, condemned the principle of his 
 appointment to office, and denied all credit 
 or character to his administration. It was 
 his first policy to break that party. He 
 waited therefore to see to what extent the 
 differences recently declared between the 
 two chief persons in it would go, what ob- 
 jects and what men they would embrace, 
 and how they were likely to be promoted 
 by the importance, and the growing pres- 
 sure of affairs themselves. 
 
 These three persons therefore, Mr. 
 Burke, Mr. Fox, and Mr. Pitt, the two 
 first distinguished by their renown, the 
 third by his unbounded power, may be 
 considered as laying at that time the foun- 
 dations of three systems for the conduct of 
 Great Britain, with distinft and* very op- 
 posite views. What might have ensued 
 from adopting either of those recommended 
 by Mr. Burke, or Mr. Fox, no man, as> 
 they have never been tried, will pronounce. 
 To that of Mr. Fox none of you would 
 listen ; and all the means of giving effect 
 to Mr. Burke s, have been squandered upon 
 the minister's experiment. To this there- 
 fore, I shall direft my chief enquiry; and 
 must request a few moments of your atten- 
 tion to a short, and compressed narrative of 
 some of the leading events which intervened
 
 between the debate on the Quebec bill, and 
 the sudden meeting of parliament in De- 
 cember 1792; in order to exhibit to you 
 those causes, drawn from a mixed view of 
 domestic and foreign affairs during that 
 period, through which the country was en- 
 trapped into the unexplained, discretionary 
 system of Mr. Pitt, to the exclusion of the 
 other two, and by which it has been pre- 
 cipitated into its present situation of unex- 
 ampled calamity and disgrace. 
 
 To begin with your foreign affairs. From 
 one cause or other not necessary to detail 
 in this place, Europe, at the first of these 
 periods, was in a situation of very consider- 
 able embarassment. The Minister, by his 
 restless intrigues, had successively stirred 
 up a war against the Empress of Russia on 
 the side of the Porte and Sweden, and a 
 rebellion against the Emperor in the Aus- 
 trian Netherlands. That spirit of disaffec- 
 tion which he had universally excited 
 against the Austrian government, by means 
 of Vandernoot and Van Eupen, a disaffec- 
 tion which in its consequences has visit- 
 ed Europe with the severest calamity it 
 ever knew, which has twice thrown those 
 rich provinces into the hands of France, 
 and given her, it is to be feared, perpetual 
 possession of Holland, had drawn off the 
 Emperor from the Russian alliance. In 
 the expectation from this event, of com-
 
 ( 30 ) 
 
 pelling the Czarina to accept what terms' 
 he pleased, his vanity had dictated to her 
 the conditions of a peace with the Turks, 
 and his folly was preparing to enforce 
 them. The result was far from flattering. 
 The Empress of Russia rejecled his pro- 
 posals, laughed at his menace, and defied 
 his power. To engage her to some con- 
 cessions which might have the appearance 
 of a salvo to his own honour, as soon as 
 the session was closed he dispatched a mi- 
 nister to St. Petersburg, whose abilities, 
 undoubtedly, were equal to any task, 
 and whose character in settling the terms 
 of pacification, if they should be unfavour- 
 able, might afford some protection to his 
 own. The whole summer, however, was 
 consumed in fruitless negociations. He 
 had failed to bully; he was content to sub- 
 mit; and there was an end of the question. 
 No sooner was this difference concluded 
 than an object of higher interest arose, and 
 the affairs of France began to occupy the 
 cabinets of Europe. The situation of the 
 royal family at Paris quickened the tardy 
 conferences at Pillnitz. Of these, the ge- 
 neral result is tolerably well known. It is 
 true that no final determination was come 
 to between the German powers, at that 
 time, to interfere by force in the affairs of 
 France. The fa6l is, and the advocates 
 for these princes are welcome to the whole
 
 ( 31 ) 
 
 benefit of it, that the determination was 
 provisional, and left intirely to the acces- 
 sion of the King of Great Britain. They 
 not only thought that an honest neutrality 
 on our parts would be fatal to such a pur- 
 pose, but that without our aftive co-opera- 
 tion the enterprise itself was impracticable. 
 But the coyness of our cabinet, whose first 
 Minister was covering his head with shame 
 for his recent disgrace, deferred the execu- 
 tion of this rash projecl:. In the then feel- 
 ings of the British nation no man could 
 expeft to be heard to the end of his speech 
 who should propose to disturb France in 
 the settlement of her constitution. Before 
 Mr. Pitt could consent to stir a step to- 
 wards such a measure, it was necessary 
 that it should appear to originate with the 
 country, and not to have been planned in 
 the closet ; and that the public opinion 
 sh6uld be so distinctly pronounced, as not 
 only to leave him without any immediate 
 fear of losing his place, but to afford 
 him, in every point of view, an exemp- 
 tion from all future responsibility. 
 
 These happy circumstances which ena- 
 bled him to preserve a decent exterior to- 
 wards France almost without the trouble of 
 professing neutrality, had the further use 
 of helping him to keep back any decisive 
 declarations in parliament, the effecl of 
 which might bring the disputes among his
 
 ( 32 ) 
 
 I 
 
 opponents to a point before they were ripe 
 for his full purpose. It was not worth his 
 while, for the sake of a few individuals, 
 however considerable in rank and charac- 
 ter, to risque a proceeding which by throw- 
 ing the whole country at once on the side 
 of Mr. Fox, might on the one hand, dimi- 
 nish considerably the extent of our party 
 differences, and render those which had 
 taken place of no benefit to htm, on the 
 other. Our first meeting in February, 
 1792, must have fully confirmed these im- 
 pressions. He could not avoid seeing how 
 strongly the publick opinion was against 
 engaging in any such confederacy as that 
 which had been projected at Pillnitz. Do- 
 mestic affairs, and the interests of our own 
 government, seemed to have a more pres- 
 sing claim upon us. That same House of 
 Commons which had pledged itself to sup- 
 port the extravagant measure of a war with 
 Russia for the restoration of her conquests 
 upon the Dniester, now unblushingly trans- 
 ferred its applause to the pusillanimous sur- 
 render of that object. That same House 
 of Commons, upon the statement of certain 
 corrupt practices at an ele6Hon for West- 
 minster, committed by a secretary to the 
 treasury, and which looked very like a 
 fraud upon the revenue, refused all enquiry 
 into his conduct. Practices of this nature, 
 not only tolerated but justified on the part
 
 ,(33 ) 
 
 of government, began about this time to 
 provoke a species of censure, novel in its 
 kind, and wholly distinct from that with 
 which they were met by the regular oppo- 
 sition. The writings of Paine had been ea- 
 gerly circulated. These condemned in the . 
 lump the whole system of our government. 
 They held up the theory of it as false, and 
 the practice as pernicious. Little managed 
 as were the terms in which they spoke of 
 monarchy and aristocracy, the objeft of 
 their chief hostility seemed to be the House 
 of Commons. Just at this moment, and 
 in the plenitude of their popular currency, 
 before the sober understandings of the peo- 
 ple could recover from its first impulse, and 
 deleft the mischief lurking beneath the false 
 but plausible doftrines contained in these 
 writings, the House of Commons, to 
 screen the imbecility of one minister, and 
 the corruption of another, is made to ex- 
 hibit in its own conduct an illustration of 
 the worst, and most dangerous of them all. 
 It occurred also to some gentlemen who 
 a&ed with us, that the conduct of admi- 
 nistration was not all we had to complain 
 of. They thought that these practices 
 began materially to affecl: the credit and 
 character of government itself. They 
 thought that no remedy remained for this 
 jgrowmg evil, but by procuring a reform in 
 the representation of the people, and pas- 
 F
 
 ( 34 ) 
 
 sing a bill for short parliaments. Sensible 
 at the same time of the mischief, it was 
 their wish to avert the danger, of the new 
 theories, u producing some moderate 
 plan, wl / limiting and fixing the 
 
 public ' -ion, should frustrate all 
 
 hope o J -g men from their first duty, 
 and gim ^ them a taste for desperate ex- 
 periments upon their constitution. These 
 gentlemen, although certainly without con- 
 sulting such of the party as they knew to 
 be adverse to the measure, imagined, it is 
 probable, that in bringing it forward under 
 the then circumstances, they gave no 
 grounds for a schism beyond what existed 
 upon former occasions, when it had been 
 discussed. At all events they conceived so 
 much J^igher of the importance of their own ' 
 scheme than of the necessity of preserving 
 the union and consistency of the Whig 
 party, that they resolved upon the trial, 
 and prepared every thing to give it its ut- 
 most effect. 
 
 Under these impressions they determined 
 against any mode of bringing it forward in 
 their capacities as individuals. They as- 
 sociated as a party. They gave them- 
 selves a party designation, and entered 
 into party engagements ; and in order more 
 thoroughly to obtain the sanction of the 
 country to their proceedings, they gave 
 notice in the month of May, of this year,
 
 C 35 ) 
 
 of their intention to introduce it early in 
 the ensuing sessions. r. t 
 
 If these gentlemen ever imagined that a 
 step so important in its nature could pass 
 by without provoking, from those who had 
 ever resisted what is called the reform of 
 parliament, a most determined opposition, 
 the event soon proved how much they were 
 mistaken. For myself I must acknowledge, 
 that, with the fullest belief in the good in- 
 tentions of its immediate promoters, I could 
 not see without the deepest regret, the party 
 with which I afted, and which I deemed 
 fully competent in its professions to every 
 branch of the public service, diminished by 
 the secession of those who appeared ready 
 in this manner, to sacrifice every thing to 
 their own scheme. But there were others, 
 of infinitely more weight, who in addition 
 to their old objections, were alarmed at 
 the complexion of the times. They argued 
 that the example of France could not be 
 without its consequences upon the minds 
 of Englishmen, that the question of reform, 
 must necessarily conned itself in the dis- 
 cussion with the proceedings which had 
 there taken place; that while the question 
 was of a remote, and speculative nature, the 
 agitation of it was comparatively harmless, 
 but brought so near to practice and experi- 
 ment as it now appeared to be, it grew far 
 more serious, and demanded from those
 
 ( 36 ) 
 
 who disliked it, a degree of resistance pro- 
 portionate to its probability of success. 
 They saw, under these impressions, great 
 additional aid afforded it by the means of 
 a party embodied for its prosecution, and 
 they knew no better method of defeating 
 it than by concert and combination with 
 its enemies. What they thought right, they 
 soon resolved to make effective. A mes- 
 sage from his Majesty to the duke of Port- 
 land produced an interview with Mr. Pitt, 
 in which it was agreed to check the mis- 
 chiefs apprehended, by a proclamation 
 against seditious writings. ^ 
 
 It was probably less to suppress these 
 writings than to shew the weight of that in- 
 fluence with which it was determined to re- 
 sist their effects, that they chose a measure 
 of this general nature which went to no- 
 thing more, at that time, than the acci- 
 dental circumstances of danger with which 
 they thought the question of reform to be 
 connected. Unfortunately however our 
 debates which turned upon so many im- 
 portant points of domestic government* 
 and now began to embrace those of an ex- 
 tended foreign policy, could not be carried 
 on in this adverse manner between the par- 
 ties who had set them on foot, without en- 
 gaging to a considerable degree their pas- 
 sions. The society of the Friends of the 
 People complained that this proclamation,
 
 ( 37 > 
 
 although in terms levelled against the wri- 
 tings of Paine, was in truth and effecl, 
 aimed at them. The duke of Portland and 
 his friends recriminated, by urging the cir- 
 cumstances of hostility towards them, and 
 their objects, which had marked the form- 
 ation of the society. The proclamation, it 
 was alledged, was temporary, and depend- 
 ent upon the circumstances of danger; 
 whereas the declaration to which the society- 
 had pledged itself, held up a permanent 
 objeft, to be pursued at all hazards, and 
 enforced by every means. Thus originated 
 a train of evils which circumstances soon 
 rendered incurable. The leaders of this 
 society, rejecting all manner of compro- 
 mise, which injustice to the duke of Port- 
 land I must say was offered. them, declared 
 their determination to persevere. Those 
 who concurred in the proclamation were 
 equally resolved to follow it up by that sys- 
 tem of measures to which it seemed ob- 
 viously to point. Between the two, the 
 real, solid, unchangeable interests of the 
 Whig cause fell to the ground, and were 
 forgotten for ever. 
 
 You see, Sir, that even if the war be- 
 tween France and the (perman powers had 
 not broke out, which it did about this time, 
 the opinions of Mr. Burke and Mr. Fox, 
 with respeft to France, could no longer 
 Jiave remained the subjeft of a mere spe- 
 
 301085
 
 ( 38 ) 
 
 dilative difference. Every thing began to 
 partake of it. The transactions of that 
 country were become gradually interwoven 
 "with all the domestic concerns of our own. 
 There was a French taste, sweet or bitter, 
 in the food we took for our daily nourish-^ 
 ment. How could it be otherwise, when 
 Europe all around us was in arms, when 
 it was known that the British court was 
 heart and soul in the confederacy, and that 
 she was only restrained from declaring her- 
 self by doubts, which speedily would be 
 done away, with regard to the dispositions 
 of the people at large? Such was the hu- 
 mour in which we reached the end of our 
 first sessions of 1792. It finished just as 
 Mr. Pitt could desire for his individual in- 
 terests. These every day were gaining fresh 
 life and vigour from the public embarrass- 
 ments. If he had not succeeded in totally 
 dissolving the Whig union, he had at least 
 effe&ed that which made it as much as we 
 eould do to keep together. The breach 
 between Mr. Burke and Mr. Fox was 
 widened, not only by the encreasing inter- 
 est which every man felt in French affairs, 
 but by the new matter which .had arisen 
 out of the discussions I have been alluding 
 to, and the new men whom .they comprised. 
 To push these dissentions still further, or 
 at least to find out how far they had ac- 
 tually carried us, Mr. Pitt, during the sum-
 
 C 39 ) 
 
 mer, opened, through the medium of the 
 present chancellor, a sort of negociation 
 for a change in the ministry, with some of 
 the leaders of the old opposition. What 
 were its pretended objects, why it failed, 
 who were purchased by his offers, or who 
 duped by his duplicity, are questions not 
 immediately within my purpose to investi- 
 gate. Enough is apparent to shew you that 
 he lost nothing by the attempt. Though 
 defeated for the present, and in some re- 
 spefts disgraced, he could always renew it 
 while the French revolution wore an as- 
 pect which might be thought menacing to 
 this country, and the Friends of the Peo- 
 ple pursued the objects of their associa- 
 tion. Circumstances might enable him 
 to succeed better another time. Events 
 of great and pressing importance were fast 
 approaching. On the loth of August the 
 jacobin party at Paris deposed and im- 
 prisoned the unhappy Louis. Such an act: 
 to a Minister with Mr. Pitt's views, how- 
 ever desirable at some distance, must have 
 come rather too soon. It seemed difficult 
 to put off any longer some declaration of 
 the sentiments of the British court; and 
 yet it was evident, notwithstanding the 
 horrible massacres at the prisons which 
 followed the loth of August, that a very 
 small proportion of considerable persons 
 in England, and none, absolutely none at
 
 ( 40 ) 
 
 all of the great mass of the people, was 
 disposed to declare war. In this dilemma 
 Mr. Pitt, like all men who play a little 
 game in great emergencies, did the very 
 worst thing that could be done. He re- 
 called Lord Gower from Paris, leaving a 
 pacific declaration towards the provisional 
 executive government established there. 
 To deceive the royalists, he took a step al- 
 ways in modern times regarded as a decla- 
 ration of war. To deceive the rest of 
 mankind he engaged himself to France 
 through the very executive council which 
 afterwards he refused to recognize, for the 
 maintenance of a strict neutrality. He 
 did that which by being amicable in words 
 and hostile in faft, left him at full liberty 
 to pursue his double game until he could 
 sound the dispositions of parties in En- 
 gland and put the alternative of war, or 
 peace, home to them, before he should an- 
 swer it himself. Fortunately for his pro- 
 jects this very revolution of the loth of 
 August was chosen by some vain societies 
 in England for the subject of a vote, and 
 an address of felicitation to the national 
 assembly. New food for alarm ! new ar- 
 guments for supporting the ministry! 
 Meanwhile the eyes of mankind were turn- 
 ed towards the march of the combined for- 
 ces to Paris. All controversy was sus- 
 pended ; Every interest seemed attached to
 
 the success or failure of that expedition ; 
 until the retreat from Champagne, and the 
 victories of the French in the Netherlands, 
 gave a bolder tone to the language of the 
 reforming societies, and brought out into 
 broad day the large views by which many 
 persons in them began to be actuated. 
 
 To keep these transactions' any longer 
 from pressing forward into our debates, 
 seemed just as little possible as it was to 
 debate them without hostility. With dif- 
 ferences of principle comparatively slight, 
 those that began to prevail with respect to 
 the mode, and degree in which Great Bri- 
 tain ought to take part in the affairs of the 
 continent, grew every day more extensive. 
 France had disgusted the world by her cru- 
 elties, and alarmed it by her ambition. To 
 temporize with the one, or to bend to 
 the other, entered as little into the views 
 of the great leader of opposition, as it 
 did into those of any set of men his Ma- 
 jesty could have chosen for his advis- 
 ers. Yet with every sentiment which 
 bespoke resolution in the substance, he 
 felt every possible scruple about the 
 mode; as he foresaw that it was precisely 
 upon this mode that the whole justice of 
 the question would hereafter be found to 
 turn, and that it would be seen whether we 
 had interfered with an intent to restrain 
 her ambition and aggrandizement, or to
 
 ( 4* ) 
 
 change her government and punish her 
 crimes. He thought, therefore, that it was 
 necessary to interfere, he thought that it 
 would be right to arm, but above all things 
 that it was indispensable to negociate. 
 This way, which he professed to be his, of 
 viewing the subject, totally, as you will ob- 
 serve, excluded from the consideration of 
 it all that set of reasons, in favour of war, 
 connected either with our own government 
 or with that of France, which weighed so 
 considerably with other gentlemen. In the 
 opinions of this latter description the des- 
 truclion, or dismemberment of the republic 
 was the best method of repressing the vio- 
 lence of the reforming societies in Great 
 Britain, and little difficulty remained, with 
 them, as to the mode of declaring war 
 against France, so long as they could secure 
 the co-operation of the other branches of 
 the confederacy. 
 
 Here was an opening the minister could 
 not miss. But the blow was to be struck at 
 once, and suddenly. Delay might bring 
 on explanation, and explanation would 
 ruin all. Early therefore in the December 
 of this year he issued a Proclamation call- 
 ing Parliament together on the 13th, under 
 the pretence of aclual plots and insurrec- 
 tions. Steadfastly keeping an eye on out' 
 main difference, a speech was framed for 
 his Majesty with a view to the closely inter-
 
 ( 43 ) 
 
 Weaving together, and by a solemn public 
 instrument making one cause of, the dangers 
 apprehended from the reforming societies, 
 and the transactions going on in France 
 and upon the continent. This speech and 
 the address upon it was to prepare the 
 ground for a set of measures founded upon 
 these dangers, with which the Duke of 
 Portland and those who thought with him 
 were sure ultimately to fall in. It was to 
 give the Minister this security for his place, 
 namely, that it would be the means of bring- 
 ing the divisions of our party to a point 
 before he should give any decisive pledge 
 to the public, as to the measures he meant 
 to pursue in that momentous emergency. 
 There was yet some difficulty in settling 
 the language of this speech. If the Minis- 
 ter should declare for war, without first as- 
 certaining what support he was to expect, 
 he risqued his present power. If he should 
 continue fairly neutral, he risqued all the 
 expected benefits of our disunion. What 
 therefore he found it safest to determine 
 upon, was a neutrality which should be just 
 enough to save appearances with the pub- 
 lic, but which could not in its nature de- 
 ceive the penetrating eye of Mr. Burke. 
 With the one, he obtained the credit of do- 
 ing all he could to avoid that war which 
 the other saw with satisfaction must inevita- 
 bly follow from the conduct he then pur- 
 G 2
 
 ( 44 ) 
 
 sued, unless some very sudden and sensible 
 alteration should take place in it. 
 
 To keep him up stoutly to this point 
 seemed the chief aim of that division of our 
 party, which began about this time to an- 
 nounce its separation from us, by some 
 high language in the House of Commons, 
 and by associations and engagements en- 
 tered into with other persons in the spirit 
 of direct hostility to the old principle of our 
 union. No sacrifice was deemed too great 
 to win from his wary policy any assent, 
 however cold, to the measures they were 
 projecting. Whatever his most vigilant 
 jealousy could exacl in the way of full se- 
 curity for his place, ail that could be asked 
 as preliminary abdications of the great con- 
 stitutional points on which they had been 
 at issue with him for so many years, every 
 reproach they had uttered against his in- 
 tegrity and capacity, every claim upon 
 their steadiness that private honour or 
 friendship could urge, all, all was thrown 
 in one undistinguished heap at his feet in 
 this frantic fit of zeal and fury. Now be- 
 gan to display itself the dexterity with 
 which he had conduced this whole in- 
 trigue. While in truth he had been court- 
 ing, and coquetting with them every day 
 since the proclamation against seditious 
 writings had announced their growing loves 
 to the world, by putting them under the
 
 ( 45 ) 
 
 necessity of taking the first open step, it 
 seemed as if they were courting him, and 
 pressing him to precipitate matters with 
 France against his more sober judgment. It 
 was a circumstance, trivial to all appearance 
 but which came very much in aid of his views, 
 that his seat in parliament had become va- 
 cant by his acceptance of the Cinque ports. 
 His absence for his re-eleftion left Mr. 
 Burke in possession of the House of Com- 
 mons during the three first days of the most 
 important period in which parliament had 
 met for a century. Assembling as we did 
 under the impressions which that gentle- 
 man's speeches and writings had produced, 
 and which the minister's violent measure of 
 convoking us had sanctioned, a great majo- 
 rity saw with 'Mr. Burke's eyes, felt with his 
 passions, and followed his cry to arms with 
 an ardour and enthusiasm little inferior to 
 his own. The Minister on his return found 
 the whole business done to his hand ; and 
 all of it the work of his enemies. A violent 
 war spirit was raised which he could either 
 quicken or retard just as it should suit his 
 own purpose. On all sides he was safe. 
 His was the past, the present, and the fu- 
 ture. Hymns of triumph, and crowns of 
 viftory awaited him for his final conquest 
 over the Whigs. The public praised his 
 moderation, and the whole responsibility 
 of the war was thrown upon the shoulders 
 of Mr. Burke and his friends.
 
 ( 46 ) 
 
 Such, Sir, was our meeting on the 13th 
 of December, 1792. In this short but 
 faithful narrative, I have as yet said no- 
 thing of my own conduct. The facts are 
 now before you on which you must judge 
 of it. The first head of charge against me 
 relates to the Friends of the People, and 
 through them, connects itself with that of 
 encouraging the other societies whose pro- 
 ceedings have been so justly and generally 
 reprobated. This charge, as against me, 
 is untenable in any one of its parts. It pro- 
 ceeds upon a supposition, that these gen- 
 tlemen and their society were so highly fa- 
 voured as to produce a considerable degree 
 of assimilation between them, and the fu- 
 ture views of the party, and a consequent 
 departure from its original objeds. Names 
 of high authority were whispered about as 
 countenancing this institution, and encou- 
 raging its proceedings. Enemies and friends 
 dispersed these rumours. From the one 
 they came in the shape of charge and accu- 
 sation, enforced by the aid of publications 
 universally disseminated ; from the other, in 
 that of self-congratulation and triumph at 
 the acquisition of such support, and by way 
 of encouragement to proselytes. At this time 
 of day it were fighting with a shadow to 
 expose the idleness of these rumours. 
 Even when they were generally current, I 
 thought the only notice they were worth,
 
 ( 47 ) 
 
 was to send you a list of the names of this 
 so terrible club. The sort of denial, how- 
 ever, which I found was expected from me, 
 went to more serious lengths. It was asked 
 why I did not concur in the measures then 
 projected, or in other words, why I did not 
 join the minister, against them? Sir, I shall 
 never repent the not giving you by my 
 versatility, this proof of my attachment to 
 old principles. I can never think the worse 
 of myself for the sort of rusty obstinacy I 
 had contracted from having been out upon 
 your service in all weathers, and which 
 kept me from veering about with every 
 gale which sprung up from Freemason's 
 Tavern. Certainly I disapproved what 
 was doing there ; Indeed, at that very time 
 I determined, (nor am I likely to change 
 this resolution) never to become a member 
 of a party in which their influence should 
 preponderate. But was there no keeping 
 to this without joining Mr. Pitt? Or was 
 there, after all, and admitting this society 
 to have had the worst views, any compa- 
 rison to be made between it, and him, as 
 to their respective powers for working mis- 
 chief ? Was I to forget this minister's early- 
 enmity to the marquis of Rockingham, 
 his uniform endeavours to destroy the 
 Whigs, his total disdain of all publick 
 principle, his incapacity for government? 
 Was all to be forgiven him, and the wrongs
 
 ( 48 ) 
 
 he had done the constitution during an ad- 
 ministration of nine years, at once to be 
 wiped away, merely because a set of gen- 
 tlemen had thought proper to bring forward 
 the question of reform at a bad time, and 
 in a new and objectionable shape? I have 
 much respecl, and very partial feelings for 
 many individuals of that society : I see no- 
 thing very formidable in Mr. Pitt's abilities : 
 But really, Sir, weighing this question as 
 a choice between evils, I could not pos- 
 sibly consent to rate them so high, or him 
 so low. The consolidation of his absolute 
 independent power, seemed to me the 
 worst death the constitution could suffer. 
 I speak as an anti-reformer. In joining 
 Mr. Pitt, independent of all its other evils, 
 there was not even a prospect of security 
 to us for any length of time, from the very 
 same dangers we so much dreaded from 
 other quarters. There was no reciprocity 
 in his treaty. We were asked to give up, 
 for ever, the principle of our opposition to 
 him, on his agreeing to resist the reform 
 for a time determinable at his own pleasure. 
 We were urged to draw a sponge over all 
 the crimes he had perpetrated to come at 
 power and to keep it, because about 20 
 members of the House of Commons were 
 going to try, in the year 1793, what we 
 had no promise from him that he would 
 not try himself in the year 1794. For this
 
 ( 49 ) 
 
 temporary aid which we did not want, as 
 we were strong enough to defeat the mea- 
 sure whether he afted with us, or not, we 
 were to surrender up all the great purposes 
 for which the Whigs, since the days of 
 Charles the Second, had held up a mo- 
 narchy of King, Lords, and Commons, as 
 the best of human contrivances to connect 
 liberty with government ; and we were to 
 take from his lips, and thenceforward to 
 ai upon, the law which in his omnipo- 
 tence he had pronounced in 1784, upon the 
 true nature, and balance of these powers. 
 To me, the alternative was of no difficulty. 
 It was too much, I thought, to put the 
 honour of the House of Commons, and 
 with that the whole of its value as a 
 controul over factious mobs, and factious 
 ministers, into the hands of a man only 
 known to us by his endeavours to destroy 
 its best functions. It was telling me just 
 nothing, to say that he had thrown off his 
 early confidences, and left the first instru- 
 ments of his power to their fate, when 
 every aftion of his life discovered so close 
 an understanding with them. All these 
 lures, thus artfully thrown out to decoy 
 the Whig aristocracy to his side, but ill 
 conceakd from me the desperate adven- 
 turer who but the other day, as it were, 
 collecting together a promiscuous horde 
 from St. James's and St. Giles's, had 
 H
 
 ( 5 ) 
 
 Stretched his desolating hand over the fair- 
 est portion of our inheritance. I could 
 not consent with Mr. Windham and others, 
 to call in a professed foreign enemy, in 
 hopes of converting him into an auxiliary, 
 and bribing him to defend one half of the 
 constitution by the sacrifice of the other. 
 We knew Mr. Pitt only as an invader. 
 Like his Vandal predecessors, I thought 
 that the exposure of our treasures would 
 tempt his rapacity more than it would gain 
 his friendship. I deprecated these coward 
 capitulations, of lazy, luxurious wealth, 
 this wretched barter of gold for iron, as 
 equally unbecoming our wisdom and our 
 honour. Would to God that Mr. Wind- 
 ham and the gentlemen who followed him 
 had recollefted the never varying destiny 
 of those who call in the aid of allies more 
 powerful than themselves. But the bands 
 of reason already were broken asunder. 
 The spirit of strange fancies was abroad. 
 Airy forms of mischief flitted before their 
 eyes at every step they took in this vale of 
 terrors ; until harrassed, and hunted into 
 madness by their own shadows, they fell 
 within the magic circle of the sorcerer, 
 where they slumber in the nullity, but not 
 the repose, of death. 
 
 You have here the precise degree of my 
 participation in the transactions of the 
 Friends of the People. Of any direft con-
 
 ( 51 ) 
 
 cern in those of other societies, I have 
 never been accused at all. Indeed the 
 whole set of charges brought against me, 
 is of a nature to afford me much consola- 
 tion. It is surely flattering to have it thus 
 publickly acknowledged by very acute po- 
 litical adversaries, that they have not been 
 able to reproach' me with one single aft of 
 venality or corruption. Their whole force 
 is strained to make out a connection with a 
 society whose measures had a supposed 
 tendency to encourage bad designs in 
 others. After all their sophisticating scan- 
 dals, this is the sum total of a charge which 
 was to degrade me from the rank I had 
 won after so many years of service, to 
 turn me adrift upon a treacherous and in- 
 hospitable element, and in the eyes of men 
 like you, to sink me into a fellowship of 
 guilt with the drinkers of blood in France, 
 and the rhapsodising mimicks of their 
 crimes in England ! 
 
 To exculpate myself from tolerating what 
 were nick-named " French principles," and 
 from favouring their progress in Europe by 
 the acquiescence of the British nation, was 
 another ground on which you reckoned 
 upon my support to ministers at the com- 
 mencement of this session. First I must 
 remark that it is with me, a great proof of the 
 insincerity of these ministers, that in such 
 a fearful crisis instead of doing anyone al 
 Hz
 
 ( 52 ) 
 
 which bore the appearance of conciliating 
 the divided sentiments of their country, 
 their chief study was to produce a case to 
 the statement of wh'^h no man who had 
 opposed them upon system could assent 
 without dishonouring himself. The foot- 
 ing on which they put this claim of assist- 
 ance from Mr. Fox and his friends, was 
 one which if acceeded to by him, included 
 the confession that he had so conducted 
 himself as to make it necessary that he 
 should be purged of certain crimes imputed 
 to him by giving some proof, which they 
 suppose he never had given, of his zeal for 
 the constitution, and for the liberties of 
 Europe. Before he could enter into a 
 course of good citizenship, it was necessary 
 that he should begin by acknowledging that 
 he had been a bad citizen all his life. Such 
 claims, from such men, could not be listened 
 to without indignation. They knew it 
 themselves. They had brought them for- 
 ward to be rejected, and in order to build 
 upon their rejection a set of charges against 
 us, adapted to the popular taste which en- 
 joys calumny, and the popular fears which 
 exult in persecution. But if honour op- 
 posed these concessions, reason forbade 
 them. Whatever had been the crimes, or 
 the triumphs of France, the measures of 
 administration were only calculated to en- 
 crease and provoke them, and to render
 
 ( 53 ) 
 
 the safety of Europe yet more precarious. 
 I did not support him, because he set out 
 upon a confused principle, unjust as far 
 as it could be understood, and leading to 
 a war which his conducl every day proves 
 to have been unnecessary. I did not sup- 
 port him, because with a party view, he 
 mixed up his schemes on France with con- 
 trivances at home in regard to dangers 
 which he, as well as I, knew to be false. 
 This, Sir, was an error, to say no worse 
 of it, in the outset, which admitted of no 
 remedy short of taking the administration 
 entirely out of his hands. In answer there- 
 fore to those, who, with a view of intro- 
 ducing by a side wind a charge against me 
 of partiality towards France, accuse me of 
 a slow sense to our danger, I think you 
 will collecl:, from what I have just stated, 
 that I met my colleagues to the full as 
 much alive to what was real in it as any 
 man of them. What indeed but alarm 
 could our situation both foreign and do- 
 mestic inspire? France was to be resisted. 
 What were our means? Was it enough 
 that we had a liberal parliament and a loyal 
 people? Was ability, temper, courage, in 
 those who were to preside over the go- 
 vernment to count for nothing? Was this 
 precisely the moment in which, exchanging 
 our experience for our hopes, it became 
 wise to speculate that ignorance, imbecil-
 
 ( 54 ) 
 
 lity, and presumption, to work all the good 
 effe&s of their opposite virtues, required 
 only to be indulged in the full swing of 
 their own discretion, exempt from all 
 check or controul of any kind ? Is this a 
 true picture? Who doubts it? Assuredly 
 not they who made these qualities in our 
 cabinet the inducement for their joining it. 
 Sir, that cabinet was every where, and in 
 every way, contemptible. Its characler 
 abroad was that of a set of inconsiderate, 
 troublesome, mischief-makers, without ca- 
 pacity to understand the complicated inter- 
 ests of Europe, steadiness to adhere to their 
 engagements, or resolution to execute their 
 objefcts. At home, what we had predicted 
 of them in the year 1784, and above all, 
 their inadequacy to make government res- 
 peeked, was daily verifying both by their 
 own confessed nullity in the season of such 
 mighty danger, and the absence of all pub- 
 lic opinion, expectation, and character 
 from their counsels. This was the cabinet, 
 so acknowledged by all, so described by 
 many even in- the honey moments of their 
 virgin vows, which I was to assist in defe- 
 cating and purging by a course of moral 
 quackery handed up to me from a school 
 of mountebank metaphysics, whose disci- 
 ples profess to cure the distemper by means 
 of the distemper itself; and who on a 
 scheme of logic well worthy of their other
 
 ( 55 ) 
 
 pretensions, argue that the more you in- 
 crease its present symptoms the more you 
 provide for its ultimate extirpation. Like 
 thosegrfl^j practitioners whocry about their 
 poisons under the hackneyed invitation of 
 " no cure, no pay," I was to join in per- 
 suading the public to swallow down this 
 trash, as a remedy for all evils, under the 
 ingenious pretence, truly, of affording Mi- 
 nisters a disinterested support. Sir, I had 
 as little inclination, as the country had lei- 
 sure, for these preposterous refinements. 
 Our situation called for prompt decision, 
 and vigorous aftion. That there had been 
 great mismanagement somewhere, was a 
 facl admitted. Looking about me to dis- 
 cover in what part our system was defec- 
 tive, my eyes beheld nothing in the main 
 pillars of it that could inspire me with a 
 wish for change. I saw a flourishing com- 
 merce, an ample revenue, justice well ad- 
 ministered, a people rich, contented, and 
 as adverse as I could wish them to the new 
 experiments of the day. I saw at the same 
 time a ministry generally acknowledged to 
 be incompetent to the preservation of these 
 advantages. Reasoning strait forward, it 
 seemed to me that as we had found out 
 the seat of the disorder, the obvious mode 
 of treatment was to apply our remedies to 
 the morbid part. I concluded that there 
 could be no question between the value of
 
 ( 56 ) 
 
 such a ministry, and the most trifling ha- 
 zard these advantages could be exposed to 
 by keeping them. It struck me as scarcely 
 admitting a dissenting opinion that this was 
 the time for us to renew, and bring again 
 before the public the substance of those re- 
 solutions which the Commons had passed 
 in the year 1784. Nine years had been 
 consumed by the Whig opposition in a 
 state of proscription and disgrace for the 
 part they had borne in those memorable 
 votes. The day of proof was come at last. 
 It was to be found in the aftual state of the 
 nation ; in the security of its constitution ; 
 in the care taken for the preservation of its 
 foreign interests ; and in the splendour of 
 its fame. But independent of all argu- 
 ments from mere consistency, it was my 
 firm persuasion that such an administration 
 alone, as the Commons then contended for, 
 could serve the country ; because it was 
 just the moment in which Europe expected 
 from us not only a clear system, but those 
 vigorous demonstrations which never can 
 be made but by a ministry fairly represent- 
 ing the country, and understood to speak 
 its sense. For let us not think we could 
 have deceived Europe, if to deceive her 
 had been our interest, by setting up that 
 administration as the faithful representative 
 of the national will. Foreign cabinets were 
 not so ignorant of the state of our parties,
 
 ( 57 ) 
 
 as not to see that, for a length of years, 
 there had been a systematick exclusion 
 from office of all men, of whatever rank or 
 services, who looked to power through any 
 means except the private favour of a cabal 
 at court ; that this system of favouritism 
 with all its attendant instabilities, had at 
 length prevailed over the best practice of 
 our ancestors ; and that so far from having 
 to deal with a strong, efficient state coun- 
 cil, they had in truth no other security for 
 the national faith pledged to them through 
 such ago vernment, than the word ofa court as 
 capricious as any of their own, and the 
 character ofa Minister who had betrayed, or 
 bullied, or humbled himself before, almost 
 every one of them in its turn. Very different, 
 according to my apprehension, were the 
 councils which were to give to Great Bri- 
 tain her proper form and station in any 
 confederacy that she might have thought it 
 expedient to accede to for the preservation 
 of the liberties of Europe. Very different 
 was the sort of leader she required to con- 
 duel her negociations, to wield her force, 
 and to calm, with the authority of his name, 
 the hostile and discofdant elements of such 
 a combination. 
 
 It was my opinion therefore, that instead 
 of attempting the chimerical experiment of 
 infusing any portion of wisdom or integrity 
 into that set of ministers, an experiment
 
 ( 58 ) 
 
 which in the first step towards its execu- 
 tion, involved the unequivocal sacrifice of 
 all that we had been contending for in your 
 name, it was our duty to get rid of them 
 by every effort of union and co-operation. 
 It was a case in which the attainment of 
 this great preliminary good, demanded, as 
 I thought, the sacrifice of differences ten 
 thousand times greater than any that had 
 hitherto subsisted among us as members of 
 a party. But if these sentiments were too 
 general to bind the conducl of a wise man 
 in the moment of consternation in which 
 we met, the circumstances under which 
 ministers called us together were such as 
 to leave no choice to those who disdained 
 participating in the most wicked aft of de- 
 lusion that ever was practised upon the 
 credulity of mankind. Need I dwell on 
 the disgusting fables oF conspiracies and 
 insurrections, the fortifying of the tower, 
 the contrived delay of all correspondence by 
 the stoppage of the mails, or lay open to 
 you the whole apparatus of political buf- 
 foonery as it was played off at one and the 
 same moment on the imaginations of igno- 
 rant men ? The whole, in my mind, was a 
 wicked, and a most dangerous trick\ since, 
 whether there existed any real cause for 
 alarm on other grounds, or no, the pre- 
 tence of a plot when the ministers knew 
 that there was no plot, was sure to create
 
 ( 59 ) 
 
 an alarm of its own, and to engage one part 
 of the kingdom (as too fatally the event has 
 proved) in a conspiracy against the peace, 
 the characters, and in some instances, 
 against the lives of the other. Yet this was 
 at least equalled by another evil with which 
 I thought the country threatened in some 
 warm speeches during this debate. His 
 Majesty, as it is known, had engaged for 1 
 the observance of a strict neutrality in the 
 affairs of France. Ill as I thought that neu- 
 trality either kept, or provided for, any 
 thing appeared better than the principle on 
 which a total departure from it was recom- 
 mended. There was always a hope, before 
 the sword should be appealed to, that 
 Great Britain by her situation would have 
 been able to meditate a peace for Europe; 
 not a mfere suspension of hostilities, but a 
 permanent pacification, which would have 
 sent France back to her ancient limits, and 
 the confederates to their homes ; which 
 would have left that country to the settle- 
 ment of her own laws, and the Princes of 
 Europe to salutary reflections on the im- 
 possibility of preventing it. I voted there- 
 fore, in compliance with these sentiments, 
 for Mr. Fox's amendment on the first day 
 of this stormy session. I voted afterwards^ 
 for the motion he offered on the 2d of De- 
 cember to negotiate with France through 
 the medium of an authorised minister. 
 
 I 2
 
 About this period my communications with 
 several of my constituents led me to think 
 myconduft was not generally approved by 
 them. You pressed me for explanations. 
 I sent you Mr. Fox's letter. This did not 
 content you. How, indeed, could it satisfy 
 men who believed in the facility of " frown- 
 ing down" mischevious opinions, who 
 thought France would fall an easy con- 
 quest, and who were eager to become the 
 punishers of crimes which cried aloud to 
 heaven for vengeance? Do you now see 
 the fallacy of these proud hopes ? Do you be- 
 lieve that Ministers have, by their measures, 
 gained the constitution more friends than 
 enemies ? or that they can conquer France? 
 or change her government without con- 
 quering her? Or in one word, that you 
 have not been made the dupes of your 
 high-spirited sentiments, and of some of the 
 best, as well as the worst passions of hu- 
 man nature ? It is my turn to be importu- 
 nate. I ask you whether every event that 
 has happened since the breaking out of 
 this war abroad, or at home, and every 
 part of the reasoning on which in this its 
 third year you hear ministers justifying its 
 continuance to parliament, does not de- 
 monstrate the soundness of those opinions 
 condemned so vehemently in those days of 
 your phrenzy, the profound sagacity, the 
 penetrating view, as well as the imexam-.
 
 ( 61 ) 
 
 pled fortitude of him who sacrificed his 
 ambition, his popularity, and hazarded 
 even his fame in their support? 
 
 Let us, on this subject, come to a fair 
 explanation. It is not one of the least 
 evils of your situation that you have all been 
 kept in profound ignorance as to what you 
 wished yourselves. Puzzled by your pas- 
 sions, you saw neither the path you were 
 about to quit, nor that which you meant to 
 pursue. Censuring me for my persever- 
 ance in opposition, what did you desire? 
 That I should be neutral? By no means: 
 I was to support somebody. But whom? 
 Mr. Burke, or Mr. Pitt? 
 
 You are not to imagine that this was a 
 matter of indifference, or capable of an 
 easy decision except in very easy minds. I 
 have already remarked to you that at the 
 commencement of our war system, a most 
 important difference of opinion subsisted 
 between these two persons. Mr. Burke 
 declared openly, and at once, for war, on 
 the broad ground of general policy and ne- 
 cessity. With larger views, a bolder ima- 
 gination, and far keener feelings, he avow- 
 ed his object to be no less than the restora- 
 tion, by force of arms, of the French mo- 
 narchy, entire, in the family of Bourbon. 
 The sentiments of Mr. Pitt were widely dif- 
 ferent. During the whole of this period of 
 Consternation, while France had settled
 
 ( 62 ) 
 
 herself in the heart of Germany, Had seized 
 Savoy, menaced Italy, and was advancing 
 to the gates of Holland by the conquest of 
 the Netherlands, he professed to be aclu- 
 ated by no other views than those of a most 
 rigid neutrality. Far from discovering any 
 danger to Europe from the progress of the 
 French arms, or any insecurity for the Bri- 
 tish constitution in the establishment of a 
 republic in France, Mr. Pitt never once of- 
 fered to interfere by remonstrance, media- 
 tion, force, in short in any avowed mode 
 whatever, until they had passed an absurd 
 decree about the navigation of the Scheld, 
 and put their red night caps upon the fe- 
 verish heads of some of our countrymen at 
 Paris; and then his very first step was to 
 negociate, (as he pretends to call his inter- 
 change of memorials) with these subver- 
 ters of monarchy, order, religion, and law, 
 for the express purpose of procuring from 
 them satisfadory explanations upon tkese, 
 and all other matters in dispute. While 
 Mr. Windham, Sir Gilbert Elliot, and 
 others, stated their separation from Mr. 
 Fox to have been because, as well upon a 
 principle of right, as upon a balance of in- 
 conveniences, he judged the establishment 
 of a republic in France to be a lesser evil 
 than the destruction which he foresaw 
 would involve Europe by an attempt to 
 prevent it, Mr. Pitt, with whom they dc-
 
 ( 63 ) 
 
 clared an union, avowedly went in princi- 
 ple to every length of Mr. Fox's proposi- 
 tion, preferring only to conduct his nego- 
 ciations through agents who might be mu- 
 tually disavowed. I will not accuse these 
 gentlemen of being influenced by any 
 wrong motives ; but own myself anxious 
 to make it clear to you, that between sys- 
 tems so very opposite a man of plain man- 
 ners might honestly doubt which he should 
 take part with, or whether with either. If, 
 for example, I had been convinced by the 
 reasons of Mr. Pitt, or to speak more accu- 
 rately, by his concessions to his adversaries 
 in debate, that no'thing could be so absurd 
 as the idea of going to war to restore the 
 French monarchy, and that the only dis- 
 pute we had with France related to certain 
 wrongs she had offered us, and to points 
 cognizable by the law of nations, I did not 
 see how it was possible to resist Mr. Fox's 
 proposition to appeal to that law in the re- 
 gular mode, by discussing, through persons 
 mutually authorised, the allegations of 
 wrong and injury under their different 
 heads. But if I had thought a war right 
 according to the principles on which Mr. 
 Burke and his friends argued it, then it 
 will follow that by giving my whole confi- 
 dence and support to Mr. Pitt, I should 
 have put it in his power to patch up a 
 peace at his own convenience, and as soon
 
 ( 64 ) 
 
 as he had carried his petty subordinate ob- 
 jefts, without touching those larger ones, 
 the importance of which had persuaded me 
 not only of the necessity of the war, but of 
 its wisdom. After bending up my mind to 
 the risque of this perilous encounter, and 
 steeling my heart to all the virtuous sym- 
 pathies of private life, and to every sense of 
 pity for the wretched race of man, I should 
 have found the purpose for which all this 
 was done but very little advanced ; that 
 another, and a yet more important ques- 
 tion remained behind ; and that I was to 
 say whether to accomodate a minister's 
 schemes, I would not give up that very 
 set of opinions the protection and preser- 
 vation of which had been the motive to all 
 my sacrifices. Believing with Mr. Burke, 
 that the republic of France must pull down 
 the monarchy of England, and consequent- 
 ly that war was our only hope for safety, 
 with what consistency could I have acled 
 on Mr. Pitt's reasoning which left the re- 
 public untouched, or how could I have de- 
 parted from opinions so dear to me as to 
 render the firmest friendships but lightly 
 valued in comparison with them, and sup- 
 port a war on a footing which involved 
 their disavowal ? I saw no escape from this 
 dilemma. According to Mr. Burke, mo- 
 narchy in Great Britain had not a day to
 
 live after monarchy in France. According 
 to Mr. Pitt, it was in no danger beyond 
 the means which France could exert against 
 it, whether as a monarchy, or as a re- 
 public. 
 
 You see, Sir, that it was not well possi- 
 ble for men to be more adverse in princi- 
 ple than the members of the new alliance. 
 All the topics which were in use with one 
 branch of it, were in direct contradiction 
 to the professions of the other. But the 
 publick could not follow both. One must 
 give way.; and to whose lot this would fall, 
 it was not very difficult to foresee. Mr. 
 Burke and his friends had made no condi- 
 tions in their surrender to the minister; and 
 he was a man very little likely to 'grant 
 them advantages to which they were not 
 entitled by their situation. All this they 
 6aw, and disregarded. Mr. Pitt, a man 
 with no earthly care about the French mo- 
 narchy, or any monarchy, offered them 
 but one choice. It was war and himself, 
 or peace and Mr. Fox. Driven to a neces- 
 sity to them so hard and afflicting, what 
 could they do? War, the result of their 
 judgments, was a bait no little tempting to 
 their passions. Once thoroughly involved 
 in war, they thought the chance of events 
 must bring them together upon some com- 
 mon principle of carrying it on. Pursuing 
 this view, they preferred a compromise 
 K.
 
 ( 66 ) 
 
 with Mr. Pitt, whose professed opinions, 
 and whose visible interest in the destruc- 
 tion of the Whig party, led him to war, 
 although on a narrow principle, to one 
 with Mr. Fox, who with a view of putting 
 it, if at all necessary, on a broad, national, 
 defensive principle, proposed a measure 
 which might have prevented it altogether. 
 After the issue of theirexperimentyou will 
 wonder no longer that, instead of appear- 
 ing before you in sackcloth and ashes for 
 the part I bore in these debates, I take to 
 myself a sort of melancholy pride in the 
 midst of our afflifting reverses. Never, 
 indeed, did that general precept, so much 
 a favourite with Mr. Burke and all wise 
 men, that we must not begin to pull down 
 before we have provided a plan, and ma- 
 terials for building up again, influence me 
 so forcibly as during the whole of these 
 strange proceedings. It taught me how 
 much those members of the Whig associ- 
 ation had to answer for, who broke up at 
 once, and without any decent warning, that 
 solemn compacl and covenant to which 
 they, and you, and all of us, were equally 
 parties. Heavily will it lie on them to 
 : prove that something had crept into the 
 party so radically, and extensively vicious, 
 as to render of no effecl: all the remedies 
 which could have been applied in the spi- 
 rit of a moderating, healing compromise
 
 c 6; ) 
 
 among our leaders. Unless they can do 
 this, they will stand responsible to poste- 
 rity to a degree the extent of which is only 
 to be measured by those benefits and bles- 
 sings they professed to transmit to it by 
 means of their union. For what have they 
 gained to counterbalance them? What is 
 the end of all this hasty confidence of their's 
 with regard to the dearest objects of their 
 pursuit.. What is the state of France? 
 What the situation of Europe? What the 
 condition of their own country? Painful 
 indeed must be their feelings on a retro- 
 spect of the last three years. This impro- 
 vident surrender to the will of a minister 
 who had neither capacity, nor heart, for the 
 situation in which he was placed, has pro- 
 duced the total failure of the war in all its 
 parts. The loss of the Netherlands and 
 Holland, the extirpation of the wretched 
 remnant of royalists in France, the cala- 
 mities which afflict, and the disgrace which 
 humbles every part of Europe, all have 
 their causes in this fault committed at the 
 outset, which in some was nothing worse 
 than an egregious blunder, but in others 
 was the result of the grossest duplicity. 
 Instead of laying down a clear system of 
 war, and of alliance after war, such as we 
 have seen pursued tolerably well from the 
 revolution until our own days, they have 
 helped the minister to make, and carry on 
 K 2
 
 ( 68 ) 
 
 a war which both in its principle and it* 
 conduct, resembles more an affray of chance 
 medley than a national contest. In this 
 antiek garb they have suffered him to send 
 out into the world this child of their old 
 age to mock and disgrace their doating fan- 
 cies. Such are the principles to which he 
 has restricted the justice and necessity of 
 a war they were so anxious for, principles 
 so opposite to their own, that to provide 
 the means of acling together even from day 
 to day, they are compelled to generalize, 
 and widen their ground, until nothing re- 
 mains but the jargon about the preserva- 
 tion of civil society, a principle which, as 
 a ground for war, eludes all reasoning, and 
 in whose wide and trackless waste whatever 
 is declared and definite in the objefts of 
 either of them, disappears,, and is lost even 
 to the speculation. 
 
 To resign small differences, and recede 
 from the common pertinacities of opposi- 
 tion in times of danger, is a duty which, 
 generally stated, I will not dispute. To- 
 have done so in a yet greater degree at 
 the period we ar^ considering, may pos- 
 sibly be very excusable in many of the in- 
 stances in which it has occurred. But 
 always, in these cases, the differences we 
 propose to abandon must be such as we 
 are capable of forgetting. They must be 
 not merely such as, in a public view, we
 
 ( 69 ) 
 
 tnay think ourselves warranted to suspend, 
 but ^ such as we are morally certain can 
 never occur again. If they are to give way 
 at all, it must be to make room for some 
 plan generally good in itself, and ap- 
 plicable to those exigencies which shall 
 have necessitated, by their immediate pres- 
 sure, the sacrifice, to a certain degree, of 
 our opinions. The opinions thus given up 
 must be of such a nature, as not to involve 
 the persons who sacrifice them in any in- 
 consistency of principle in concerting such 
 a plan with those to whom the sacrifice is 
 offered. This never can be the ease, where 
 the differences have gone fundamentally to 
 principles on which the constitution is built, 
 as well as to those on which government 
 has been administered. Then there can be 
 no prospective view of public advantage 
 in the surrender. It will go to nothing 
 more than an abject acknowledgment that 
 we have been totally mistaken in the prin- 
 ciple of our opposition from the begin- 
 ning. We cannot capitulate ; we must 
 yield at discretion. The consequences are, 
 that instead of binding a minister to the 
 terms of a fair compromise, by thus invit- 
 ing him to dispose of us and our differences 
 just as he likes himself, he will be sure to 
 persist in the very same system of mea- 
 sures which originally made us think that 
 in our opposition to it we had no choice :
 
 ( 7 ) 
 
 that -the salvation of the empire depended 
 Hf>6>ri its change. He will pursue this, with 
 the -additional mischief of receiving from 
 our suspension- of hostilities, the means of 
 carrying it into the most complete effecl:. 
 This good-humoured condescension is sure, 
 in the first instance, to be fatal to ourselves. 
 It will be worse : it will be fatal to every 
 objecl we have been in the habits of con- 
 necling with our conduct and principles ; 
 in every hope of good example ; to every 
 rational purpose of unanimity itself. He 
 who is to reap the benefit of our submis- 
 sion, will study very little either our con- 
 venience or our honour, and keep barely 
 within the pale of not provoking us to re- 
 vive those sorts of disputes with him which 
 may tend to weaken his authority. In- 
 stead of acling together in a fair, manly 
 concert, the only way by which any junc- 
 tion can be efficacious, our time will be 
 spent in little partial quarrels, and re- 
 concilements, and soothing, and flattery, to 
 keep matters quiet a few days longer. In 
 the mean while the public cause advances 
 nothing ; all is left to chance ; to the un- 
 checked levity, and delirious presumption 
 of incapacity. The results are visited upon 
 us* Public distress, instead of shrowding, 
 brings out, and exposes to broad day every 
 shade and speck of our private disgrace ; 
 until at last we are delivered up, cause,
 
 sentiments, interests, and all, to those whom 
 we have abandoned, and thrown upn the 
 mercy of an injured and offended friend- 
 ship. 
 
 If you will take the trouble t( carry 
 these observations with you into the de- 
 tails of our public transactions i>r two 
 years and more, you will find then cor- 
 rectly to describe the conduct, aid pos- 
 sibly to anticipate the fate, o those 
 gentlemen whose example you wiaed nfle 
 to follow. They fell into a snan whtfih 
 the sober recollection of past times nabled 
 me to avoid. To my view, theservice 
 Mr. Pitt required of them was piin and 
 evident. He took these gentleme along 
 with him exactly as far as the viement 
 Tory spirit they shewed suited his urpose 
 of disuniting us, and not one inchurther. 
 The war for which they were sonxious 
 he granted them ; but in all that garded 
 either its principle or its managemrt., whe- 
 ther as to concert with the Germanrinces, 
 or as the degree in which the Engh peo- 
 ple Were to consider themselves ebarked 
 in it, he kept his own counsel, without 
 agreement, or consultation with em, of 
 any kind. In many respects, everhis ob- 
 jects were different from theirs, i one it 
 was diametrically opposite ; for lile the 
 others were pledging themselvedeeper 
 and deeper every day not only toie war, 
 but the war system, and cutting f every
 
 ( 72 ) 
 
 possibility of their retreat, this minister, in 
 the ful tempest of his indignation against 
 Jacobhs and their adherents, had his eye 
 ever teadily bent towards the way by 
 which his could be kept open. Here 
 is in >ne word, the cause of all that 
 perple.ity, contradiction, weakness, and 
 want f system, which has marked the 
 condut of the coalesced powers. To keep 
 his pice at a peace, he has relaxed the 
 sinews:>f war. To keep his place at a 
 peace, le has unfeelingly sported with the 
 distress of the unfortunate emigrants. 
 To keo his place at a peace, he has af- 
 fixed t national stamp to a mass of per- 
 plexed unintelligible, hypocritical, and 
 fraudunt declarations with regard to the 
 
 froun< on which the war rests, equally 
 isgracful to the country holding out 
 such iiidious invitations, and destructive 
 of all onest concert with those whom 
 they 'vre intended to conciliate. All 
 this, fr, was mean and -little. To be 
 actuate by such paltry predeliclions was 
 below te character of a great man. To 
 indulghim in them, was by -no means the 
 part toe expected from a wise one. The 
 true frids of the war, by so doing, have 
 destroy! the better half of their purpose. 
 No soer had they delivered themselves 
 up toh, than they saw that the very first 
 use he lade of his power, was to deliver
 
 ( 73 ) 
 
 them up to Mr. Fox. They saw, that to 
 secure his retreat he abandoned them on 
 almost every one of the points on which 
 they had grounded their separation from Mr. 
 Fox : That he conceded the question of a 
 republic in France, with a proviso of its 
 being a good republic ; of which goodness 
 he constituted himself the sole judge, giv- 
 ing them, however, no definite principle 
 by which they might guess at his opinions : 
 That he conceded the question of the per- 
 sonal characters of those who execute go- 
 vernment in France. They have heard him 
 concede so much as to be convinced, as 
 every body else is, that whenever he at^ 
 tempts to make peace, he must aft on the 
 principles laid down in Mr. Fox's letter to 
 his constituents. " Let him paint art inch 
 thick, to this complexion he must come at 
 last." He must not only negociate with 
 these republicans, which Mr. Burke never 
 would do at all, but negociate in Mr. Fox's 
 manner, by an authorised minister. 
 
 You know this too. You have begun to 
 learn it in the loss of sixty millions of your 
 money, and of sixty thousand lives, either 
 of British produce or of British purchase. 
 You might have read it yet more clearly in 
 that train of concession which ran through 
 almost every one of his speeches. For how 
 stands the question? First of all, in contra- 
 vention to Mr. Burke, he has admitted toMr t 
 L,
 
 ( 74 ) 
 
 Fox, that we need not have gone to war be- 
 cause France willed her present republic. 
 Next he has admitted, and for this I desire no 
 more than the raft of his having negociated 
 with an unauthorized agent, that after the ca- 
 tastrophe of the 21 st of January, 1 793 , peace 
 might have been preserved. Again he has ad- 
 mitted, that peace may now be made, France 
 remaining a republic, and such as she is ac- 
 tually, provided there be left no other sub- 
 jecl of dispute. Lastly, he has acknow- 
 ledged that the personal characters of those 
 at the head of affairs, is no bar to the con- 
 clusion of a permanent treaty. The fair 
 result of all these admissions is, that there 
 was nothing in the invasion of the Nether- 
 lands, nothing in the decree of fraternity, 
 nothing in the murder of Louis XVI. 
 nothing in the whole series of extravagan- 
 cies and crimes committed by the Brissots, 
 and the Roberspieres, by the rabble whom 
 they governed, or those by whom they 
 were guillotined, of force sufficient to pre- 
 vent our receiving both satisfaction, in- 
 demnification, and security, for us, and the 
 rest of Europe, provided these persons for 
 the sake, or on the speculation of keeping 
 their power, had only been wise enough to 
 give it us in sufficient quantity. These 
 were the objecls publicly held forth to the 
 world, objecls so distinct from those of 
 Mr. Burke, that nothing but a private
 
 ( 75 ) 
 
 understanding betwen the parties, that 
 there should be war at any rate, could 
 have kept up for one moment the sem- 
 blance of co-operation between them. But 
 Mr. Pitt thought he had done enough for 
 these gentlemen in giving them the war 
 they were so eager for, without shutting 
 himself out from the prospect of making 
 peace whenever the country should grow 
 tired of it; and this he was cunning enough 
 to know was only to be done by declaring 
 war under such reserves and limitations as 
 those which Mr. Fox appeared to extort 
 from him during the debates. 
 
 Such were his concessions. Such is the 
 line of separation he marked out, very early 
 in the contest, between himself and his new 
 friends. With his purpose in so doing, all 
 his public declarations most accurately 
 correspond. There are two senses in all 
 of them. As it has been said of him by a 
 very close observer of human nature, when- 
 ever he speaks to you he places a substantive 
 between two adjeffii'ves of an opposite mean- 
 ing. The war has not made him forget 
 this, his favourite part of speech. Having 
 determined upon it, to gain the seceders 
 from the Whig party, and upon assigning 
 reasons which should enable him to get out 
 of it whenever he liked, it became his policy 
 to perplex and entangle as much as possible, 
 the threads of this mystic skein in which he 
 
 L 2
 
 ( 76 ) 
 
 held so many of our tender consciences fast 
 bound and locked up. Accordingly he 
 stated, as you may remember, that the 
 points at issue with France were reducible 
 to the three following to REPARATION 
 for an unprovoked aggression, INDEMNI- 
 FICATION for our expences in seeking it, 
 and SECURITY against future attempts. 
 With regard to the two first, there was very 
 little room for introducing into the discus- 
 sions concerning them any perplexity in the 
 least propitious to his wishes. Even those 
 who carried highest their opinions in fa- 
 vour of the monarchy, never disputed the 
 full practical competency of Roberspierre, 
 or any you will name, to satisfy us. Putting 
 the justice of our claim for a moment out 
 of the question, it must be owned that 
 France had not much to repair, or to in- 
 demnify us for, in the month of February 
 1703, and to whatever extent we since have 
 conceived ourselves entitled to ask for in- 
 demnification, the modes of it could equal- 
 ly be settled by the present, or by any set 
 of rulers that France, in her folly, might 
 give herself. If money was to indemnify 1 
 us, doubtless we should not have scornei 
 to receive, even from the hands of Robers- 
 pierre, the gold he had plundered from the 
 church. To the reproaches of Mr. Burke, 
 the minister probably would have answered 
 in the words of a Roman emperor, whose
 
 C 77 ) 
 
 chancellor of the exchequer was not, it 
 should seem, over delicate in the choice of 
 his ways and means. * If territory was 
 to be the mode, we doubtless should have 
 been as ready then, as I take it we are now, 
 to accept St. Domingo under a treaty with 
 the Convention, as we were to enter Toulon 
 under a capitulation with the French roy- 
 alists. These two points, therefore, of re- 
 paration and indemnification were easily 
 disposed of. The great question was the 
 security. Here was a subject of chicane 
 without end. Here was a field for the dis- 
 play of all those ambidextrous contrivan- 
 ces, of all those tricks and shuffles so easy 
 to the imagination under no restraint from 
 principle. On this it was that he played 
 double during the whole of that session, as 
 he has ever since, alternately resorting to 
 the systems of Mr. Burke and Mr. Fox, ac- 
 cording to the degree in which they bore 
 on that first objecl of his cares, the preser- 
 vation of his office and the disjunction of 
 his opponents. 
 
 To keep the game entirely within his 
 own hands, he cautiously avoided all ex- 
 planation of the term " Security," even as 
 he understood it himself. Whenever the 
 war was mentioned incidentally, in the 
 House, he enforced the triple ground on 
 
 * Reprehtndenti Tito pecuniant admovit ad nares, sciscitans num 
 odire offenderetur? tt illo negantt, ATQUI, intuit E LOTIO 2s T. 
 Suet.
 
 C 78 ) 
 
 winch he had put it by a set of argu- 
 ments which had an effecl, as by him it 
 was intended that they should, far beyond 
 the immediate question he was debating, 
 and which, as well as puzzling the ques- 
 tion of Security, gave him the additional 
 advantage of confounding it with that of 
 Indemnity. Declarations to this import 
 were frequently repeated during the first 
 sessions of the war. If no two men under- 
 stood him the same way, it was enough 
 for his purpose that every friend to the 
 war understood him in his own. It seemed, 
 however, that the further we advanced in 
 the business of this war, the darker and 
 the more slippery became our way. On 
 the 28th of August Lord Hood and Don 
 Juan Langara entered the port of Toulon. 
 They took possession of it, and of the ships 
 at anchor there, under a treaty with the 
 inhabitants of the place, to hold them in 
 trust for Leiois XVIL whom they ac- 
 knowledged as King of the French, under 
 the Constitution of 1791. As in this treaty 
 not a syllable was said about reparation, in- 
 demnification, or security, while the French 
 nation on the other hand was invited to 
 repair to the standard creeled at Toulon 
 for the monarchical constitution of 1791, 
 Mr. Pitt found himself under the necessity 
 of counteracting an opinion which then 
 began to prevail, and which was so far
 
 ( 79 ) 
 
 dangerous to his views as it pledged him 
 against any terms with any sort of re- 
 public. Accordingly, on the 23d of Octo- 
 ber, a declaration, or manifesto, is put 
 forth, addressed to all the foreign mini- 
 sters, and to all commanders of his Ma- 
 jesty's fleets and armies, and more par- 
 ticularly to the French nation. Always 
 ready as I am to pay the profoundest ho- 
 mage to his talents when I see them em- 
 ployed on these exercises of ingenuity, to 
 do them full justice on this occasion can 
 be the work of no hands but his own. To 
 this most extraordinary paper I shall beg 
 a few moments of your attention. Its 
 character is in its matter. It admits of no 
 close description, since it is the index of 
 the mind of him who put it together. In 
 this performance it must be confessed, 
 that no part of his various excellencies is 
 hid by the envious interception of intelli- 
 gence, or principle of any kind. It seems 
 to have been imagined in the idea of con- 
 ciliating all parties to the war, by exhibit- 
 ing, in a piece which should contain a little 
 of every body's, a specimen of that amiable 
 unanimity which prevailed among the mi- 
 nisters themselves. It was contrived to 
 look like a joint effort of cabinet ingenuity, 
 to which every member contributed his 
 separate portion of wisdom, which he took 
 care so to distinguish from his neighbour's
 
 8o 
 
 as to be sure of no difficulty in making out 
 his claim to it hereafter. It was an assem- 
 blage in which monarchies, republics, war, 
 peace, religion, atheism, dire bloodshed, and 
 halcyon harmony, mingled together in a 
 groupe wholly new and fanciful ; forming a 
 sort of divertissement somewhat between a 
 Pyrrhick dance and a Scotch reel ; a whimsi- 
 cal fairy fandango, which presented in its 
 turn to the eye every variety of shape and 
 attitude; but which, when you approached 
 to join hands with it, vanished into the 
 thin air of which it was composed. With 
 all this, the deception was admirable. Every 
 man looked at it in his own way, and be- 
 came satisfied with the resemblance he 
 found to his own notions. Nothing was 
 ever hit off in such rare felicity of mis- 
 chief. He had framed a declaration which, 
 it is true, did not directly disavow Lord 
 Hood : that were to have spoken too 
 plainly in another sense : but although 
 not an aclual, it was one that might be 
 understood as a virtual disavowal ; or, if 
 that would not do, as tantamount to a vir- 
 tual disavowal. If there yet remained any 
 persons- still determined, in spite of the 
 constant ambiguity of his language, to trust 
 to his management who fancied that they 
 could pick out, from the operations of the 
 war, a distinct object which prudential rea- 
 sons induced him to keep back, and who,
 
 8i 
 
 under this impression, had embarked in 
 the cause of monarchy with zeal and spirit, 
 in the belief that in so doing they were 
 committing themselves to his views no 
 further than as he was assisting them in 
 theirs ; here they found at once the short 
 and certain end to whatever had appeared 
 clear and hopeful to them in these pros- 
 pects. The text had been revised afresh. 
 The original doubtful reading was restored. 
 Reparation, Indemnification, and Security, 
 those words of potent spell, regained their 
 credit, somewhat weakened, it must be 
 owned, by the preference recently shewn 
 to that of Monarchy at Toulon. The sen- 
 timents of those who agreed to the war in 
 his view of it, but objected to one the pro- 
 fessed purpose of which was to settle the 
 disturbances of France, and of those who, 
 like iMr. Burke, deemed nothing else worth 
 contending about, were here blended to- 
 gether, and made to harmonize in a com- 
 position impoverished by no ceconomy of 
 fraud, confined to no single order of du- 
 plicity, but lavishly displaying the whole 
 resources of the art worked up into a 
 master-piece by a master-hand. To the 
 first description of persons he addresses 
 himself in language such as this " His 
 " Majesty by no means disputes the Right 
 " of France to reform its laws. It never 
 " would have been his wish to employ the 
 M
 
 ( 82 ) 
 
 " influence of external force with respeft 
 " to the particular forms of government to 
 " be established in an independent coun- 
 " try." To these he holds up his two 
 points of indemnity, and security, as stand- 
 ing by themselves ; totally disconnected from 
 the question of her government, and ren- 
 dered important and indispensable only on 
 the ground of the progress of the arms of 
 France, and her forcible seizure of the ter- 
 ritories of other powers. This view of the 
 subject he sustains by the chain of reason- 
 ing we have before had occasion to advert 
 to in considering the nature of his conces- 
 sions, and which is applicable to no other. 
 But when he speaks to the next set of sup- 
 porters, a very different language is adopted. 
 Another ingredient must be thrown into 
 the cauldron to bind the charm. The king 
 is then made to " demand" from France, 
 " some legitimate and stable government, 
 " founded on the acknowledged principles 
 " of universal justice, and capable of main- 
 " taining with other powers the accustomed 
 " relations of peace and amity." From this 
 government the king would exacl " none 
 " other than equitable and moderate con- 
 " ditions ; not such as the expences, the 
 (l risques, and the sacrifices of the war 
 " might justify; but such as his majesty 
 " thinks himself under the indispensable ne- 
 " cessity of requiring with a view to those 
 " considerations/' &c. &c. Here the plot
 
 thickens! indemnity is confounded with 
 security, and security with the question of 
 
 fovernment, from which before it had been 
 ept distin6t. Here the security is made to 
 depend not upon the cession of towns, for- 
 tresses, or provinces to any number or ex- 
 tent, which in the other view of the subject 
 might constitute a satisfactory one, but 
 upon the adoption on the part of France 
 of what we, not they, may happen to think 
 a " legitimate" government. Who embar- 
 rasses the security with this condition ? The 
 king of Great Britain, who had just before 
 declared that he " by no means disputes 
 " with France, the right to reform its 
 " laws." The king of Great Britain, who 
 can't bear to think of employing " the in- 
 " jluence of external force with respecl to 
 " the particular forms of government to 
 " be established in an independent country" 
 This you acknowledge to be inconsistent. 
 I wish it were nothing worse. It might 
 then be neutral in the scale of evil. But 
 what name shall we find for the inconsist- 
 ency that springs from Will and is accom- 
 panied with Power? In any other case, it 
 wouldbethecapriceof an odious despotism. 
 All however was acquiesced in that Mr. Pitt 
 might be enabled to secure himself by talking 
 the language of monarchy to Mr. Burke, 
 and that of money and profit on the royal 
 exchange. 
 
 M2
 
 ( 84 ) 
 
 , If I had been ever so much disposed to 
 concur in Mr. Burke's general view of the 
 wisdom of a war with France, I certainly 
 should not have carried my complaisance to 
 the minister so far, as to take, in return for 
 all the sacrifices that concurrence would have 
 required, a war upon such terms. If right at 
 all, it was right upon Mr. Burke's principles, 
 which, as well as being the only ones to de- 
 fend it by, were those which led to the only 
 means that gave a chance for its successful 
 termination. On these principles it should 
 "have been declared, not waited for. Least 
 of all should it have been waited for as 
 Mr. Pitt affe&ed to do, daily provoking the 
 formal declaration of it on the part of 
 France, by afts which were in truth and 
 substance, a declaration of it on his own. 
 In all this to be sure there was risque-, as 
 where is the situation without it? There 
 was the risque of his place first, in the sup- 
 position that the country would not go 
 with him in a war so declared. There was 
 a second risque, in the event itself; since, 
 after declaring war on such a principle, 
 there was no mode of a republic with which 
 he could treat. But is it true that we are 
 a country so lost, that we are in a condi- 
 tion so abandoned of virtue and heaven, as 
 to see no resource beyond the existence of 
 a minister, whose only talent is the dexte- 
 rity with, which he avoids the adoption of
 
 ( 85 ) 
 
 any decisive course in the season of public 
 extremity? Sir, these habits may suit little 
 affairs, and the moment of profound peace, 
 in which a country like ours may be said 
 almost to govern itself; but I know of no 
 severer curse it can labour under than the 
 rule of such a minister, who when the 
 storm is up, and danger affronts us on every 
 side, can look to no objecl: firmly, or with- 
 out glancing aside to his own place. In 
 vain do we share his risques: In vain do 
 we wake and watch, and urge him with 
 every argument, and tempt him with every 
 sacrifice. Weakness and irresolution meet 
 us at every corner; the cause is betrayed; 
 and those who conscientiously support him 
 in it are made the scape-goats of his mise- 
 rable ambition. 
 
 They who reason closely upon the na- 
 ture of Mr. Pitt's admissions at the outset 
 of this business, will surely see the mis- 
 take in which they have suffered their 
 passions to hurry them by jumping in 
 with his conclusions to the justice and 
 necessity of a war. On the principles 
 avowed by Mr. Burke and his friends, it 
 is at least easy to understand by what chain 
 of argument, and through what deduclions 
 of expediency, they make it out. They 
 put their objections to Mr. Fox's proposal 
 for negociating with France upon its true 
 ground. They argued, that the sending, 
 or receiving an authorised minister, would
 
 ( 85 ) 
 
 imply a recognition of the French repub- 
 lic; that by such an act we should dispirit, 
 and wholly destroy, the royal cause ; that 
 if was unwise, at a moment in which we 
 had been forced by the principles of France, 
 into a war with her, to begin the conflict 
 by a measure which would leave her no 
 care for the security of her power at home, 
 whereas by an opposite course she would 
 set out in her foreign contest, with a fierce 
 civil war in the very heart of her territory. 
 In Mr. Burke's view, this doctrine was as- 
 suredly correct, and if the reasoning on 
 which it was founded had been followed up 
 to its true point, I am ready to confess that 
 whatever might have been my other ob- 
 jections to the war, those which belonged 
 to the deceitful indistinctness of its prin- 
 ciple whould have been entirely done away, 
 and that which was grounded upon the im- 
 practicability of recovering the monarchy 
 very much diminished. But how ought 
 this reasoning to have been followed up? 
 By a direct declaration on our parts in fa- 
 vour of the infant monarch; by a national 
 recognition of his title; by connecting that 
 title, and the principles on which it was 
 claimed for him, with those enlarged prin- 
 ciples in relation to civil society and social 
 order now foisted into every silly harangue 
 " which begs us to trust the minister whether 
 he disposes himself to war for the monarchy,
 
 or to peace with the republic. It should 
 have been followed up, not by cold, oc- 
 casional exhortations to choose, but by 
 a&ive co-operation to restore, a monarch ; 
 and by setting up, and exhibiting under 
 the sanction or the British nation, the de- 
 scendant of so many kings in an adverse 
 point of view to a republic founded on so 
 many crimes. We ought to have shewn 
 the faithful description of persons yet at- 
 tached to the monarchy that the nations 
 of Europe interested themselves in their 
 cause for the cause itself; 'that a sense of 
 their own safety as connected with the re- 
 establishment of monarchy in France, had 
 dictated the terms of a general confederacy 
 for its restoration ; that all ancient animo- 
 sities were laid aside, as well as all those 
 views of ambition and aggrandizement 
 among each other which had kept those ani- 
 mosities alive ; and that as a proof of their 
 sincerity towards France, and as it were to 
 be a guard over, and a security against, 
 themselves, they had placed at their head 
 a nation long renowned for integrity and 
 plain dealing, itself enjoying a just govern- 
 ment by law, under whose preponderating 
 influence all the operations of the war, and 
 all the arrangements to be made for the 
 cure of their miseries, would be directed. 
 
 It was by such a declaration alone that 
 our cause as against the government of
 
 ( 88 ) 
 
 France, could derive any effectual aio* 
 The point which, in this whole contest, 
 seems the least to admit of any dispute, is 
 that the co-operation of a royalist force in 
 the interior of France was essential to your 
 other exertions. But without some such 
 declaration as that which I have alluded 
 to, I think you ought not to have claimed 
 that co-operation, and that you could not 
 have obtained it. It has been argued in- 
 deed, that ministers would have been very 
 much embarassed by such a step. That 
 the royal cause had many supporters of op- 
 posite and adverse ways of thinking; that 
 it was impossible to declare for one set, 
 without offending and alienating the other, 
 and that it was better to acl as they did 
 with a view to unite, as well every descrip- 
 tion of royalists, as all other persons who 
 might wish to withdraw themselves from 
 the tyranny of the convention. Those who 
 offer this apology for ministers are compel- 
 led to maintain that they must either have 
 said absolutely nothing at all on the subjeft 
 of monarchy, or have held out, as they 
 did, all sorts of hopes to all sorts of royal- 
 ists, since it was only in these two ways 
 that they could secure the object which 
 they thought so wise, of avoiding all dis- 
 tinctness and specification. The first an- 
 swer I should make to this, would be from 
 the fad of their conduct at Toulon. I
 
 C 89 ) 
 
 know it is said that Lord Hood pledged 
 this country to nothing there beyond here- 
 ditary monarchy. The treaty says the re- 
 verse; ?.nd that the sort of monarchy then 
 stipulated for was hereditary monarchy, 
 with 'certain Limitations expressed and spe- 
 cified by a Laio of their onm making. Of 
 those limitations there were probably many 
 which the good sense of the French nation 
 would have rejected or altered, when they 
 came to the final settlement of their consti- 
 tution ; but it is not in common reason to 
 suppose that they would have given up 
 that in which was to consist the whole dif- 
 ference between the government they were 
 endeavouring to establish, and that which 
 they had just destroyed. Shall it therefore 
 be argued that Lord Hood engaged for 
 nothing but the old monarchy, when by 
 the mere mention of that, of 1789 he re- 
 cognized in the name cf his master, who 
 never disavowed him, the legitimacy of it's 
 subversion? admit this tome, which you 
 must, and I must argue that the treaty was 
 valid as between Lord Hood, representing 
 the King of Great Britain, and the Tou- 
 lonese virtually taken to represent the roy- 
 alists in France, quoad the principle of 
 these limitations ; that the sort of royalism 
 in the contemplation of his Majesty's Mini- 
 sters here was the royalism specified by the 
 first revolution in 1789 ; and that by autho- 
 N
 
 r oo ) 
 
 rizing Lord Hood so to do, they a&ed not 
 only in direft opposition to their own de- 
 clared principle of avoiding all specifica- 
 tion, but acled most unwisely by declaring 
 in favour of that particular specification 
 which was sure of placing an eternal bar 
 between them and any of the old royalists 
 who were then exerting themselves in la 
 Vendee. Unless y however, the " common, 
 cause" of the allies was such as the genuine 
 Royalists of France could not honour- 
 ably co-operate with, I affirm that this af- 
 fefted avoidance of all specification was 
 the worst judged piece of political prudery 
 ever imagined.. Ministers were not by any 
 means reduced to a dilemma between* 
 these two descriptions of persons; nor was 
 k required of them to make any specifica- 
 tion of the nature of that which was ha- 
 zarded at Toulon. All that they were 
 called upon to do, was to declare for mo- 
 narchy, and for hereditary monarchy, in 
 the person of Louis XVII. accompanied, 
 undoubtedly, in the view in which I 
 am now considering the subject, with an* 
 engagement from the whole confederacy 
 not to make peace or truce with France 
 until these points should be obtained. 
 To come to some definite understanding 
 on this subject was absolutely necessary; 
 as much so was it to communicate the 
 decision to the joyal party, become 
 as it must have been by a candid
 
 { 9* ) 
 
 proceeding of the allies, both in, and out 
 of France. Those unhappy men would 
 then have had an opportunity of knowing 
 'on what terms they were to act..: Whether 
 it would be most adviseable to agree, pos- 
 sibly, to the dismemberment of their coun- 
 try for the sake of living under a monarch 
 in the part which should remain to it, or 
 whether to submit to the revolution, and 
 take their chance for better times. 
 
 Could it, for instance, be reasonable to 
 exclude, from any project of carrying on 
 this war against France, a party which at 
 the period I speak of is mot to be under- 
 valued by counting it at any given number 
 of men, but which then could only be esti- 
 mated by a description comprising the ex- 
 tent of the territory they occupied, the 
 whole of whose vast population started up 
 in arms at the voice of their chiefs ? Some 
 sort of intercourse and concert, all admit, 
 should have been kept up with them. 
 What intercourse? What concert? I an* 
 -swer that whkh should take for its founda- 
 tion an honest declaration in favour of mo* 
 narchy, and which, wisely leaving all its 
 limitations to be settled by Frenchmen 
 alone, should confine itself to proving the 
 sincerity of the confederates by a pledge in 
 the nature of that to which I have alluded. 
 
 But this, after all, was a wild and chi- 
 merical projecl. So be it, I promise you 
 
 N2
 
 ( 92 ) 
 
 that I shall have nothing to object to the 
 arguments of those who maintain that we 
 never ought to have mixed in these trou- 
 bles. My only business with the question 
 is in its comparative view with Mr. Pitt's 
 principle; to which I prefer Mr. Burkes 
 all to nothing. For let me put it to your 
 common sense, whether a system could 
 have been pursued more in unison with 
 jacobinism itself, than the whole of that on 
 which the minister has conducted this 
 war? Was there ever a man before him 
 \yho engaging in a war any part of the ob- 
 ject of which was the rescuing a country 
 from the miseries of anarchy, neglected to 
 hold out clistinclly to it any sort of induce- 
 ment founded upon the state of things in- 
 tended to be set up in lieu of that anarchy? 
 How many royalists has this foolish cun- 
 ning banished into hopeless inactivity? 
 How many republicans have we roused to 
 the field, who would have been content to 
 smile at the sword and the manifestoes of 
 the Duke of Brunswick? For again let me 
 ask, what sense was there at any time in 
 refusing to treat with the French republic? 
 Assuredly none if it was for the indul- 
 gence of an idle punctilio ; but the case 
 is somewhat different when the refusal is 
 put upon the ground of giving heart to 
 tkose within France with whom the great 
 measures of the war would have been con-
 
 ( 93 ) 
 
 certed by wise ministers. It would have 
 been right to attack France with the wea- 
 pons peculiar to such a war. For one, I 
 should have speculated for success upon the 
 joint co-operating force of external war, 
 and internal insurrection. In this point of 
 view, I can understand the resistance made 
 to Mr. Fox's motion; because there is cer- 
 tainly some sense in making the refusal to 
 treat a cause of war, when you make it 
 also a powerful instrument for carrying it 
 on. But to take this line with any hope 
 of success, the most indispensable of all 
 things was good faith, and a perfect intel- 
 ligence on all points with the people I was 
 to acl with. I am not going to descant in 
 common places upon the necessity of good 
 faith ; but look to the peculiar species of 
 war in which our fortune has engaged us, 
 and then tell me whether the system pur- 
 sued by ministers has not been fatal to 
 every one of their objects, chiefly on the 
 grounds of its ill faith? You know to what 
 a degree the old royalists of France detest 
 the constitutionalists of 1789. They have 
 not one sentiment or feeling in common 
 with each other even in the midst of their 
 common distresses. His Majesty's minis- 
 ters, however, told you that it 'was a great 
 point with them to get the aid of these two 
 parries against the existing French govern- 
 ment ; and that therefore it .was expe-
 
 ( 94 ) 
 
 tlient to carry on an understanding with 
 each. Now let me ask, whether it be pos- 
 sible that where parties have no common 
 object arising from opinion, a third can 
 mediate between them without betraying 
 both ? He that puts himself in that situation 
 begins by holding a language to entrap the 
 confidence of each, which instead of using 
 to any of the fair purposes for which it is 
 entrusted to him, he carries to market upon 
 a principle of mere profit and loss, and sells 
 the one to the other, or both to a better 
 bidder, just as a bargain may happen to 
 suit him. All he is anxious to avoid is the 
 giving to either of these parties a particular 
 title to reproach him. Under the cover of 
 this stupid insincerity he huggs himself in 
 the prospect of being able to deal out im- 
 partial treachery to all sides. Weak policy, 
 this, as applied to any situation ; but con- 
 temptible beyond all imagination when ap- 
 plied to our intercourse with the French 
 royalists. Never was plain dealing so ne- 
 cessary : never was honour so little to be 
 separated from wisdom, as in all our trans- 
 actions with that unfortunate set of men. 
 In common affairs we may sometimes ven- 
 ture to go great lengths, with a view to 
 some aft of manifest public benefit, with 
 those whom we may know to be deceiving 
 us. Great nations, hating each other in 
 their hearts, may yet be brought to aft to*
 
 ( 95 ) 
 
 gether in a well regulated confederacy. 
 No man is deceived by the language of 
 treaties, much less thecourts themselves with 
 which they happen to be negociated. The 
 security of independent European nations, 
 generally speaking, lies in this, that in the 
 present situation of the world, if one Ally 
 tail them, they are, upon the whole, tole- 
 rably sure of Applying his place with ano- 
 ther. But widely different is the case when 
 you are to form an union with a party in a 
 country against its government. They in 
 France who are to call you friends, trust 
 you with their all. If you are to enter into 
 engagements with such persons they should 
 be solemn, and binding upon you in pro- 
 portion to the awful magnitude of the trust 
 you undertake. You cannot engage them 
 to run the risque of so perilous a correspon- 
 dence, in a country where the least of their 
 dangers is the mighty force they will have 
 to contend against, without subjecting your- 
 selves to a moral responsibility far greater 
 than any that I am capable of imagining. 
 What, Sir, should I be able to say to those 
 deluded men who had escaped from im- 
 prisonment, torture, famine, and the sword, 
 who, cherishing their loyalty in the midst 
 of a thousand hardships, had consented to- 
 crawl about their wretched country in all 
 the bitterness of woe, exposed to every spe- 
 cies of anguish that can afflict, or want
 
 ( 96 ) 
 
 -that can debase the mind, in the fond hope, 
 taught them by your promise, that we 
 should come to restore them to their ho- 
 nours and estates, when we present to their 
 parched lips the dregs of their cup of sor- 
 row, and bid them swallow down the con- 
 stitution of 1789 ? Or what face could I 
 shew to the Royalist of 1789, who, on the 
 plighted faith of the British^ government, 
 had taken arms against the Convention and 
 helped to pull down its power, when for 
 the reward of his services and his risques, 
 I should deliver him up to be punished as a 
 traitor by the ministers of the old despo- 
 tism which he had helped to re-establish ? 
 I put it to you, Sir, as a zealous well- 
 wisher to the cause of French monarchy, 
 whether the recognition of the Republic 
 on Mr. Fox's principles would not have 
 been ten thousand times more eligible, and 
 even a shorter way to its restoration, than 
 these insidious contrivances to hook in the 
 various parties in France by appearing all 
 things to all men, while in facl we pledged 
 ourselves honestly to nothing. 
 
 I am indeed infinitely more inclined to 
 ascribe our failure to this double dealing 
 in ministers, than to any superiority of mi- 
 litary prowess, or conducl, in the French 
 armies. There was a moment, it was in 
 the first campaign, about the period of the 
 surrender of V'alenciennes, and the re-cap-
 
 ( 97 ) 
 
 ture of Mayence, followed by the forcing 
 the passage into Alsace by the allies, when 
 the destruction of the republic seemed al- 
 most within the reach of men who knew 
 how to make use of their advantages. 
 Royalism then triumphed in La Vendee, 
 federalism in Normandy and in Gascony, 
 insurreclion at Toulon, Marseilles, and 
 Lyons, the frontiers were abandoned or 
 forced famine was at Paris fear was every 
 where. This was the decisive moment in 
 which a little sincerity might have given 
 you France. Why was it missed ? In two 
 words I will answer because neither sin- 
 cerity nor capacity belonged to Admini- 
 stration ; because, for purposes of their 
 own, they had put this war on a footing 
 which forbade all honest co-operation be- 
 tween the allies, and those within the terri- 
 tories of France with whom a common ob- 
 jefl could have been concerted. The rea- 
 son is to be found in that spirit of faithless 
 indecision between the two schemes of dis- 
 memberment and monarchy; schemes for 
 ever floating before their eyes, and tempt- 
 ing them with the prospect of advantages 
 between which they knew not how to 
 choose. They have failed, not for want 
 of the resources common to all ministers, or 
 of the means of persuading the country to 
 support them, not through any impediments 
 thrown in their way by the influence of their
 
 ( 98 ) 
 
 opponents, but through the total absence 
 of that in which true greatness consists, the 
 ability to discern, and the vigour to de- 
 termine, the preference due to different de- 
 grees of political good. 
 
 Viewing this question as a royalist, there- 
 fore, I confess I can see nothing to justify 
 the sacrifice with which the minister was 
 complimented by Mr. Burke and Mr. 
 Windham. To the success of the war that 
 sacrifice, perhaps, has been fatal. Persua- 
 ded as these gentlemen had been for a long 
 time before, of the wisdom of a war with 
 France, they would have done well to consi- 
 der the effect upon the public mind of ac- 
 ceding to principles which, in order to ac- 
 commodate a minister, gave up the strongest 
 part of their question, and suffered it to go 
 to the country upon the single argument of 
 its necessity; a footing always doubtful, and 
 which Mr. Pitt, as slippery an ally as he 
 is an unfair enemy, rendered less and less 
 tenable for them every day by those con- 
 cessions I have already enumerated to you. 
 These were my reasons Sir, for preferring, 
 when the war questions began to be agi- 
 tated, the plain strait forward road pointed 
 out by Mr. Fox in the outset of our dif- 
 ficulties. I thought this the only way to 
 relieve me from the certain inconsistency 
 of voting for war on the principles of Mr. 
 Pitt, or of speculating towards peace with
 
 ( 99 ) 
 
 any republic, after having consented to aft 
 on those of Mr. Burke. It was thus only 
 that I could be spared the toil of chacing 
 through the mysterious vicissitudes of prin- 
 ciple which the war assumed every day, 
 any one definite, or intelligible object. 
 Standing at that distance out of the fog, 
 it was plain to me that the contrivers of 
 all these manoeuvres were entangling them- 
 selves with their own tackle ; and that be- 
 tween rash zeal, which promised all, and 
 wary duplicity which was providing for its 
 own safety, the monarchy they both pro- 
 fessed so highly to value, as well as all those 
 interests connected with it, would be lost 
 sight of altogether. It was evident that 
 the war would be crippled from the want 
 of heart in those who claimed to be trusted 
 with its conduct. Necessity therefore, must 
 have ranged me on the side of Mr. Fox's 
 proposition even if I had felt no inducement 
 from reason and reflection to join with it. 
 Between Mr. Burke and Mr. Pitt, I was 
 not allowed to choose, although between 
 the objefts, and the plans of these two 
 persons, there was every species of diffe- 
 rence on which choice could be exercised. 
 Our warm zealots preferred any sort of 
 war, no matter how conduced, to what 
 they thought the hazards of peace. For 
 myself, retaining to the full as much dis- 
 gust for the cruelties of the French as they 
 
 02
 
 did, and departing in no point from my 
 old Whig opinions respecting the aggran- 
 disement of that nation, I thought the 
 peace ought not to have been broken for 
 the sake of a war professedly of chances. 
 Chance, you will say, decides much in all 
 wars ; but to leave as little to chance as 
 possible in what we undertake, I have ever 
 thought to be the peculiar office of pru- 
 dence. We read of wars well planned 
 and ably conducled, ending, nevertheless, 
 very wide from their original design ; 
 but a war begun without an object, a war 
 that was to pick up an object in its way, 
 was reserved for the politics of this en- 
 lightened age ! A war of this description, 
 among other reflections, is sure to strike 
 an enquiring mind very forcibly with doubts 
 whether it might not have been avoided 
 altogether. You begin to understand this 
 now. You will understand it much better 
 whenever you think seriously of peace. 
 
 For what is it that you desire of France ? 
 If this question comes too close, I take itycu 
 will allow me to answer for you that you 
 would be glad to see in that country a king. 
 This is your fancy : you are at no pains to 
 disguise it. You swallow with credulous avi- 
 dity all that is told you in the public prints 
 of armies of royalists, and feed fat the ancient 
 grudge you bear this revolution with the 
 hopes of a famine at Paris. You, whoperpe^
 
 tually object the instability of all govern- 
 ment in France to our proposal for treat- 
 ing with her, wait with an impatience that 
 makes sad work with your argument, for 
 the insurre&ion which is to produce a 
 king there. With him, or his ministers, 
 or a regent in his name, you are ready 
 to negociate. What? before a second 
 messenger can come to tell you whether 
 another revolution has not sent him back 
 from his throne to his prison ? Before you 
 know whether they have eletted for their 
 king the descendant of a Bourbon, or the 
 spawn of a fish wo man? Oh no ! Irmust be 
 the son, or since he is no more, a brother, 
 of Louis XVI. Then it is not a king you 
 ask of France for the sake of the office of 
 king, but a king with limitation to a par- 
 ticular stock ; and if you cannot be in- 
 dulged in this, the w r ar must go on. But 
 I grant another Bourbon "placed on the 
 throne of his ancestors. What next? You 
 can never think of treating with him un- 
 til you know his ability to keep his en- 
 gagements. Here is one more remove 
 from precision in your object. What is 
 meant by ability to keep his engagements? 
 Who are to judge of it? Yourselves. By 
 what rule ? Not to quarrel with you for a 
 word, I will call it by your discretion. 
 France restores monarchy, we will say, un-
 
 der certain limitations. You don't approve 
 of these limitations, or you think the mo- 
 narchy not likely to be safe under them. 
 Consistently with your principles therefore, 
 you can make peace with the monarch as 
 little as you can \vith the present republic. 
 France must submit to you the whole 
 question of her government, both as to form, 
 to persons, and to limitations. The case 
 is full of all manner of embarrassments. 
 What will any monarchy be worth in 
 France unless the emigrants recover their 
 estates ? Of the two, a demand to reinstate 
 them would be far the more reasonable and 
 the more just. These were your difficul- 
 ties from the beginning ; they are still the 
 same, and must continue so in the most 
 favourable turn the contest can take. They 
 impose on you the necessity of setting up 
 in France a king of your own, and of sup- 
 porting him when he is there. I think it 
 clear, upon the face of such terms, that a 
 .war to enforce them could not be neces- 
 sary ; wise, honourable, expedient, for the 
 present as much as you please, but that 
 character which is understood by the term 
 necessary, that is, inevitable, can never be- 
 long to it upon any reasoning we have yet 
 heard. It may fairly be thrown on the 
 other side therefore, to support the ne- 
 gative of this proposition, That no politi- 
 cal situation in which Great Britain can be
 
 ( 103 ) 
 
 said to have stood in the month of January 
 1793, made it necessary that the peace 
 should be broken at that moment in order 
 to hunt for a cause of quarrel so large as 
 that which is now explained by the de- 
 mand of '* a government capable of main- 
 taining with other nations, the accustomed 
 relations of peace and amity" 
 , Here, Sir, I must stop for a few- 
 moments to notice the flimsy conceit, it 
 deserves no better name, of those who 
 rest the question of necessity on the acci- 
 dental, formal declaration of war first at 
 Paris : to such it is more than enough 
 to answer that the insulting dismission of 
 M. Chauvelin was the substantial declara- 
 tion of it. In the strictness of public law, 
 the notification to him not to appear at 
 Court was giving France a just cause of 
 complaint against us, which, if not settled 
 by negociation, might become a just cause 
 of war. But the dismission was an acl of 
 positive and final hostility. It was going 
 one step farther than any act of military ag- 
 gression, on which nations are apt enough 
 to take fire, as it happened to us in a re- 
 cent dispute with Spain ; because, after 
 such an acl, intercourse still remains to ex- 
 plain the circumstances ; but the dismis- 
 sion of a minister in the midst of a nego- 
 ciation includes both acls, that of aggres- 
 sion in the first place, and the refusal to
 
 ( 104 ) 
 
 explain it in the next. On this ground 
 therefore, they who justify the war can 
 make no impression. They must have re- 
 course to the argument that M. Chauvelin 
 was not a regular minister. Why was he 
 not? They answer, because France had 
 no regular government. I ask no more ; 
 for then I say they give up the whole ar- 
 gument of the necessity of the war as far as 
 it depends upon its mere formal declaration 
 at Paris^ and must come back to the ground 
 of social order, and so forth, which Mr. 
 Pitt has uniformly disclaimed as having 
 any reference to the origin of the war, 
 and which therefore by a necessary and in- 
 evitable conclusion, must have been picked 
 up in the course of it. 
 
 To return to your demands on France. 
 The same reasoning which goes to the ne- 
 cessity of your fixing for France the prin- 
 ciple of her monarchy, should she be dis- 
 posed to return to it, will apply to the 
 case of a republic, if at last you hear of 
 one with which you incline to beat a parley. 
 The mode in which that republic is con- 
 structed, the degree of its dependence on 
 the body of the people, the extent of its 
 powers executive and legislative, all these 
 great features must regularly pass you in 
 revision if your principle be kept to, of 
 not negociating but with a stable govern- 
 ment. You cannot trust France to make
 
 it such. You must do it yourselves. As 
 little can you trust yourselves to a re- 
 public of the Champ de Mars, as to a mo- 
 narchy dug out of the common shores of 
 the fauxbourg St. Marceau. Reserving 
 thus to yourseives to judge what sort of 
 government, and what only, will content 
 you, and investing the ministers with a 
 power to pronounce sentence upon it in 
 your name, the object of the war is not 
 concealed by their prudence, but called to 
 its very existence by their will. Coming 
 from this source, it varies according to that 
 will, and according to every circumstance 
 whether of public import, or of private 
 convenience and interest, by which that 
 will is determined. You give them thus a 
 perpetual negative on all the modes by 
 which France may endeavour to free her- 
 self from the calamities of her bad govern- 
 ment. Where is the difference between 
 this power of negative ad infinitum and 
 the direcl: positive power of origination ? 
 This large discretion I will not now dis- 
 pute may be fit and wise to lodge in the 
 king's ministers ; but where I ask are those 
 great public interests, or that national credit 
 and honour, the risque or the violation of 
 which, places a government under the ne- 
 cessity of resorting to the dire extremity of 
 war? 
 
 P
 
 ( ie5 ) 
 
 Every way in which you try the ques- 
 tion, it presents you with the same results. 
 Reverse it ; and say, to the exclusion of 
 all foreign interference, that you are ready 
 to negociate with France, whenever she 
 has got what you would call a fit and 
 proper government. You must admit 
 a capacity in France to create out of 
 her own materials, this fit and proper go- 
 vernment. Admitting this capacity now., 
 you must admit that it existed always : 
 otherwise you will puzzle yourselves with 
 a question yet more difficult to settle than 
 any of which this contest has been so fruit- 
 ful, and that is, When did they acquire 
 the capacity ? It is in proof against the mi- 
 nisters, that they " do not dispute the right 
 " of France to reform its laws :" that they 
 never wished to advise his Majesty " to em- 
 " ploy the influence of external force with 
 tc respect to the particular form of g over n- 
 <( ment to be established in an independent 
 " country" Thus far agreed, the question 
 occurs did France ever attempt to exer- 
 cise this never disputed RIGHT, and ta 
 avail herself of this admitted CAPACITY? 
 I answer, she did. France, when in Sep- 
 tember 1792, she chose the Convention 
 which is now sitting, spoke her will plainly 
 and distinctly ; as distinctly, to say nothing 
 more, as you can expecl: to hear her pro- 
 nounce it under any invitation of yours.
 
 What follows? You acknowledge her ca- 
 .pacity; you never meant, as you say, to 
 dispute her will ; why then did this war 
 commence. Under what pretext did you 
 refuse to receive M. Chauvelin as ;n au- 
 thorized minister? Under what pretext did 
 you dispute the powers by which he afted? 
 Under what pretext was that aft of unpro- 
 voked aggression and insult, an aft which 
 all writers on the law of nations confider as 
 tantamount to a decl ration of war, com- 
 mitted against France, namely, that of or- 
 dering M. vJhauvelin to quit the kingdom? 
 Was your choice free to aft in this manner, 
 or was it not? If you could choose, you 
 was under no necessity, moral or physical, 
 of embarking in the war at the time you 
 did, and consequently it is fair to argue 
 that it might have been avoided altogether. 
 So much Sir, for the justice, and neces- 
 sity of the sort of war which Mr. Pitt has 
 provided for us. I have said you would 
 understand better at a peace, why it might 
 have been avoided. I thirrk so, because it 
 is then, and possibly not until then, that 
 you will be made thoroughly sensible of 
 your disgrace. Ministers seem to think 
 indeed, that disgrace like crime, may be 
 diminished by participation ; and conse- 
 quently, by a perverse analogy to a false 
 Erinciple, that they may be acquitted of 
 liling in any one objeft of their war if they
 
 io8 
 
 have but the good fortune to fail in all. 
 I doubt their escaping so easily. Because, 
 whether France shall eleft a monarch, or a 
 magistracy, if she does it of herself, if her 
 will prevail over your power, it comes to 
 the same point. Your defeat is plain and 
 legible. You can no more disguise it than 
 the simpleton can hide himself by cover- 
 ing his eyes with his hands. It is at the 
 peace that you will find, that your hosti- 
 lity will have been the pure loss of just so 
 many lives, and so many millions, and all 
 your honour, unless the form of govern- 
 ment France shall set up, and which you 
 recognize at last, bear some unequivocal 
 mark of your hand, and of your having 
 produced it by yo.ur interposition. Even 
 monarchy, the daily object of your prayers, 
 will help you nothing. In fair truth, where 
 is the difference between a republic of M. 
 Tallien and the Abbe Seyes, and a mo- 
 narchy coming out of their hands? Call it 
 by what name you please, it is still M. 
 Tallien, and the Abbe Seyes. Formed in 
 utter contempt of you, wanting in all it's 
 parts, the seal of your authority to attest 
 it's genuiness, be the constitution of France 
 monarchy, aristocracy, simple democracy, 
 or a confederation of republics, neither your 
 pride nor your convenience will be consi- 
 dered in the settlement. 
 
 Before, however, I dismiss the point of 
 necessity, I feel it incumbent upon me to
 
 state some observations of a more general 
 nature, in which, perhaps, I may have the 
 good fortune to approach considerably 
 nearer to your sentiments. It is asked, 
 had France in January 93, given us no 
 cause for offence or dissatisfaction? Was 
 neutrality the right policy for us to follow 
 \vl ile she was seizing province after pro- 
 vince, and proclaiming common cause with 
 disaffection and rebellion in all countries? 
 Against this mode of stating the question, 
 I must ever protest. It supposes that we, 
 who contend against the principle on which 
 the war was rested by administration, must 
 have prepared our minds for the entire 
 conquest of Europe by France as a matter 
 of perfect indifference : that we had con- 
 sented to abandon the ancient foreign system 
 pursued by this country with little exception 
 since the revolution, to limit our views to 
 our own island, and leave the continent to 
 take care of itself. Sir, it will ever form one 
 of my very heaviest grounds of complaint 
 against the administration of that time, and 
 not less so against many of our former as- 
 sociates that, holding as I do, opinions the 
 >exact reverse of these, they made it impos- 
 sible for me to aft upon them. With 
 every disposition to curb France, and even 
 to assist them in an endeavour to curb her, 
 I felt that they were determined, for un- 
 worthy party purposes, to encumber my as-
 
 sent to the measures necessary for it, 
 with subscriptions to new doclrines, un- 
 known to our fathers, and utterly inconsist- 
 ent with all sound wisdom, or right princi- 
 ple. They rejected with disdain all offer 
 of support which did not leave the wh.-le of 
 the war, whether with regard to it's object, 
 it's conduct, or it's principle, to their' arbi- 
 trary caprice. In a spirit of unfair dealing 
 which I did not think was in their natures, 
 Mr. Windham, and others, countenanced a 
 clamour which just then began to be raised 
 against Mr. Fox, as if he had seen with sa- 
 tisfaclion the progress of France in the Ne- 
 therlands, and towards Germany. They 
 countenanced these calumnies, knowing 
 them to be such, knowing from long ha- 
 bits of consultation with him, that his whole 
 foreign system was framed upon a direclly 
 opposite view, and from private explana- 
 tion as well as public avowal, that his sen* 
 timents on this point continued unaltered. 
 These gentlemen rejected his support, be- 
 cause it did not go to a war without first se- 
 parating the principle on which the country 
 was to engage in it, from that contained in 
 the Duke of Brunswick's manifesto. The 
 ministers rejected it because they knew that 
 if the war should stand upon any fair na- 
 tional principle which Mr. Fox could ap- 
 prove, the country would call for him to 
 conduct it. Jt seemed to be the mutual
 
 ( 111 ) 
 
 wish of these parties to draw a line which 
 should separate him from all that was de- 
 cent, orderly, and settled in political prin- 
 ciple ; and to drive him to seek his safety 
 in associating himself and his cause, with 
 the leaders of the English revolutionary 
 societies. Frightened at the proceedings 
 of men who wanted, as they said, nothing 
 hut a leader to be in a capacity to pull down 
 King, Lords, and Commons at their plea- 
 sure, all was done, in the true character 
 of panick such as theirs, to make them a 
 present of such a leader as Mr. Fox, by 
 passing, as it were, a sentence of outlawry 
 upon him, and shutting him out from all 
 communion with the constitution. If perso- 
 nal provocation could have weighed against 
 a sense of duty, enough in all conscience was 
 offered Mr. Fox, to make him the veriest 
 Jacobin that ever lived. That he did not 
 become so, those friends of his, who, " like 
 the poor Judean, cast a pearl away richer 
 than all their tribe," may thank his honour 
 and consistency rather more than their own 
 judgment or moderation. Suffering with 
 him in the same cause, and guided by his 
 example, I declared then, and am still of 
 opinion, that France by 'her invasion of 
 Savoy and the Netherlands, did give to 
 Great Britain just grounds for offence : 
 that these just grounds for offence, if not 
 removed by negociation, would give us a
 
 f 112 ) 
 
 just, and a necessary ground for war. Pur- 
 suing this principle as far as it honestly 
 went, I did condemn the minister for not 
 having interfered much earlier. In my 
 view of the subject many occasions had 
 occured for this interference. First, when 
 the convention between the Emperor and 
 the King of Prussia at Pillnitz was notified 
 to the other powers of Europe; secondly, 
 when upon the breaking out of hostilities, 
 France threatened an invasion of the Au- 
 strian Netherlands; again, when in June, 
 1792, France directly applied to Great 
 Britain for her good offices ; and again, 
 when the victory of Jemappe had cleared 
 her frontiers, and put the Austrians out of 
 condition to renew offensive operations. I 
 thought it highly criminal in the minister 
 not to have spoken out, at each of these 
 periods, in a language dictated by the spirit 
 of a sincere, but efficient neutrality, as well 
 to France as to the confederates. This it 
 was his duty to have done, even though his 
 dear place were the forfeit, instead of play- 
 ing off the petty artillery of intrigues at 
 home to set old friends at variance, and to 
 conciliate through the fears of some of us 
 a support he never could win from our ap- 
 probation. To every part of that ancient 
 system of our foreign policy which was 
 established by the just and necessary wars 
 of King William and Queen Anne, and
 
 C "3 ) 
 
 which went to establish a balance of power 
 against Franc% and to erecl: the Austrian 
 Netherlands into a barrier for Holland and 
 that side of Germany, I conceived myself 
 tothe full as much pledged as ever. But 
 was this the ministers way of thinking? 
 What are his pretensions to be thought the 
 defender of the liberties of Europe when 
 endangered by France ? If report speaks 
 true, when the invasion of the Austrian 
 Netherlands was determined upon, Mr. 
 Pitt caused a communication to be made 
 to the French ministry that they were wel- 
 come to the whole of them provided they 
 would agree not to touch Holland. This 
 facl: he has never denied, although stated 
 in his presence in parliament more than 
 once. Again, when the King of Sardinia, 
 upon the invasion of Savoy, called upon 
 him to fulfill the treaty of Worms, going 
 out of his way as it should seem to be dis- 
 tinct, he flatly and positively refused it. 
 
 Under this explanation Sir, the neutra- 
 lity recommended by Mr. Fox claims to 
 be interpreted ; a neutrality, the very op- 
 posite to that which was followed, as his, 
 the result of resolution, would have been 
 accompanied by armament, and Mr. Pitt's, 
 the offspring of indecision, was supine 
 and pusillanimous. Under this explana- 
 tion, coupled with the admitted capacity, 
 and right, of France to reform or to spoil 
 
 >
 
 ( "4 ) 
 
 her government, I demand judgment of 
 the question at issue, and call upon you to 
 pronounce which kept the nearest to our 
 ancient system of defensive foreign po- 
 licy, they who contended for the armed 
 interference of Great Britain when the Ne- 
 therlands were menaced, or Mr. Pitt who 
 gave them up to the sword, or the frater- 
 nity of France, under the single restriction 
 of her abstaining from an attack on Hol- 
 land? You augured however, much mis- 
 chief from the recognition of the republic, 
 and much relaxation in the vigour of the 
 royalist's exertions. First, I am entitled to 
 ask, how did your minister second those 
 exertions when they were made? Secondly, 
 I have a right to argue from what we have 
 seen, that the diminution of energy on the 
 part of the royalists, confined to one corner, 
 would have been more than compensated 
 by the universal diminution of energy on 
 that of the republicans throughout the whole, 
 of France. It is plain that you have lost 
 more than you have gained, by making the 
 subject of government any part of your 
 dispute. But is it true that by temporising 
 with France, you would have destroyed 
 the spirit of your cause ? Could Europe 
 never have recovered her heart, if you had 
 once condescended to parley with this re- 
 public in the regular diplomatique form? 
 If to recognize a title we think bad in a 
 government, be, in reality, to destroy that
 
 ( "5 ) 
 
 which we think good, what shall we say to 
 King William, who recognized the title of 
 Philip the Vth. to the throne of Spain, at 
 the very moment he was preparing for the 
 war of the succession ? What happened 
 from this ? Did the Duke of Marlborough 
 feel it's effecls at Blenheim? Did he feel it 
 at Ramillies? Or when he was at the gates 
 of Lisle ? Or when he had cleared his way 
 to the gates of Paris? Or was it until the 
 ignominious peace of Utrecht, negociated 
 under other auspices, that the title of Phi- 
 lip the Vth became of any value to him in 
 the eyes of Europe against his opponent? 
 
 I know this is no case of precedent : per- 
 haps there are none in politics. But it will 
 not follow from hence that no use can be 
 made of the wisdom of our ancestors. I 
 would have recognized the republic of 
 France in the spirit in which Philip the 
 Vth was recognized by the best and wisest 
 of our Kings, that is, (and not as sophistry 
 may objeft, with a design of going to war 
 with her as soon as we were ready ^ under 
 the pressure of a case which made it expe- 
 dient, and with the intent of reducing the 
 quarrel, if quarrel we must, to the safest 
 point for us to take issue upon. In the 
 case before us, the formal recognition was 
 nothing, the substantial recognition was 
 every thing ; and the merits of that must 
 ha e depended not upon receiving, or 
 
 Q2 

 
 C u6 ) 
 
 sending a regular minister, but upon the 
 terms agreed upon with that minister. Af- 
 ter having gone so far, I do not scruple to 
 declare for myself, that if France had deter- 
 mined to retain her conquests, even Savoy, 
 my vote should have gone for the war. To 
 some indemnification I think she was entitled 
 by the unprovoked aggression of the allied 
 powers ; but that should have been in mo- 
 ney, and not in the cession of so material 
 a barrier as Savoy. You would have gained- 
 by this way of proceeding, a fixed object. 
 You would have gained the plea of justice 
 and necessity in the prosecution of that ob- 
 ject. You would have been gainers on the 
 side of enthusiasm within France. Here, 
 you would have been gainers on that of 
 unanimity to support the war, and vigour 
 to conduct it. All these weapons you have 
 blunted or thrown aside. You have raised 
 in France " an armed nation" against you. 
 The confusion in your objects, as Mr. Pitt 
 has stated them, and which probably has 
 contributed as much as any other cause to 
 the marked disunion among the confede- 
 rates, when examined with regard to it's 
 operation in France exceeds all calculation. 
 Hope and fear, those strongest induce- 
 ments of the human mind, are in the ranks 
 against you. By pledging yourselves to 
 nothing distinct, you have disarmed every 
 party in Fiance of it's prospect: to save, or
 
 7 
 
 to better itself by change. By setting no 
 limit to your demands, you have put every 
 man upon his defence; you have exalted 
 terror into despair. You have done this 
 for no purpose but to keep present power, 
 and to secure future indemnity, to a mini- 
 ster, who is as false to you as he has been 
 unfaithful to them. Already has he begun 
 to measure back his steps. Already are you 
 prepared to see him negociate with the pre- 
 sent rulers in France in " a cafe of extreme 
 necessity'' What he means by this no man 
 can tell. He does not know himself. What 
 in his judgment is a case of extreme ne- 
 cessity, the accidents of the times may pro- 
 duce every day. It is any thing that em- 
 barrasses his administration. He may give 
 you a peace with France to enable him to 
 make war with Irel nd. 
 
 Your means therefore of reducing France 
 to a condition in which she will be glad to 
 coincide with any of your objects, have en- 
 tirely failed, as far as these could derive as- 
 sistance from within. You have so de- 
 meaned yourselves as to become suspected 
 and odious to all parties there. It remains 
 to be seen whether you can compleat the 
 work you have so pitifully begun, by means 
 of any foreign force which the remainder 
 of Europe can supply. For one so full of 
 hope, I think you are singularly circum- 
 stanced. Your vigour, that is your phrenzy,
 
 rises with your disasters. There is some- 
 thing truly frightful in the last struggles 
 of your pride. In a fourth campaign against 
 France, with exhausted forces, with Hol- 
 land against you, the Austrian Nether- 
 lands gone, a great part of Germany in the 
 possession of your enemy, with scarcely 
 the means of opposing her a month toge- 
 ther in Italy, Prussia changed sides, Spain 
 as good as neuter if you are yet so fortu- 
 nate, the Mediterranean and the West In- 
 dies calling out to you for all your care to 
 make head on the defensive, the war in La 
 Vendee finished, you are now undertaking 
 to do that which yourselves condemned, 
 as vain and impracticable, when the whole 
 of this picture was reversed. If any cer- 
 tain principle be to be found in the conduct 
 of your ministers, or in their official docu- 
 ments, or in their parliamentary declara- 
 tions, it is, that without the assistance of 
 some active, and acting principle of discon- 
 tent in the interior, the whole experiment was 
 idle. There was an end both of all power 
 to shake their government, and all pretence 
 for trying it. It was with arguments drawn 
 from this source, that ministers and their 
 friends replied to Mr. Fox whenever he 
 reasoned upon the absurdity of attempting 
 the conquest of France. I believe them. 
 They did not expect to conquer France ; 
 neither had they the foresight to see that
 
 except by her conquest, all other chance 
 they had of destroying her government 
 was vain. They are welcome to this con- 
 cession. How will it serve them? Why 
 truly it will enable them to say, we dis- 
 owned this intention at first, we reprobated 
 the scheme as the climax of folly and ab- 
 surdity, but now that no other choice is 
 left us between that and hegociation, with 
 our eyes open to all that is described to us 
 as the state of Europe, with no army to 
 carry into effecl any chain of operations, 
 with no means of coming into contact with 
 France except by the infringement of neu-< 
 tralities certain to be the causes of more 
 wars, with a starving, discontented people 
 and an incapable ministry, we will -now 
 for the first time try the experiment, not 
 of conquering France only, but of con- 
 quering Prussia, Holland, the Netherlands, 
 all the neutral part of Germany which lies 
 between the Austrian territories and France, 
 and all that which is in her possession. I 
 understand the fallacy, frequently, of what 
 in logick is called a dilemma ; but this is a 
 dilemma of facl. The ministers have no 
 escape. They must now avow either that 
 they carry on the war, or to speak correctly, 
 that they continue in a state of war, to see 
 what chance may bring them, or that they 
 have seriously begun to think about con- 
 quering France. They can take no one
 
 ( 120 ) 
 
 military step without some view to this ob- 
 ject, if the war goes on upon the continent. 
 Upon the ocean it is a war of piracy. 
 
 It were making a cruel use of your pa- 
 tience to combat this folly with serious ar- 
 gument. Believe me it is not to discuss 
 with you the means of effecting this con- 
 quest that I wish you shortly to advert to 
 the present state of Europe. Very differ- 
 ent are the reasons which render that state 
 so highly interesting. The question is no 
 longer whether we shall give law to France, 
 or whether, failing in the attempt, the 
 members of the confederacy shall retire 
 each quietly to his home to repair his for- 
 tune, just as if nothing had happened ; but 
 whether by our obstinacy we are not cre- 
 ating and raising up a power of a new de- 
 scription, from which we must receive the 
 law for years to come? 
 
 Amidst the general convulsions that have 
 shaken to their centre those regular govern- 
 ments which took the lead in the measures 
 to coerce France, there subsists, fortunately 
 for some part of Europe, a strength hither- 
 to untouched, and which is daily augment- 
 ing under the faults and follies of the rest. 
 The Swiss republics, Sweden, Denmark, 
 and some of the states of Italy considerable 
 from their local importance, have wisely 
 kept aloof from this contest, and rest upon 
 their arms, not ingloriously, but with the
 
 ( 121 ) 
 
 full means of securing respect to their 
 trality. Every one of these powers, which it 
 is well worth remarking, are either pure aris- 
 tocracies, orundertheguidance of thearisto- 
 cratic principle, we have exasperated in their 
 turns by bullying manifestoes, which when 
 it came to the point, we meanly and pusil- 
 lanimously retracted. A sense of their own 
 security will not suffer them to be uncon- 
 cerned spectators of our losses. So long 
 as they have reason to think us actuated by 
 the same sentiments and counsels which in- 
 spired those manifestoes, they will see that 
 their safety consists in keeping down the 
 power of Great Britain: and to do this ef- 
 fectually, all they will require is some con- 
 tinental power of sufficient consideration 
 and force to act as their head, and give 
 consistency to their confederacy. That 
 power has already stepped forth. Prussia 
 has made her peace with the republic of 
 France on the principle which best facili- 
 tates a confederacy of those nations which 
 have remained neutral during the war. 
 Prussia, withdrawing herself in good time 
 from the prosecution of a*fruitless contest, 
 with her army entire, her resources compa- 
 ratively but little diminished, offers under 
 the eleventh article of her treaty with 
 France, mediation, and peace to the Ger- 
 man principalities on the Rhine, and under 
 the general spirit of that treaty, friendship 
 R
 
 ( 122 ) 
 
 and alliance to all those who stand sepa- 
 rate from the members of the present coali- 
 tion. 
 
 This treaty of peace, if not counteracted 
 by wise counsels on our side, will extend 
 it's principle wider and wider every day, 
 until a total change is effected in the poli- 
 tics of Europe. First, let us consider its 
 immediate consequence. It is here very 
 current that immediately after the signa- 
 ture of the preliminaries, a peremptory 
 order was sent to the British head quarters 
 to evacuate the territories of his Prussian 
 Majesty. Are we in a condition to dispute 
 the point with him? If we are, it must be 
 by force of arms ; but if not, what military 
 operation can take place against France on 
 the side where, from every motive of our 
 ancient policy, we should be chiefly anx- 
 ious to make an impression? Can we cross 
 the Rhine? Could we form the siege of 
 Maestricht? Is there any entrance into 
 Holland, or the Netherlands without pass- 
 ing his door? I do not know that towards 
 the Upper Rhine, our prospect is much 
 better. All the Emperor can do, perhaps, 
 will be to keep Mentz. If he wishes to 
 make that fortress, a point for military 
 operation against France, admitting that 
 Prussia would allow this, he must establish 
 in it the whole of his magazines, and as- 
 semble there all the force he may want for his
 
 ( 123 ) 
 
 expeditions. But when he has got them 
 there, what is the use of his position ? Un- 
 less he can retake Luxemburgh, he cannot 
 attempt on that side the recovery of the 
 Netherlands. All he obtains by it is the 
 means of making predatory incursions into 
 the Palatinate. France is far away! But 
 should he once lose Mentz, to all the pur- 
 poses of a war he might as well make one 
 upon the Emperor of China. He has not so 
 much as a road into France. Here the 
 Prussian treaty shuts him out. From the 
 hour he loses Mentz, all between him and 
 France is dead neutrality. The eleventh 
 article of the Prussian treaty comes dire&ly 
 in force, the spirit and obvious meaning of 
 which is to make that monarch guarantee 
 of the peace to all those princes of the 
 empire who accept neutrality with France 
 through his mediation. His Prussian Ma- 
 jesty, as soon as he begins to acl; in this 
 character, assumes the right of interfering 
 to stop the march of any troops, or stores 
 through the territories of those princes. 
 The Emperor is checkmate. I shall not 
 fatigue you with discussing the question 
 whether this Emperor, consistently with 
 his late declaration to the diet of Ratisbon, 
 can continue the war as King of Hungary. 
 But let us admit him to be sincere both in 
 that rescript, and in his intention of fulfill- 
 ing the treaty he has just entered into with 
 
 R2
 
 ( '24 ) 
 
 us for his loan. By this last engagement, 
 1 will suppose him still a party to the war, 
 and by the first declaration, at peace, as 
 head of the empire, with France. This si- 
 tuation, curious in many re>pe6ls, will be 
 so in nothing more than in the way in 
 which it bears upon the point we are con- 
 sidering. If, as head of the empire, he 
 makes his peace, it is not the King of Prus- 
 sia alone who will prevent his coming into 
 contaft with France ; he excludes himself. 
 The neutrality of the empire binds him 
 with regard to all military operations on 
 the side of Germany, to the full as much as 
 it can bind any one of the lesser princes for 
 whom it is stipulated. If a treaty there- 
 fore, should take place for this purpose, 
 the spirit of that article in the Prussian 
 peace which provides for removing the 
 war from the North, will remove it from 
 every other part, of Germany ; and if the 
 King of Hungary should retain any desire 
 of coming to close quarters with France, 
 the Emperor of Germany must embark his 
 troops at Trieste under the convoy of a 
 British squadron to join the British forces 
 at Southampton ; by which time it is pro- 
 bable that some plan of future operation 
 will be concerted. 
 
 The next consideration is that which re- 
 lates to the possession of Holland by France. 
 J do not yet think it fair to state the rea~
 
 soning which belongs to this question con- 
 sidered in any remote political point of 
 view. The justice of all such speculations 
 must depend upon the event of a peace, 
 and whether Holland shall then be left in 
 her present situation. But the importance 
 of the separate peace which Holland has con- 
 cluded with France, and of her occupying 
 that counry as a military station, is a sub- 
 ject the most serious, and one that presses 
 home to our immediate regard. From that 
 moment your great continental confederacy 
 was hamstrung. We heard a vast deal, in- 
 deed his Majesty's speech condescended to 
 speculate in the same way, concerning the 
 insecurity of this peace to Holland. I 
 thought very much with the ministers. 
 But what made it insecure? Their own 
 conduct, in obstinately rejecting all over- 
 tures towards a general peace, and com- 
 pelling Holland to take her chance for sa- 
 fety in a separate one. Had they been pos- 
 sessed of the least capacity, nay had they 
 seriously looked forward to preserving the 
 remnant of a confederacy against the fu- 
 ture ambition of France, they would have 
 begun negociating for themselves, for Hol- 
 land, for the Emperor, and all the rest of 
 the allies, while those allies were a conso- 
 lidated body, and while it was yet a matter 
 of doubt whether Pichegru could cross the 
 Waal. The prospect of a safe peace for
 
 ( 126 ) 
 
 Europe would at the least have been as pro- 
 mising as it became after the States General 
 had concluded a separate treaty, and as it 
 is now, when other considerable powers 
 are following their example. Wavings-how- 
 ever, all further remarks on this head, let 
 us view it in it's military relations. Hol- 
 land in the hands of France gives her the 
 entrance of Germany on the weakest side. 
 From Wezel to Magdebourg there is not a 
 fortification to oppose to her. This was 
 her advantage before the Prussian treaty. 
 What is it since? Between them, these two 
 powers command the whole direcl com- 
 merce of the North of Germany, and all 
 that is carried on circuitously through that 
 part of Europe with the rest of the world. 
 They possess all the great northern navi- 
 gable rivers from the Scheld to the Vistula. 
 If you contemplate power in the sources of 
 power, what a view of it is here ! Yet even 
 this is but a pigmy representation. While 
 France holds Holland, the whole of your 
 eastern coast is at her mercy. In her hands 
 the station is unhappily such as to out flank 
 your least defensible side, as well as that of 
 Germany. It is not in my plan to present 
 you with the detail of it's naval inconve- 
 niences. You will not fail to remark how- 
 ever, that for upwards of a century the 
 naval system of this country has been shaped 
 measured to the shores of France. You
 
 12 7 
 
 will find it difficult to establish a naval 
 arsenal in the North of Great Britain time 
 enough to afford you protedion in those 
 seas. On the eastern coast, that is from 
 the Foreland to Leith Roads, I learn that 
 it is doubtful whether you can create a 
 harbour for men of war. In the mean 
 while your Baltic trade, the sinews of your 
 marine, is open to your enemy's depreda- 
 tions. All the commerce his Prussian Ma- 
 jesty permits you to carry on with the 
 North of Germany, must pass their doors. 
 I conneci my observations on this part 
 of the subject with the Prussian treaty, be- 
 cause, before that event, France could not 
 derive it's full military advantage from the 
 possession of Holland. It were needless to 
 press any further the effecis of that treaty 
 upon the operations of the war. There 
 are considerations, however, behind, of a 
 yet more alarming import. Considering 
 the Prussian treaty upon a larger scale, it 
 strikes me as likely to become the founda- 
 tion of a new system of national engage- 
 ments coming in aid of the new system of 
 government and manners with which the 
 world is threatened. In this view it forms 
 a new epoch in the French revolution. But 
 a short time ago, the worst that Europe 
 had to fear, was that the influx of French 
 principles would produce, through a gradual 
 revolution of sentiment, revolutions in all
 
 her governments : but never could it have* 
 been credited even by those who confided 
 most in the triumph of the revolution even- 
 tually, that by a direcl league with one of 
 the most considerable of the regular go- 
 vernments, one half of Europe would be 
 seen confederated to force it's principles 
 upon the other. I think this very likely to 
 be the case, in the present situation of af- 
 fairs. If the King of Prussia had merely 
 withdrawn himself from the war, nothing 
 further could be said of him than that he 
 afted like a wise Prince. But he has done 
 more. His treaty with France has all the 
 effecl; of an alliance, and must be so ar- 
 gued to speculate freely upon it's conse- 
 quences. Now the intent of an alliance is 
 to give effecl; to some purpose ; and either 
 is made in opposition to some present in- 
 terest among adverse neighbouring powers, 
 or looks forward to the possibility of it. 
 In either case, the contracting parties must 
 necessarily use all the means within their 
 reach to advance the objeft of their alli- 
 ance. What are those means on the part 
 of Prussia? Purely military. What are they 
 on the part of France? If we conceive her 
 present state to continue, certainly she has 
 not, among the various means of offensive 
 war against herenemies, any one more 
 important than the propagation of her opi- 
 nions. I profess myself a great believer in
 
 he efficacy of peace to cure what is chiefly 
 mischievous in those opinions ; but that 
 peace, as well as being ably negotiated in 
 point of terms, must be general in point of 
 operation. The separate peace, which has 
 just been negotiated under the eyes of out 
 improvident ministers between Prussia and 
 France, will produce the very reverse: it 
 will arrest the certain progress of these opi- 
 nions to the grave, and once more bring them 
 back to life and action, by putting that mo- 
 narch in a situation in which he must depend 
 on them for his support. I look, therefore, 
 for the revival of this revolutionary phrenzy, 
 commonly known by the name of Jfcwi- 
 nism, to the king of Prussia, and the situation 
 in which you have put him. He k is who 
 receives it into the bosom of Europe, and 
 provides for it there, full freedom of action, 
 and a permanent residence. His palace is the 
 head quarters of its negotiators and men of 
 business. His academies of its philosophers. 
 Through him, the chief of a government re- 
 gular beyond dispute, this enthusiastic spirit, 
 snatched from an eternal sleep to which it had 
 been consigned by a suffering world, obtains 
 a direct formal channel of communication 
 with other states dreadfully shortening the 
 road to all its objeds. Enlisting himself 
 thus in its service, he becomes the centre of 
 a new system. He proclaims himself, for the 
 of France, the great royal factor and
 
 contractor for revolutions. By his 1 rank, 
 power, locality, and above all, by the high 
 degree of favour in which he stands, he forms 
 the main link in the chain that connects her 
 with those European states which have an in- 
 terest in our humiliation. In one word, the 
 object of the treaty he has just signed, is to 
 place hinrat the head of the Germanic Em- 
 pire as the ally of France ; to give him, as 
 the organ of the new system, a preponderance 
 in all that relates to the government of the 
 old, and through these means to bind up, as 
 it were, indissolubly and for ever, the desti- 
 nies of the ancient world with that of France, 
 and to bring all its properties and its powers 
 under the influence of her ascending constel- 
 lation. 
 
 For this evil, the greatest practical evil that 
 ever threatened us, there are none but preven- 
 tive remedies : and there are no means of ap- 
 plying these except through a peace. It is 
 peace alone, the occupations of peace, and 
 ^the objects to which it leads, which can retard 
 the .ripening calamities of an event that 
 opens but too surely the way to this fcheme of 
 monstrous confederation. But if you w r ould 
 secure this effect of peace, you must lose no 
 time in making it. The good conduct of 
 centuries to come may be insufficient to cure 
 the delay of one critical month in the present 
 posture of your affairs. A peace, or a sincere 
 experiment for it, begun at the hour am
 
 imparting to you my thoughts, by dissolving 
 the gigantic military fabric which France has 
 erected, might destroy this terrible system in 
 its first germination. What we have to fear, 
 is that the vast irregular exertions which 
 France has made for her defence should set- 
 tle into a permanent war establishment, greater 
 in a similar proportion, than any that can be 
 kept up by other European governments ; 
 and this will infallibly happen if nothing in- 
 tervene in her civil state, considered relatively 
 to other nations, to divert her from carry- 
 ingher views forward at the time she con- 
 cludesa peace. If, therefore, you now go on 
 with the war on the principle of changing, 
 through its operation, the government of 
 France, and if ever you come, (as you 
 must at laft) to make peace without having 
 changed it, France must for her own sake look 
 forward to the means of sustaining the situa- 
 tion in which her neighbours shall have been 
 forced, tardily and unwillingly, to consent 
 that she should stand. This principle opens 
 the door to her connecting herself by treaties 
 and alliances with those states which may be 
 disposed to come into them, exadly upon the 
 old scheme of the court of Versailles, but 
 with very different means of effecting their 
 purposes. She gets this principle by the ge- 
 neral urgency of her situation; she gets the 
 habits of acting upon it every day the war 
 82
 
 5 
 
 lasts. Reciprocal danger binds her closer to 
 Prussia. The chain of continuity is kept up 
 between the necessity of her present exertions, 
 and that of settling a plan of permanent po- 
 licy for foreign affairs, which embraces the 
 question of foreign connections, and the esta- 
 blishments by which these are maintained. 
 All this you would withdraw from the eyes ot 
 the people of France by any advance towards 
 a peace, made them in the true spiritof paci- 
 fication : because it is not untill then that they 
 can begin to think of a constitution ; but the 
 moment you set them seriously to work upon 
 it, you give them an interest in all those bene- 
 fits which are the objects of a constitution. 
 France, for these last thres years, has been 
 living upon her principal. Half an age of 
 retrenchment will scarcely, under the cheap- 
 est constitution they may fancy, enable her 
 to keep within the income of her industry. 
 But whosoever governs France r and looks 
 but a year before him, will find that towards, 
 settling any constitution for her at all, he 
 must call to his aid every one of the advan- 
 tages of peace : that he must set out upon a 
 plan of contracted expenditure, and of atten- 
 tion to resource, wholly and alike adverse to 
 any system of foreign alliance which requires 
 the support of a large war establishment. 
 This brings us to the point. If that infatu- 
 ated policy shall continue, which teaches the 
 sovereigns of Europe that their safety depends
 
 on nourishing and keeping alive the anarchy 
 of France, and when the horrors of war shall 
 have ceased by their inability to continue 
 them, on their adopting a system of intrigue 
 and cabal which shall permit no respite to 
 her miseries ; if unfortunately they fall 
 in with the projects of those ministers, 
 who, to console them for their disappoint- 
 ments, shall pour into their ears the balmy 
 counsels of persecution and revenge, and en- 
 courage them with the cheering prospects of 
 ruined commerce, of depopulated towns, of 
 neglected agriculture, of returning discord, 
 massacre, famine and desolation, then must 
 we expect that France, never quiet herself, 
 will leave no quiet to her neighbours. If 
 the contrary shall prevail, if kings at length 
 shall learn, that by augmenting the sum of 
 human happiness they provide for the certain 
 augmentation of their own, if France be al- 
 lowed to see, and think, that her recovery is 
 worth trying for, then may the elements once 
 more be hushed, the troubled ocean retire to 
 its bed, and these lowering military confede- 
 racies be dissipated for ever. 
 
 I do not tell you this will be the certain 
 effect of negotiation, or even of peace. All 
 depends on the time you choose for it. Is 
 this voluntary ? the chances are as certainly 
 in your favour as in human calculations any 
 thing ran be so. Is it forced upon you ? I 
 \vill answer for no terms from France worth
 
 ( '34 ') 
 
 .to a manly mind the difference between them- 
 and utter annihilation. Your ministers arc 
 putting all to. the hazard : 1 fear that under 
 their management, any termination of our im- 
 mediate evils will be but the Beginning of 
 others ten thousand times more intolerable. 
 I repeat to you, Sir : if peace ever shall be 
 made while the Prussian alliance with France 
 continues in force, and no change of systeni 
 or disposition shall have taken place in this 
 country with regard to French affairs, you 
 .have no security for its, lasting one hour. It 
 will be a peace engendering wars by genera- 
 tions ; and the worst of all wars, as partaking 
 of their common stock. They will be wars 
 not of commerce arid territory, but of govern- 
 ment and opinion. 
 
 1 lament to tell you, Sir, that here we talk 
 in a much higher tone. Nothing goes down 
 but war, if our misfortunes are considered 
 with any view to the repairing them. We 
 defy augury and fate. We talk of a triple 
 alliance ; of a league, defensive as it is called, 
 between the courts of London, Vienna, and 
 St. Petersburgh, which is to counteract the 
 king of Prussia's treaty with France, to crush 
 his power, and if necessary to parcel out his 
 'dominions. According to this speculation 
 nothing is so easy : it is but the work of ~a 
 campaign. In spite of the confidence with 
 which 1 hear -this promised, 1 cannot help 
 suspecting our en lightened age to be lamenta- 
 3'
 
 ( '35 ) 
 
 bly deficient in the art of .calculating coru . 
 quests. By all I can learn, or observe of 
 Prussia, she is likely to prove a bitter morsel 
 to her devouring pursuers. Hitherto we 
 have seen little of Prussia but her politics. 
 Acting with an army against France, in 
 concert with the irreconcileable enerny of 
 her dominion, her military energy has al- 
 ways been veiled under the cloud of a du- 
 bious faith. All that we know for certain 
 is, that in the contest from which she has 
 just withdrawn herself, she has suffered in 
 her treasure and her troops in no decent pro- 
 portion to the other powers. It is generally 
 admitted by those best capable of forming a 
 judgment, that the interior of the Prussian 
 dominions bears less than any other country 
 you can visit the marks of this common ca- 
 lamity. In pecuniary resources she is be- 
 yond all comparison richer than either of the 
 continental branches of this triple confede- 
 racy. In those which belong to political 
 situation, the advantages are altogether as 
 much on her side. From the House of 
 Austria she has nothing directly to fear. In 
 the present state of Europe the chances of a 
 Silesian war would be rather in her favour. 
 It- is on the side of Poland, and chiefly the 
 newly acquired territories, that our great 
 hopes of giving the law to the King of Prus- 
 sia are supposed to rest.
 
 Whatever may have been the fate of that 
 gallant but unfortunate people, the vigour 
 with which they resisted the last dismem- 
 berment of their country has at least proved 
 the extent of public sentiment in Poland, 
 and its value to any considerable neighbour- 
 ing power which may find an interest in 
 foing with that sentiment. The King of 
 russia has tried it both ways : First, when 
 in concert with the British Minister, and to 
 set up his own interest in Poland against that 
 of Russia, he settled the new government 
 with the leaders of the revolution in 1791. 
 Secondly, when by the desertion of that 
 minister in a contest in which he had em. 
 barked at his instance, he was driven into 
 the arms of Russia, and into a participation 
 of her views. This is the sum of his his- 
 tory with regard to Poland, He has had his 
 share in the plunder of a country which, 
 without his co-operation, never could have 
 been plundered at all. It seems the two Im- 
 perial courts are now to deprive him of those 
 acquisitions, and share them amongst them- 
 selves, J think they will experience a diffi- 
 culty in this second transfer not so easily 
 conquered as when they met it in the first. 
 Perhaps the court of Vienna may find itself 
 not altogether at ease on the side of Hungary 
 and the Turkish frontier. But what should 
 hinder the King of Prussia from changing 
 sides in the politics of Poland, and coming
 
 round again to the revolutionists of 1791? 
 What should hinder him, after having secured 
 his own share of the spoil by stipulations 
 which they who remain in Poland would be too 
 M r ise to refuse complying with, from march- 
 ing a Prussian and a French army into the 
 heart of the Russian provinces, and with the 
 aid of its inhabitants, wresting the whole of 
 them out of her hands ? You talk of extir- 
 pating the King of Prussia through Poland. 
 It is on this side the Russian empire is chief- 
 ly vulnerable herself; and never, depend 
 upon it, while the wise counsels prevail 
 which have governed that court for so many 
 years, never will any step be taken to disturb 
 the happy compromise which extended her do- 
 minion last year to the banks of the Vistula. 
 The speculation is extravagant. 
 
 The state of our account, therefore, I take 
 to be all to nothing against us". I wish no 
 man so ill as that he should employ himself 
 in examining it with a view either to the con- 
 quest of France, or to any change in her will 
 with regard to the fort of government she is to 
 set up. It is to little purpose that Mr. Wind- 
 ham,- and others of his way of thinking, have 
 obtained at last some share in the counsels un- 
 der which the war is managed. They come 
 to a government exhausted by adventurous 
 improvidence, and stand before a people fa- 
 tigued, discouraged, querulous, and full 
 T
 
 .( '38 ) 
 
 charged with the materials of a most fright- 
 ful discontent. The time was gone by ei- 
 ther for honest advice, or vigorous action. 
 Your war had got such an ill name, that no 
 wisdom, no spirit, no honourable pledge of 
 their persons or characters could restore it. 
 I have dwelt the longer upon these matters, 
 and gone the more into details relative to the 
 origin of our misfortunes, from a desire of 
 standing clear with you in those points 
 which relate to the separation of our old 
 friends, as well as from an anxiety, which I 
 cannot help feeling as a matter of taste, that 
 the original ground of their difference with 
 us should not be confounded with those we 
 are now contending with Mr. Pitt. To 
 these I will add a yet stronger motive ; for 
 neither shall the character of our party 
 survive its fate, nor can the "country look 
 with any hope towards its preservation, 
 unless we determine upon a retrospective in- 
 quiry into the conduct of the war, in order 
 to fix the blame of our discomfitures where 
 it is due. It is not for us to be told by a 
 minister, with an easy accommodating levity, 
 " We have tried one scheme and failed ; 
 " now let us all be friends, and try an- 
 '* other ;"-* this is not the way to act with 
 dignity or effect. If an effort is to be made 
 for our country, and surely it deserves one, 
 we must know who are \villing, and who are 
 able. / A great thange in your situation is at
 
 ( '39 ) 
 
 hand. With dispositions in government less 
 pacifit than ever, possibly you are not very 
 distant from a peace with France. Great as 
 you may suppose the evil, it must come at 
 last. With peace, you must have intercourse j 
 you must be civil to this republic of Jacobins, 
 reared by the hands of Jacobins of the worst 
 order, if disdain and horror will admit of 
 your distinguishing them. You must be- 
 think yourselves of making some provision 
 for this eventful change ; for eventful indeed 
 it will be, and whether to our prosperity or to 
 our ruin, must wholly depend upon those who 
 are at the head of affairs in the moment of 
 its arrival. Whence it is to proceed, whe- 
 ther from inability to go on with the War, 
 or from the exhausted patience of the people 
 calling for new measures and new men, I 
 will not pronounce, but some there must be, 
 else there will be nothing left to change ex- 
 cept your government. You may now 
 choose, and do not undervalue this great pri- 
 vilege, whether you will begin it yourselves, 
 or wait until it come upon you. Remember 
 it can be done but once; but that it cannot be 
 done at all, unless you place each man in 
 the rank and station proper for him to ac^ 
 eomplish the purposes of such a change. 
 If you neglect this, you will be as much in 
 the dark with regard to the circumstances on 
 which it is to operate, as you have been hi- 
 therto with regard to the objects for which
 
 f 140 ) 
 
 rdl your prosperity basr been risquecL 
 thing will be thrown back upon that capri- 
 cious discretion which you vainly fancy 
 yourselves to be fixing and conirning- by the 
 resolution to adopt any change at all, until 
 at last you will discover that you have con- 
 sumed by anticipation whatever you had a 
 right to hope for from the frugal and the 
 proper use of this last resource. 
 
 Taking it, therefore, for granted as a point 
 of mere dry fad:, that one of these days, and 
 not very distantly perhaps, you must make 
 peace with a republic of some sort in France; 
 we shall not differ, I think, in this, that it 
 must: be our care to guard our own govern- 
 ment' from the shock, if any shall be to be 
 feared, of the recognised subversion pf mo- 
 narchy in so extended a portion of the civi- 
 lised world. Observe, S,ir, that if 1 can by 
 any means consent to admit the possibility of 
 coir, preservation from the dangers that imme- 
 diately surround us, I must caution you against 
 setting it down to aught of a temper very r 
 common amongst us* and in an equal de- 
 gree sanguine and indolent, by which men 
 buoy themselves up with ideas of our bound- 
 less resources, and other general fancies of 
 the like sort, and about as solid. No step 
 that 1 take, none that 1 would advise, is 
 determined upon any such expectation. But 
 you have not yet restored me to the full free* 
 dom of despair. Where little is left for hope,
 
 I 1-41- > 
 
 much may remain for duty, which, in these 
 eases, travels on beyond hope, and never 
 fairly leaves us till the last. That duty tells 
 me that we must attempt the adventure in alt- 
 its ways. I neither promise you that*a peace 
 is to be had; nor that, if obtained, it could 
 save us ; but 1 think we ought to try for it ; 
 and in recommending it, I have a right to 
 press upon your adoption all that may bo 
 necessary to make the experiment successful. 
 Otherwise, with every expectation from 
 peace, and my sincere good wishes for it 
 generally speaking, I am by no means sure 
 that the present minister may not conclude 
 one which will be yet worse than his war. 
 We may consider this point further by-and- 
 by ; I mention it for the present to avoid the 
 difficulty with which they would embarrass 
 us, who desire nothing better for themselves 
 than the inertness of despair in good minds. 
 Whatever may be our chance, better or 
 worse, we must try it, and make the best 
 we can of it. Impressed with this feeling^ 
 I have bestowed a little more attention than 
 perhaps a wiser man would think it right 
 tb waste, upon the means which are left tc* 
 extricate ourselves. The speculation, it is 
 merely such, leaves me I own very much 
 a prey to fears of all kinds. I am afraid 
 that, to any good purpose, the change, as 
 well as being more sudden, must be far 
 more extensive than we are yet prepared for.,
 
 ( '4* ) 
 
 We have been fed too high wkh provocatives 
 to return with any relish to the plain whole-, 
 some food of our ancestors. Calamity has 
 come upon us with too hasty a stride. Some 
 hours should have been snatched from the 
 tomb, and allotted us for meditation and 
 repentance. We retain, I doubt, yet too 
 great a hankering after our old sins to take 
 up new courses, and, by a sincere contri- 
 tion for the past, deserve to be received 
 once more within the pale of the consti- 
 tution. I question whether we have time, 
 J cannot trust to our inclination, for any 
 work of permanent prospective good. 
 
 If we are to try peace without such dis* 
 positions, better were it perhaps to be 
 wholly passive. Whatever is undertaken, 
 I am sure cannot admit of being thwarted in 
 its progress by any intermixture of their op-r 
 posites. Indeed, I scarcely know what one 
 Conciliatory exertion we can dispense with 
 in providing for the complicated objeds 
 which are included in my .idea of a 
 peace. All the considerations belonging to it 
 are of the highest order in politics, To be 
 any thing less than an evil, peace must be 
 established, or attempted, in a spirit widely 
 different from any that has hitherto seemed 
 to influence the conduct; of your ministers. 
 Very serious will be the matter of its terms 
 and formal stipulations; but, viewing a 
 peace with France as connected with our
 
 ( 143 ) 
 
 future situation under it; with the part we 
 must act, and the share which will belong 
 to us under the new system of Europe ; with 
 the evil or the good which we may be made 
 to derive from it by wife, or weak counsels j 
 with the alliances we must contrail; with 
 the establishment of that sort of plan and 
 system of home administration which may 
 alternately conciliate and repress, according 
 to the dictates of a steady, liberal, and manly 
 policy ; with the renewal of a dreaded inter- 
 . course, so impossible to avoid if we have 
 peace at all, so essential to our commerce, 
 and through that to the re-establishment 
 of our resources ; viewing it, Sir, in all 
 these relations, it is scarcely possible to fill 
 the mind with conceptions of a more elevated 
 nature than are included in this one word 
 Peace. This will be no naked question of 
 territory, but a great settlement", practically 
 involving in its consequences all those ques- 
 tions which I have ever thought your eager- 
 ness for alarm has so imprudently antici- 
 pated. It will depend upon the capacity 
 and honesty of those who negotiate it, whe- 
 ther from the signing of its articles any traces 
 of this old world of our's shall remain, or 
 whether a new scheme of things, leading to 
 other customs, other morals, other social 
 connections, the reverse of all our present 
 ones, wijl not take their date; whether in 
 short the evils too hastily predicted from
 
 ( 14+ ) 
 
 g to negotiate in an early stage, 
 when your power was whole, will not hap- 
 pen in a later when you carry negotiation 
 into effect with your power destroyed. Such 
 a measure, you will see at once, requires 
 the utmost liberty of action, and for this 
 end the movers in it must be endowed with 
 the largest portion of our confidence. I 
 have great doubts whether your minister is 
 a man equal to this arduous undertaking. 
 I am sure he is not likely, through any sug- 
 gestion of his own, to consult the necessities 
 of the country, and enter fairly into such mea- 
 sures. I will submit to you my reasons for so 
 thinking, in a few short observations on some 
 of the leading objects just enumerated. 
 
 In the first place, I cannot expect from 
 Mr. Pitt, (except in one view which shall 
 speedily be noticed.) any sincere renunciation 
 of the project of destroying the French go- 
 vernment.. Until this be done, not in words 
 but in fact, not by ministerial professions, 
 but by national engagements, all expectations 
 of peace are idle and illusory. Do not think 
 I mean to charge him with that inveteracy 
 of consistency which would restrain a man 
 who had ventured upon the lofty language 
 towards France which he has used, from 
 being a party to a measure which, coming 
 from him, must be taken as an apology for 
 it. Verily I acquit him of all such unpro- 
 fitable stubbornness. Neither can I believe
 
 C '45 ) 
 
 him to flatter himself any longer with thd 
 hope of success in the war itself. He can 
 expect as little as you or I, that foreign arms 
 can unmake the republic, or if you will, 
 the Jacobinism of France ; or that any in- 
 dividual would long escape the kind vigilance 
 of his next of kin who should hold in sobet 
 sadness the ostensible language of his ad- 
 ministration. This he must know and feel ; 
 but to renounce the project, and recognize 
 his error at the same time, the only way in 
 which he can render repentance beneficial, 
 were an effort of magnanimity only within the 
 compass of men of a tried and steady prin- 
 ciple. No good is to be looked for from the 
 renewal of a negotiation similar to that car- 
 ried on before the rupture with M. Chau- 
 velin. Such a measure would be dishonour- 
 able and delusive to both parties. They who 
 are entrusted with this nice business, must 
 begin by renouncing for themselves and their 
 allies, all confederacies for the purpose of 
 imposing a government on France. That 
 question must be set at rest in the first in- 
 stance, or your negotiation cannot advance 
 a step; You must do this, were it only to 
 tie up your hands from tearing off your ban- 
 dages in a moment of returning phrenzy, 
 and again setting the fountain of your blood 
 at play. But while you thus bind yourselves, 
 which in your present state would be an ad- 
 vantage to you, you bind France too. Is it
 
 nothing think you, to set this question, ift 
 which success and power will assert so large 
 an interest, totally aside in all discussions 
 between you and France? In the hour of 
 your insolence you raised against treating with 
 her, an objection of principle. What should 
 prevent France in the hour of her success* 
 from throwing a similar impediment in the 
 way of accommodation with you ? You re- 
 jected negotiation with her, because you 
 could not trust her government. Why 
 should not she reject a treaty with you 
 as well for what she cannot, as what she 
 can, trust in yours ? Unless you recall those 
 volumes of manifestoes with which you have 
 covered Europe, France cannot trust to your 
 stipulations ; but she can trust, if experience 
 be worth any thing, to the general feeling of 
 your government for its seizing the first fa- 
 vourable moment to renew the war. The 
 present minister can give you no security 
 for attending to the adjustment of a point in 
 so many views indispensable. In fact, by 
 separating the question of government from 
 the terms of peace, as a preliminary, he would 
 do precisely what Mr. Fox recommended 
 two months before hostilities commenced ; 
 and however sincerely you may conclude him 
 disposed to adopt any measure which secures 
 him in his place, it is not in human credulity, 
 after the conduct you have witnessed two 
 short years ago, to believe that in recog-
 
 ( '47 ) 
 
 the French republic he will be actuated 
 by those considerations, which, both in then, 
 and in every succeeding circumstance of the 
 country, made that a measure of prudence, 
 which is now becoming a measure of hard 
 and afflicting neceflity. 
 
 Depend upon it, Sir, that to this point of 
 recognition, of naked, unqualified, previous 
 recognition, we must eventually arrive " The 
 disgrace, and the necessity of yielding it, 
 grow upon us every day." Instead of making 
 it, as we pretended to do with America, 
 the price of peace, we must, as by that un- 
 fortunate war we were compelled, begin by 
 recognition, and discuss the terms by them- 
 selves. It is only thus that we can make 
 peace ; it is only thus, let me add, that we can 
 make legitimate war ; for so long as we re- 
 fuse to negotiate under the pretence that the 
 republic is something we have a right to give 
 to France, or to withhold from her, or to 
 clog with conditions and compromises, dis- 
 guise it under what diplomatique subtleties 
 you will, it is the government which is the 
 object of the war, not incidentally as the 
 means of repelling the aggreiiion of an enemy, 
 but directly as the means of gratifying those 
 paflions which produced it. 
 
 Such must be their conduct who look for 
 
 peace on truly pacific principles. You are 
 
 -not one from whose *' uncandid dulness" I 
 
 have much to fear in making use of this 
 
 U a
 
 ( '48 ) 
 
 phrase. You will not suspect that in striving 
 to guard what remains of British empire 
 and constitution from the destructive igno- 
 rance of those who take the lead in your 
 councils, my only purpose is to surrender it 
 to a French committee of safety. How you 
 will decide on any question, is what I cannot 
 venture to anticipate; hut with regard to this 
 which divides us, I feel that at length the 
 time is come when you will bear to be told 
 that at least you must examine it upon its own 
 merits, and that you must cease to encumber 
 it with the difficulty of fixing any such mo- 
 tives upon those who deprecated the war from 
 its commencement, and forewarned you of 
 its event. You will see, what the tenor of my 
 whole life shall justify against these praters 
 about the constitution, that by urging you to 
 search for peace in the spirit of peace, 1 
 mean nothing so little as to recommend to 
 you the example of France at any one period 
 since the revolution j that 1 afk for no more 
 than a fair, honourable termination of this 
 unavailing contest. Certainly after what has 
 passed, I cannot expect this from Mr. Pitt, 
 iwen were he disposed to attempt it, there 
 are many reasons which render it impoflible 
 for him to open a negotiation for peace upon 
 any honourable footing, to obtain even tole- 
 rable conditions, or to provide any solid se- 
 curity for its preservation.
 
 ( '49 ) 
 
 First, as to the point of honour : J mean 
 of the national honour ; for with regard to 
 what is due to his individual character, as 
 far as in great public transactions that can 
 admit of separation from the character of 
 the state under whose authority he ads, he 
 must be left to his own feelings, such as 
 they are. Among the many causes of this 
 -war, whether of its origin or its continu- 
 ance is no matter, Mr. Pitt has uniformly 
 placed in the first rank his fear, or his dis- 
 like, or call by what name you will, his 
 objections to the principles on which France 
 pretends to found her Republic. This Re- 
 public, or government, or anarchy, which- 
 soever you please, he has attempted to 
 overturn by force; and he has failed. The 
 attempt, however, was made by him as re^ 
 presenting the sentiments of this country, 
 whose honour, notwithstanding every mis^ 
 fortune of the war with America, was de- 
 livered safe, whole, and unimpaired into his 
 hands. Is it possible, Sir, that admitting 
 his readiness to crawl in the dust before 
 France after having talked so big on this 
 side of the British channel is it possible 
 that, as an Englishman, I can consent to see 
 my country submit to that last of degrada- 
 tionsthat of retracting all its vain and 
 arrogant pretensions through the very 
 mouth that uttered them ? If I pass an in- 
 sult upon any man in the face of the world,
 
 ( '50 ) 
 
 honour requires that he should compel me 
 to retract it in the same mode and form as 
 that in which it was given. There can be 
 no compromise. J-Je who has received it 
 is at liberty to go no where else for relief 
 but to me. That identical portion of cha* 
 racter which I have taken from him, he 
 must tear from mine, and mine only. For 
 me there is as little choice. Poor of spirit 
 indeed is he who speculates upon a middle 
 course, I am not fond, in general, of ana- 
 logies between -cases of individuals, and 
 .cases of governments; but in this before us 
 the parallel' holds exactly, as it will in all 
 questions of government which go to their 
 legitimacy. To dispute this, is in the very 
 highest order of insult. Now, Sir, without 
 going into abstract considerations of the 
 legitimacy of that of France, I aik, are you 
 in a condition to dispute it with her ? But 
 did not Mr, Pitt dispute it with her ? and 
 can he now, or under any circumstances, 
 recognize that legitimacy without renoun* 
 cing for us, as a nation, all those high sen^- 
 timents through which, appealing to our 
 pride, our honour, and our feelings* he en- 
 gaged us to deny it, and to support that de- 
 nial by trying our strength with France 
 upon the very point? This were an abject 
 suing for peace, this were, indeed, to bow 
 down the head of Britain, and cover it with 
 indecorous dust. All advances towards
 
 France on the part of Mr. Pitt, must tie- 
 cessarily be so many apologies for his arro- 
 gance, not in his name, but in your's. 
 
 It is not the mere indecency of this which 
 would disgust me. It is a point that goes 
 to essentials ; influencing very considerably 
 on the terms of any treaty we might con- 
 clude with France ; and as vitally connected 
 with our honour, affecting through that our 
 security for every thing else. France, in 
 treating with Mr. Pitt, must naturally take 
 into consideration all the circumstances 
 which create in him a readiness to treat with 
 her. In the first place, she knows his dis- 
 position ; how far she may trust to the sin- 
 cerity of his pacificatory professions ; how 
 far he is likely to abstain from giving her 
 any disturbance after peace by meddling 
 with her parties and factions. Giving her 
 credit for what degree of moderation you 
 will, you must be sure that France, if she 
 acts wisely, will weigh all these considera- 
 tions ; that she will calculate her risque in 
 the terms of her agreement ; that these terms 
 will be higher, or lower, in proportion to 
 what she will have to apprehend from the 
 hostile, or treacherous disposition of the 
 power with whom she negotiates. Be- 
 lieving that he seeks in a peace, nothing 
 but a suspension of hostilities, in order to 
 renew the war at a more favourable moment, 
 she will think it right to secure herself
 
 against the effefts of a surprize, by insist- 
 ing in some instances upon cessions, irf 
 others upon renunciations, which to us 
 may appear in the highest degree exorbi- 
 tant; but which, to speak truth, would be' 
 no more so than we, under the same cir- 
 cumstances* should conceive ourselves en- 
 titled to aik from her. This, you will say,- 
 is putting a very extreme case; and sup- 
 posing that France will have it in her power 
 to dictate to us what peace she likes. I do 
 not see how your objection is to remove 
 the probability of the fadl. If Mr. Pitt 
 continues minister, I most certainly think 
 that it will be so. France has measured his 
 powers, and very much do I doubt whether 
 she has found any thing in them to dis- 
 courage her most extravagant demands * 
 What countenance, I afk you, can he wear 
 towards France, by whom he has been so 
 beaten into a sense of his incapacity, except 
 that of the most abjecl: humility? In dis- 
 cuffing the articles of peace, at what con- 
 cession, however disgraceful, could he stop? 
 Put the most extravagant case you can think 
 of. He must either concede the terms, or 
 fight to procure better. If he concedes them, 
 there is an end, you will admit, of the ques- 
 tion one way; and yet, since the experience 
 France has had of his abilities as a war 
 minister for the two first campaigns and 
 the beginning of the present, with what
 
 ( '53 ) 
 
 hope of intimidating her could he resort to 
 measures of vigour and resolution ? What 
 cares France either for his manifeftoes, or 
 for his armies, or, notwithstanding British 
 superiority, what cares she even for his 
 navies ? Would she understand his deter- 
 mination of renewing the war as a threat, or 
 an invitation ? 
 
 It is not, therefore, to peace on honour- 
 able terms, but to peace on any terms, that 
 we must prepare ourselves to submit, if 
 we leave the present minister to negotiaie it. 
 I cannot bear to impart to you all my fears on 
 this subject. I would not put into the heads 
 of our enemies the hundredth part of the 
 conceffior.s I think him disposed to make. 
 It is perfectly true what you suggest with 
 regard to the difficulty both of settling the 
 terms of peace, or providing for its dura* 
 tion, in the present posture of affairs. No 
 man will deny it, but he to whose presump- 
 tion and self-sufficiency all things are alike 
 .easy. The negotiator of such a treaty must 
 bring to it the firmest courage, the most 
 comprehensive genius and sagacity, the most 
 enlarged knowledge of Europe and her in- 
 terests, added to the most disinterested pub- 
 lic spirit. that ever were combined in man. 
 Rejecting all imaginary dangers, it will be 
 his to foresee the real ones connected with 
 the establishment of this vast military Re- 
 public, and to prevent her, if yet it can be 
 
 A
 
 ( '54 ) 
 
 prevented, from drawing within her circle 
 any very considerable European power, 
 whose accession to her system might over- 
 balance the rest. His will be the task to 
 choose out for the future allies of this coan- 
 try, those who are best calculated to give 
 him the great desideratum of a security for 
 the peace he negotiates. His must be those 
 talents for conciliation, that ability to in- 
 spire confidence, that temper and vigilance, 
 which mast assemble and keep together, 
 ready to be called out at a moment's warn- 
 ing, all that shall be found to remain of 
 the power and resources of Europe; and his 
 the penetration that must discern, and the 
 courage that must determine, the moment 
 beyond which peace cannot be retained with 
 safety. A minister of expedients is no mi- 
 nister for these objeeTis. There is a degree 
 of extent and combination in any rational 
 plan of a peace for Europe- under its present 
 circumstances, which no one can even con- 
 ceive, who is not a statesman upon system. 
 It is because I think Mr. Pitt the very last 
 you can name to me who can provide, or 
 preserve, the securities on which peace must 
 depend, that I objecl to his making it. 
 For what is our security, and what our 
 chance of independence, while Holland re- 
 mains in the hands of France ? Bad enough, 
 you \vi : il say ;- but- still not wholly despe- 
 rate so long as other considerable states re-
 
 main not subject to her power. If we can- 
 not exactly balance that power, we must 
 do our best towards it, and collecting all 
 the fragments of disjointed Europe, throw 
 them into the opposite scale, to make what 
 weight they can. Confederacies, it is true, 
 just at this hour, are in had repute; but al- 
 though confederacies to give France a go- 
 vernment against her will, have made but a 
 sorry figure, they may succeed better when 
 directed to better objects, and certainly are 
 not to be rejected from any scheme of op- 
 posing some barrier to her universal domi- 
 nion. But any such confederacy, whether 
 to deserve success, as I may think, or to in- 
 sure it, as you and every body else will ac- 
 knowledge, must resemble the present as lit- 
 tle as possible, both in its objects and in the 
 principles of its combination. Setting aside 
 all objections which may lead to dispute 
 with respect to the present confederacy 
 against France, and stating the one on which 
 I am speculating, as simply intended to re- 
 sist her force; and speaking of such, as I 
 always must, as a confederacy in which 
 Great Britain ought to take the lead, I afk 
 how, or with whom it is to be formed, if 
 Mr. Pitt continues to direct your councils ? 
 Who believes in his sincerity ? What is the 
 opinion of his abilities ? 1 woul 1 risque the 
 whole of the argument upon his general 
 estimation in the different courts with which 
 X 2
 
 ( '56 ) 
 
 he has had any dealings. Spain, Austria, 
 Prussia, Sweden, the Porte, Russia, the 
 miserable, betrayed, and ruined Poland, all 
 will tell you within the short space of four 
 years, that he seemed in his foreign politics 
 to have no other object, or occupation than 
 to insult the weak, to bend before the proud, 
 to deceive the confiding, and every where 
 to stir up insurrections and rebellions, 
 embroiling subjects with their sovereigns, 
 and sovereigns with one another. Which 
 of these powers, do you imagine, he will be 
 able to engage in any system that requires 
 stability and a permanent trust? And how 
 by their means, or any of them, will he be 
 able to mew that best and only security for 
 peace, namely, that he is in a condition to 
 maintain it ? All, in my apprehension, pro- 
 nounce him unfit for the large duties we 
 require of a minister, who, after a peace, is 
 to preside over the interests of Europe as 
 connected by wise alliances with our own. 
 
 What do I deduce from this? Is it mere 
 calumny, think you, or stated only for 
 the purpose of invidious comparison? If 
 jt be calumny, the worst of all calumnia- 
 tors are his colleagues, since it is from 
 them, through their example, and their 
 arguments, that I have chiefly been led to 
 form my general opinion of the transactions 
 of his foreign policy. The truth is, that 
 like all vain men, who have the misfortune 
 *o step young, and at once, into high an4
 
 ( '57 ) 
 
 efficient offices, he has been obliged to learn 
 his business by experiments. Observation 
 had given him nothing, and he was too proud 
 for counsel. The precarious tenure of his 
 power, founded on no. settled principle of 
 public good, representing no mass of public 
 interests, deriving force from the destruction 
 of opinion instead of from opinion itself, 
 was obliged to live by the day, and help 
 itself on by one expedient or another, to the 
 total exclusion of all objects that required 
 time or steadiness for their completion. 
 Himself of no description, the exigencies of 
 his situation have obliged him to have re- 
 course to men 'of all descriptions. Power 
 of this nature whenever it fails to see its 
 way, which it can very seldom, drives 
 every thing to confusion, from which only 
 it can hope to reap some benefit. Unable to 
 stand alone, as being wholly without re- 
 source, it naturally conneds itself with its 
 next neighbour, or with the strongest for the 
 time being that may happen to want its co- 
 operation. This principle of present conve- 
 nience, and no other, guides and influences 
 all its movements. I do not know how bet- 
 ter to exemplify what I am stating, if you 
 will enlarge the scale, than by a view of the 
 general politics which seem to influence the 
 court of Berlin. Pruffia was a power, 
 under the old system, which the policy that 
 governed it very clearly saw could not
 
 ( '58 ) 
 
 stand alone, and without the support of some 
 of the powers of, what is called, the firft or- 
 der. In the year 1787 the present Sovereign 
 entered, and wisely if wise counsels had pre^ 
 vailed among -us, into a close connexion with 
 Great Britain and Holland. In that of 1791 
 the dispute with Russia broke out. It is 
 \vell known that in the settlement of that 
 dispute to which Mr. Pitt agreed, the King 
 of Prussia had no voice -, that on the con- 
 trary, he considered himself outraged and 
 betrayed by it, In facl: from that moment 
 no alternative was left him, if he wished to 
 keep his rank in Europe, but an alliance 
 either with France, or with his formidable 
 neighbour with whom we had provoked him 
 to quarrel. Why he did not choose the 
 first, which possibly w r ould have been in his 
 situation the wiser, is a wide question into 
 which I will not enter. It is enough that 
 we knew he could not, because we knew 
 of the detestable negotiations going on about 
 this time at Pillnitz, and the degree to which 
 he was a party to them. - It follows then, 
 that either he must have stood single in 
 Europe after the desertion of Great Britain, 
 or have a. -opted the other part of the al- 
 ternative > which it was also clear he could 
 not do without' consenting to participate in 
 the views of Russia with regard to Poland. 
 He did this. A very few months after the 
 settlement of the OczakofF dispute, and in
 
 ( '59 ) 
 
 confequence of that fett lenient, those engage- 
 ments were announced between his Prus- 
 sian Majesty and the Empress, which led, 
 as we have seen, to the plunder and de- 
 struction of Poland. In his situation, the 
 King of Prussia had no other choice. To 
 have kept him honest, he should have been 
 kept secure ; he should not have been ex- 
 posed to the temptation of alarm. This was 
 his conduct in 1791, in the politics of the 
 North. When we consider it with regard to 
 France from that period until his peace with 
 her, the same fluctuating inconsistency will 
 be found uniformly to distinguish it. You 
 never could trust him for a month together. 
 At one moment he was denouncing fire and 
 the sword against the spirit of Jacobinism, 
 and negotiating with it the next. Popular 
 opinion attributed all this to his personal 
 character. I own, Sir, that it struck me as 
 more applicable to his political situation ; 
 precarious at all times, but.rendered yet more 
 so by knowing that among those with whom 
 he was to ac"t in close and intimate concert, 
 and for whom he was to brave very consider- 
 able risques, he was to number the British 
 cabinet. Remember, Sir, that I am offer- 
 ing you nothing by way of justification for 
 his conduct. All I mean is to .shew you 
 how .a Monarch must necessarily acl: who 
 has to keep together a" species of predatory 
 Monarchy formed o;ut of the odds and ends 
 3
 
 of Europe, and which "can exist no longer 
 than while it is in a state of military activity 
 or preparation. You now see that he has 
 made his peace with France. Between a 
 peace and an alliance with her in his case 
 there can he no difference. 
 
 Thinking as I do, that a very near ana- 
 logy may be traced out between the principle 
 on which the Prussian Monarchy depends, 
 when we consider it relatively to the other 
 great kingdoms of Europe, and that which 
 prevails in Mr. Pitt's administration, 1 am 
 very apt to think, that if you suffer him to 
 negotiate at all, he will follow that Sove- 
 reign's example. Unable to give you the 
 real securities for peace, he will be obliged 
 to substitute those which are false and hol- 
 low. Instead of a strong foreign confederacy, 
 he will present you with a French alliance. 
 Now let me atk you, Sir, whether you are 
 prepared for this sort of connection with 
 such a neighbour ? For one, I must acknow- 
 ledge myself not to be fo by any means ; 
 and beg to put in my claim to the distinc- 
 tion, which I trust to be wide indeed, be- 
 tween a peace which shall leave France to 
 the formation of her own government, and 
 that which involves an engagement of this 
 nature. I shall press the subject no farther 
 for the present, hoping that the little I have 
 said may put you upon your guard against
 
 ( ,6! ) 
 
 all endeavours to surprise your assent into 
 such a proposition. 
 
 I think therefore, Sir, that the very ex- 
 tensive change which mutt take place in your 
 whole series of measures before you can ob- 
 tain the full benefits of a peace, cannot be 
 the work of that minister to whom you owe 
 the war, and its train of misfortunes and 
 disgraces ; that he could not attempt nego- 
 tiation with honour j that were he to con- 
 clude any pacification, its terms would be so 
 bad as to necessitate, possibly, the breach of 
 them on our parts ; and that in the opposite 
 case, he could provide you no security for 
 its duration on that of France. If there be 
 indeed, any danger that an immediate peace 
 would bring about a revolution with us, it 
 can only arise from a peace negotiated under 
 such auspices, in which .either a foundation 
 would be laid for future wars againft the go- 
 vernment of France, or, for the sake of 
 evading present difficulty, engagements 
 contracted with her leading to an inter- 
 course of politics the most hazardous. 
 I now come to a consideration, perhaps 
 the most serious of any. Granting all ob- 
 stacles to be for the present overcome, and 
 Mr. Pitt to settle your peace, what is to be 
 his plan of domestic government after peace? 
 If the end of this war be such as to bring 
 our constitution into jeopardy, first, from 
 the contagious influence of French princi-
 
 C 16* ) 
 
 pics, and secondly, by leaving France with 
 such large means to enforce them, it is clear, 
 that henceforth we must consider our con- 
 stitution as one and the same thing with our 
 empire. Disposed to think as highly of our 
 constitution as any man, I have always held 
 that the chief part of its excellence, and the 
 whole of its security, depended, as the best of 
 human institutions must, upon the method 
 of administering it. I never was a favourer 
 of those fanciful theories of balanced 
 powers, sometimes mutually aiding, some- 
 times counteradting each other, but always 
 harmonizing at last. This constitution, 
 highly as we all prize it, can no more 
 support itself by its own mere spirit thaa 
 any power in mechanics can act of itself. 
 It is hence that very rare endowments are 
 requisite -in a minister who" aims at so 
 high a trust as that of giving it its impulse, 
 or presiding over its safety. Whatever he 
 may possess of zeal, vigilance, or acuteness, 
 will, be useless, if not worse, without a 
 thorough and particular knowledge of the 
 species of mischief he will have to provide 
 against, and resources for repelling it derived 
 from long and settled constitutional habits of 
 aciicn. You would not take a physician, 
 notorious only for his skill in poisons, and 
 for his readiness to give them, in the hope 
 that if you paid him his price he would ad- 
 minister to you nothing but wholesome me- 
 dicine. It is not by incantations and fur-
 
 ceries that the spirit of evil can be cast out. 
 To be a fit guardian and defender of the 
 constitution it is indispensable that they for 
 whom, and in whose name, he acts, should 
 agree with him as to what that constitution 
 is ; what is its strength, and where its 
 weakness ; what are its beauties, where its 
 defects ; and which are its true securities. 
 These he muft not only keep in due repair, 
 and readiness for service, but possess the fa- 
 culty of bringing them into action at once, 
 and thus, on any great emergency, be able 
 to play off the whole resources of the state at 
 the same instant. 
 
 Such muft be the qualities of your mi- 
 nister. But what is to be the system ? Or 
 is government to go on, as it has hi- 
 therto, without system, upon mere tem- 
 porary shifts and expedients ? Whatever 
 ministers may wish, they must not ex^ 
 peel; that much will be left to their option. 
 Look, I entreat you on France j after 
 having given herself a constitution, not on* 
 your principles but her own, and maintained 
 at the point of the sword her will ty change 
 and alter all things belonging to it according 
 to her fancy, now creeled and consolidated 
 into one vast republic. If, when kept at a 
 distance by our fears, and struggling with 
 all the difficulties of her revolution, our dan- 
 ger from her opinions was such as to justify 
 whatever our great men have said and done 
 Y 2
 
 C '64 ) 
 
 to repress them, what hope will be left us 
 when France, cloathed in the double fasci- 
 nation of novelty and victory, comes to de- 
 mand an intercourse with you on terms of 
 conciliation and commerce ? Is it just then 
 that these opinions will lose their danger, 
 and that our constitution may be left to take 
 care of itself? or is it upon a peace that we 
 are to enforce the system of Tory tcrrorifm 
 with renovated vigour, and carry into yet 
 wider effect the set of measures which it has 
 originated ? If, consistently with a state of 
 peace, we cannot continue our alien act, our 
 traiterous correspondence act, and the rest 
 of the laws and regulations we passed in the 
 same spirit against France, are we, with a 
 view of producing their ends in another way, 
 to search into the sore and tender parts of 
 our constitution, enact new treason laws, 
 and, perhaps, repeal the habeas corpus act 
 altogether? These are measures which, 
 with all the infatuation of the present day, 
 I scarcely should believe in the contempla- 
 tion of any set of men. Yet your present 
 ministers have no choice ; either they must 
 have recourse to some such, or, by doing 
 nothing, confess their whole conduct hi- 
 therto to have been rank imposition. If 
 peace with France, or even neutrality, was 
 so dangerous in 1793 that war, with all 
 its hazards, was considered as a safe expe- 
 rimqnt in comparison; and if, after trying
 
 war, they find the danger from that so much 
 greater, although of another sort, as to drive 
 them back again to peace, to what a degree 
 must not the original dangers of peace be 
 augmented in their minds, when we con- 
 sider the circumstances under which we shall 
 eome to it, and the sort of terms we are 
 likely to obtain ? What follows in reason? 
 If the strong measures I have alluded to were 
 right at a period so little flattering to the 
 expectations of France, how infinitely more 
 urgent will be the obligation of acting upon 
 them when the peace shall be settled ? 
 There seem to be no modes within the known 
 line of the constitution of protecting it by a 
 temporary suspension of its functions, strong 
 enough for the necessity of their argument. 
 It must be abrogated at once, in form, and 
 substance. 
 
 I am far from carrying to this extent, 
 which must call as you will observe for 
 still severer restraints upon public liberty, 
 the dangers from this republic of France left; 
 in quiet possession of so many means of 
 annoying us ; but no man will tell me that 
 this mighty change, produced by such 
 mighty efforts, will not oblige us, as a 
 means of keeping our ground, to draw very 
 largely upon the fund of our constitution. 
 Observe, Sir, this is no constrained admis- 
 sion from me of an adverse argument ; it is 
 the strong part of my case. Whether the
 
 ( '66') 
 
 conclusion of the war shall leave France with 
 a government good or bad, it can never be 
 to us a matter of indifference : if it be good, 
 we must guard against whatever it may pos- 
 sess of real temptation ; if bad, against its 
 false pretences and its power, against its 
 fraud and its force. In either case I think it 
 high time to look about us, to muster our 
 whole strength, and examine what we shall 
 have to trust to whenever we come in the 
 face of mankind to a fair trial between tbe 
 value of their government and our's. Fully 
 satisfied with my own, I wish to give it all 
 advantage in this trial ; I wish it to receive 
 no detriment from the wickedness of its mi- 
 nisiers, or the discontents of its subjects. 
 These considerations have drawn my atten- 
 tion very much to the quarter in which I 
 apprehend our chief danger to lie. If I ven- 
 ture to expose your weak parts, I shall do it, 
 Sir, with all the freedom of an old friend, 
 to whom it is permitted to offer wholesome 
 cbrre&ives, and the common remedies, per- 
 haps with little hope of your adopting them 
 in time, but with as little fear from the sort 
 of reproach which it is so much the fashion 
 to throw out against the motives of such as 
 recommend them. 
 
 In the very first and foremost rank, I 
 place a spirit of perfecl carelessness among 
 the people themselves, on all matters which 
 regard their pride, honour, safety, liberty, or 
 whatever else you can suppose in a public
 
 point of view dear or valuable to a nation. 
 I think the worse of this, from observing 
 with what inveteracy it is attached to, and 
 woven in with, the scheme of our civil ad- 
 ministration in all its branches. I am convin- 
 ced that in times of danger there will be no 
 safe reliance on this spirit, either for the 
 whole of your constitution, or for any of its 
 parts, even for the monarchy which it seems 
 most to favour. I could know far better 
 how to deal with a stiff, high-flying monar- 
 chical spirit, which the experience of our 
 history tells, me is to be softened and pared 
 down to the true standard of our constitu- 
 tion, for the 'sake of what it most loves and 
 venerates. Something is always to be ac- 
 complished with the pride of an independent 
 aristocracy. Nor should I tremble to behold 
 a plain, manly, genuine republican sentiment, 
 were it mixed with republican manners and 
 virtues, prevailing among the lower orders. I 
 find no fault with these abstractedly consi- 
 dered ; because a w r ise government will always 
 know what to engraft on such dispositions, 
 and how to turn them to the general benefit. 
 But far different is it with the sad and name- 
 less jumble of all principle we see before us ! 
 It is not that ministers are ambitious, par- 
 liaments corrupt, the crown holding its pre- 
 rogative too high; such are the vices of all 
 ages, never to be cured, but always to be 
 balanced; but we seem in our public morals
 
 to unite every opposite corruption of the ex- 
 tremes of mixed monarchy. The spirit of 
 these times is a spirit of persecuting political 
 bigotry, which exhibits the law upheld by 
 mobs, and slavery enforced by sedition. Is 
 it now, principally, that lofty sentiments of 
 honour ought to be cherished and cultivated 
 almost to a degree of romance j that we 
 should be tenacious in the extreme of privi- 
 leges originating from that source j that we 
 should give to property even more than its 
 due consideration and weight; that we should 
 display justice in all those energies with 
 which she protects the good and terrifies the 
 bad ? The duties corresponding to these 
 maxims shall be set before us in the sub- 
 limest precepts of philosophy and reason. 
 In vain ! Comes there a call upon our pradice, 
 find we the least ruggedness in our path to 
 make us toil and stumble, at once we desist 
 from the pursuit. Rich iniquity, turning 
 the weapons of virtue against her own breast, 
 claims and obtains immunity from crime 
 through the fruits of that crime itself: aris- 
 tocracy, preserving all its insolence and none 
 of its pride, leagues with the court to destroy 
 and quench the vital spark through which 
 it holds a separate existence, the opinion of 
 its independence and of its justice: the court, 
 fixed beyond all precedent in the exercise of 
 those powers which seem rather to belong 
 to arbitrary, than to mixed monarchies, in- 
 2
 
 ( '69 ) 
 
 capable of giving any shape or system to its 
 councils, lays itself out to flatter the passions 
 of a debauched and giddy populace ; that 
 populace, hating the very name of liberty, 
 degrades and ostracises every man who seeks 
 to guard it upon any permanent principle of 
 adion ; the ministers, participating in this 
 common nature, than which for the pur- 
 poses of government nothing can be so fatally 
 feeble, follow at an humble distance the fancy 
 of the day, without ever daring to lead public 
 opinion. This, Sir, is our state. Court, people, 
 ministers, all encourage one another in the 
 perversion of every principle of just govern- 
 ment. Think you that this can produce 
 harmony ? By no means : never was that 
 happy state intended to arise out of such 
 agreements, Domestic discord, in its direcl: 
 form, lurks beneath the smile of this trea- 
 cherous affability. What the habit may turn 
 to, what fungus this rottenness may throw 
 out, baffles all rational conjecture*, Great 
 power, under the dominion of great fear, 
 has recourse to strange expedients. If you 
 ask me my opinion, I should tell you, that 
 it would probably end in establishing among 
 us a revolutionary mob government, just as 
 bad as what they have got in France. 
 
 Do you remember the riots of Birming- 
 ham ? I know there are those who express 
 a very high degree of exultation whenever 
 i-/
 
 ( '70 ) 
 
 mention is made of the transactions of those 
 foul days. With some expressions of decent 
 regret, and even this not very often, for the 
 outrages then committed, such as the burn- 
 ing of houses, the pillage and destruction of 
 property and of the labours of science, they 
 think the spirit of what they call loyalty 
 there manifested, fit matter for triumph and 
 congratulation. Could the whole people but 
 be animated with similar zeal, nothing 
 would be to be feared from the progress of 
 French revolutionary maxims ; instead of 
 declining, they would provoke the conflict. 
 This is the language; and miserably are they 
 deceived who hold it. Be assured that there 
 is an end of all effective force in the law, 
 and consequently of all certain obedience 
 to it, when it is left to find its own level and 
 balance between the violence of two opposing 
 anarchies. The weakness of government 
 stands revealed, when any class of its citi- 
 zens, even those who pretend to wish it 
 best, shall be suffered in any case whatever 
 to flatter themselves that, by breaking 
 through the known and fixed fences of jus- 
 tice they may advance its ends, and serve 
 the constitution. Admit the danger, and you 
 go a great way towards weakening the go- 
 vernment ; but it will begin to verge fast to 
 its dissolution indeed when the impression 
 bhall be such among its friends, as that the 
 established authorities are insufficient for its
 
 ( '7' ) 
 
 protection without pressing upon the last 
 spring, and opening the reservoir of public 
 force existing ultimately in the people, 
 and never to be touched but in the last 
 agonies of the state. A mob of affection 
 is just as dangerous as a mob of disaf- 
 fection. Nor is there after all, any such 
 great difference between the mobs of Bir- 
 mingham, and the mobs of Paris. The 
 common apology of rashness belongs to nei- 
 ther. Our Englishmen are not so fond of 
 blood indeed ; they are content with persecu- 
 tion. But the pretexts, and the purposes of 
 each are exactly the same. Each, for the sake 
 of justice, begins by destroying law. These 
 restraints removed, they are left to pursue 
 their own inclination and bent, which in all 
 mobs, ever was, and ever will be alike. 
 Tired of fighting against each other, they 
 join to indemnify themselves with the com- 
 mon plunder of the state. 
 
 Such are not the dispositions out of which 
 I mould hope to oppose any thing durable to 
 France in the way of example. An admini- 
 stration founded upon these dispositions, 
 therefore, and encouraging their prevalence, 
 cannot be a fit or proper depositary of the 
 public force. What answer, indeed, can I 
 rind to all the plausible part of the French 
 theories, 'from Mr. Pitt's government consi- 
 dered in its practice ? To begin for instance, 
 with hereditary monarchy. The French, and 
 
 Z/ 2
 
 Some English after them, call it an absurdity, 
 because wisdom is not hereditary. I answer, 
 that no English monarch .governs by his own 
 wisdom be it ever so great ; that if he could, 
 there would be an end of our liberties, It is 
 for this reason that the constitution declares he 
 can " do no wrong ;" because he is supposed 
 -to acl; by the advice of his ministers, who 
 not only can do wrong, but who can be made 
 to smart for it. But if selfish persons about 
 the crown, sheltering themselves under this 
 maxim, and taking advantage of a high Tory 
 spirit among the people, and of a disposition 
 to interpret it in a literal, and not a virtual 
 sense, can contrive to vest the chief offices of 
 state in persons of no weight or consideration 
 in the country for talents, integrity, property, 
 or general character of any kind, and per- 
 suade the House of Commons to give to all 
 such appointments as often as they may hap- 
 pen, their countenance and good will, then 
 Undoubtedly the chief argument which re- 
 conciles it to sound wisdom, namely, that 
 the advisers of the crown who are to answer 
 for its adls are themselves most interested in 
 giving good advice, becomes nugatory ; then 
 it would indeed be more consonant to reason 
 that a king should govern without any ad- 
 yice ; and then I should be compelled to 
 confess, which is the point to which the ene- 
 mies of monarchy want to bring us through 
 this concatenation of results, that hereditary 
 i
 
 C ''73 ) 
 
 monarchy is an absurdity. What can I offer 
 better in favour of aristocracy ? I will not alk 
 you what Mr. Pitt has done, but what he has 
 omitted, to degrade its true principle, to vi- 
 lify the characters of its natural supporters, 
 and in the persons whom he has admitted to 
 a share of its privileges, (with very few ex- 
 ceptions,) to render it in the eyes of the peo- 
 ple not only hateful, but ridiculous ? again, 
 when the House of Commons is held up to 
 its constituents as an object of contempt', 
 shall I hope to regain to it any portion of 
 respect or attachment by repeating to them 
 the language of Mr. Pitt ? Or where, in his 
 practice, shall I find arguments to contravert 
 this detestable maxim, that the House of 
 Commons deserves respect and veneration 
 when acting with the Crown, execration and 
 .extinction when acting against it ? 
 
 All this, Sir, is with me, the foundation 
 of very serious alarms. I am concerned to see 
 the constitution, which remember will be our 
 best weapon of defence against France, in the 
 hands of a man who will not give it its fair 
 chance when opposed to brilliant and seduc- 
 tive, although fallacious schemes, cloathed 
 in all the allurements of new theories, and 
 imposing upon us with the authority of suc- 
 cessful experiment. Much indeed has he to 
 learn in the art of government, and much to 
 unlearn of what has been taught him in the 
 school of his youth, before he can attach men
 
 ( '74 ) 
 
 to the constitution through him, and his mode 
 of administering it. When I hear in what 
 manner he describes it, and what he tells us 
 are its obligations, I am indeed alarmed for 
 the duration of its popularity, whether it be 
 offered to the choice of the people of Eng- 
 land, or pressed upon their will. I certainly 
 am one, who, considering the circumstances 
 of the times, am ready to take the constitu- 
 tion as it is, and who, with the best wishes 
 for its wiser management, consider it not as 
 a thing to be tolerated, but as a thing to be 
 loved ; yet when he tells me that it was the 
 constitution which made him minister in 
 1793, and that to keep him so, the constitu- 
 tion enjoins us to persist in those measures 
 which have marked the last three years of 
 our history with calamity abroad, and nearly 
 with the extinction of our liberties at home 
 when I am told that to keep him in his place 
 the constitution demands of us to recognize 
 the debasement of the House of Commons, 
 and the proscription of all men who are not 
 ready to bow the knee to his usurped autho- 
 rity, then, I repeat, a fair chance is not given 
 to the constitution in any question which 
 may arise between it, and any possible specu- 
 lation for its reform. What, in such a con- 
 test, are we tempted to hazard, we who 
 believe and know, that this is neither our 
 original charter, nor even so good a thing as 
 a clumsy copy of it ? that it is something else
 
 which ministers have fraudulently substituted 
 instead of a constitution, something which 
 operates not as a casual deviation from its 
 letter, but as a radical change in the substance 
 of the contract itself ? I think this a great 
 evil : because in a struggle of such momen- 
 tous import, reasons enough will be found 
 without furnishing a new one, for a cold 
 deadening neutrality, or at best a languid in- 
 difference to the event. Many there are 
 who, with an honest attachment to the con- 
 stitution, will see nothing worth the trouble, 
 and still less the danger of a choice, between 
 the transient prevalence of projecting refor- 
 mers, and the insolent dominion of a minis- 
 ter; who will think that neither the one, nor 
 the other, have any claims upon them to stir 
 a step ; but that they shall best perform their- 
 duty to an establishment they love, and wish r 
 to serve, by keeping their strength whole and - 
 unbroken, until two mischievous factions, ? 
 exhausted by mutual animosities, shall pre- 
 sent them with an easy victory over both. : 
 Is this a thing to be wished? Would it not 
 rather be a symptom of ruin most rapidly . 
 coming on indeed, if to any considerable ex- " 
 tent a way of thinking were to prevail, which . 
 should drive away well-intentioned men from 
 looking at all into the public affairs ? Such, 
 however, must infallibly be the consequence 
 of separating whatever is distinct in public 
 principle, from a cause which is to pass under
 
 t '7* > 
 
 filename of the constitution. Is it thus 
 armed and accoutred, and under such auspi- 
 ces, that its real defenders can risque an en- 
 gagement ? And were it not the heighth of 
 misconduct in those, who have so dear a 
 charge in their immediate keeping, to ven- 
 ture with half their forces into the field* and 
 link the fortunes of an odious and a power- 
 less name with that of every valuable interest 
 of their country ? Can they think it quite 
 safe to send about as a watch-word, the cry 
 of PITT, OR A REVOLUTION ? 
 
 Certainly it can never be with the effects 
 of such a cry that I should recommend it to 
 you to meet the dangers, whatever they are, 
 to which we may be exposed by a French 
 republic. God forbid we should not have 
 some better standard than this to fly to 
 when that fearful crisis shall come upon us ! 
 But the views of Mr. Pitt I must consider as 
 the very reverse. No issue could be so fa- 
 vourable 'to him and his power. All his 
 measures, therefore, will obviously be direc- 
 ted to bringing our public divisions to this 
 point, and the nature of them will be such as 
 may be best adapted to sustain the cheat of 
 plots and conspiracies, and to feed the expi- 
 ring embers of our fears. You will only be 
 gainers by this in increased rigours of your 
 government; the whole blame of which is 
 visited upon your constitution, which it 
 makes less dear to those who reason, and
 
 
 less worth defending to those who do not. 
 It is, hence that I have ever considered our 
 former Whig associates to have fall, n into 
 the worst of all possible mistakes when they 
 coalesced with Mr. Pitt. For the first time 
 since party has been known among us, and 
 the name of Whig considered as the designa- 
 tion of that party whose way of interpreting the 
 letter of the constitution was most conforma- 
 ble to its spirit, we hear it maintained, which 
 that coalition docs, as a principle of duty 
 scarcely to be distinguished from their allegi- 
 ance itself, that the .crown having given its 
 confidence to a particular servant, it does not 
 become them to dispute his precedence. Thus 
 in the preliminaries of their treaty with him 
 they think fit to accede to a principle which 
 vests in Mr. Pitt a perpetual title, and inde- 
 feasible right, to his office as a matter of 
 property ; to be governed by the rules 
 and practice applicable to cases of property. 
 Thus, shortly and conveniently are got rid 
 of at once all that touches the merits, or 
 that may hereafter affect the permanency, 
 either of the minister, or the measures 
 connected with him. That minister, and 
 those measures incorporating thus with the 
 machine of government, become a part of 
 the constitution as necessary to it as the 
 monarchy itself. To the holders of sucL 
 maxims- no middle course is left. They must 
 take the whole of such a minister, or none 
 of hina : but in embarking with him at all, 
 A a
 
 ( '73 ) 
 
 they must take the consequences of acting in 
 extremes. Then mark, Sir, what a sudden 
 and a frightful change is produced in the 
 entire complexion of your affairs ! The 
 public voice is held in check by the imputa- 
 tion of seditious views to all opposition or 
 complaint. Even parliamentary dissent treads 
 close on the heels of disaffection. In this 
 temper it is easy to confound proceedings 
 which originate in mistrust of a minister, 
 with the incipient symptoms of revolt against 
 the sovereign. The alarm is spread at the 
 first movement which menaces that minister. 
 They fly to his defence as to the advanced 
 posts of the constitution itself. If the acci" 
 dents of the times combine to invest them 
 with a decisive superiority in strength and 
 numbers, after repelling their opponents, 
 they become assailants in their turn. Ex- 
 pecting no quarter they determine to shew 
 none. Then is reardd aloft the gloomy 
 standard of proscription and persecution. 
 The British constitution, disrobed of her 
 beneficence, and swathed up in premunires, 
 and confiscations, and constructive treasons, 
 is bid to display herself in the sullen ma- 
 jesty of terrors not her own. All choice be- 
 tween the extremities of evil is scornfully re- 
 jected from th,eir plan of unconditional sub- 
 jugation. Rational neutrality becomes 'sus- 
 pected. Timid hesitation is punished. The 
 feeble voice of moderation is drowned in the 
 ^in of a motley host of invaders, each yelling
 
 ( '79 ) 
 
 out in his own barbarous accents, h? that is 
 not for me is again/I me.* They who set them- 
 selves to strive against this torrent, are ac- 
 cusedi if not of positively participating in 
 the views of certain wild theorists, at least 
 of aiding and countenancing them in their 
 avowed designs against all lawful authority* 
 Who is prepared to. submit to these preten- 
 sions ? Who will bear to be told that he can- 
 not innocently seek a medium between the 
 claims of infatuated arrogance, and the me- 
 naced desolation of the change by which it is 
 proposed to resist them ? Yet it is by such 
 pretensions, enforced by such language and 
 principles, that those who on every conside- 
 ration of talents, rank, character and pro- 
 perty are the natural and stationary enemies 
 of projectors of all kinds, are disgusted and 
 driven to a distance. Men of warm passions, 
 listening to the suggestions of a just resent- 
 ment, throw themselves into the opposite 
 scale. An ardent popular spirit, nursed up 
 and encouraged by public distress, but hi- 
 therto without order or connection, by gaining 
 leaders and discipline gains all that it wanted 
 to effect the most extravagant of its purposes. 
 Parties and factions are formed, knowing as 
 little whence they come, as what they aim at. 
 Each, as it were, by instinct, finds itself em*. 
 battled in hostile and opposite array. In this 
 
 Vide the declaration of fhe Kings of Prussia and Hun- 
 gary, delivered to the Diet at Ratisbon, M*y 17* 1792- 
 
 A a 2
 
 universal soreness of the public mind CIVIL 
 WAR is only deferred while a conscious ine- 
 quality of force teaches prudence to the 
 weaker side. But all is. prepared. They 
 wait only until the folty of a minister, by 
 swelling the mass of discontent, shall have 
 increased their numbers to a capacity for 
 action. Then, the first mistake in govern- 
 ment is the signal. 
 
 I leave you to judge whether such is the 
 ministry you would desire to see continued 
 for its own sake ? or whether you think it 
 good for any purpose of maintaining ftie 
 British constitution against reformers, French 
 or English ? Indeed the coalition which 
 gave the Duke of Portland to Mr. Pitt, seerris 
 to have cut off for ever all hopes of this na- 
 ture. Say what they will, the members of 
 that coalition meet under impressions of such 
 declared ill opinion, as ; totally to prevent 
 their answering to you for the accomplish- 
 ment of any one beneficial purpose by it. 
 This is no common junction of parries the 
 leaders of which consent to forget what 
 might remain of -animosity- after the first 
 cause of division had subsided. Mr. Wind- 
 ham in 1 792 the interval is not too long for 
 his consistency told us that so far irom 
 thinking better of Mr. Pitt, one great mo- 
 - tive for his supporting him was because he 
 thought worse of him. Now what must 
 have been Mr. Windham's opinion of the
 
 sense of manly pride, of the political recti- 
 tude of a minister to whom in the face of 
 parliament he promises support and the ob- 
 livion of all contest about power of place, 
 lest a too great anxiety for the preservation of 
 them should distract his attention* relax his 
 energy, or keep him back from the adoption 
 of those strong but dorfbtful measures which 
 in the speakers mind were' so essential? 
 Doubtless Mr/ Windham will acknowledge 
 that every thing which has happened since 
 that period, justifies the wisdom of that re- 
 solution, and confirms the minister's title to-his 
 support. But are you prepared to follow up 
 all this strange reasoning to its consequences "? 
 The ministry in 1792 was feeble, timid, 
 and improvident. To- give it strength and 
 courage, he supported it. In 1-70.4, it ; g^^ 
 worse, it shewed itself possessed' 6f no a'>ar 
 city for the conduct, and acl?u&te& -'by- HO- 
 right feeding towards the just pbj^l*?Cu the 
 war. To make it better, .and bolster it up 
 for a while, Mr. Windham and his friends 
 resolved upon becoming a part, of that ad- 
 ministration themselves. - They hoped, it 
 seems, that although they should be com- 
 pelled to sacrifice the whole principle on 
 which the Whigs had adled since 178.4, they 
 might be able to make such terms with Mr,. 
 Pitt as to secure them, though not pre-ermV 
 nence in power, yet such a degree of strength " 
 as would enable them to carry into effecl:
 
 some of the leading measures of their systeniv 
 I would afk Mr. Windham with what fidelity 
 Mr. Pitt has executed those terms ? and to 
 what degree he,has : enablc<l the division of the 
 Whigs who joined him to perform any one 
 of their engagements to the public, or in any 
 one instance, except perhaps in the admiralty 
 department, tq better fhe system they found? 
 These gentlemen may deceive themselves, 
 but I assure you. they 'deceive no one else, 
 if they imagine that their accession to office 
 has wrought any change in the character of 
 Mr. Pitt's administration. They have added 
 indeed something to its numbers : but the 
 great powers of government continue still 
 in the same hands,- It is the same unnatural 
 fa,tior} that, in the year 1784 joined with the. 
 Crown and that very, mob it now threatens. 
 to .hang, draw, and quarter, to pull down 
 the Hpuse of Cpmnions. 
 
 Desinat in pi seem mulier Formosa superne* 
 
 These. may be very good reasons for Mr. 
 Windham to continue acting with it* He 
 and his friends may not despair of their ef-^ 
 forts to serve you; but you, who are to 
 judge of the work, will probably 'expect," 
 both in shew and substance, something more 
 worth your money than a mere augmentation 
 cf personal strength to the word, and 'most; 
 dangerous minister this country ever saw.
 
 I remember the vast expectations which 
 you, and many other of my worthy friends 
 at **** had formed from that coalition. In 
 particular you thought what was to be done 
 for Ireland was of itself a sufficient justifi- 
 cation of that step. Among other taunts it 
 was put to me, what must be thought of my 
 continuance in opposition to a government 
 which offered in their very names so many 
 securities for the public freedom? I agree 
 with you, Sir, that the objection demanded- 
 some other answer than the general one, 
 with which however, so many of our rigid 
 examiners are satisfied, that my motives' 
 were disinterested because opposition is not 
 the road to power or profit. In my opi- 
 nion nothing can be more disgraceful than to 
 be seen continually in opposition to govern- 
 ment, when it is good. I do not however 
 feel myself so very hard pressed for a reason 
 for keeping aloof from the Duke of Port- 
 kind^ union with Mr. Pitt last year. I 
 must think that whether it be regarded with 
 a view to principle or practice, the inefficacy 
 of any such union as was then proposed, 
 was plain from the beginning. 
 
 Unpropitious indeed were the auspices 
 under which it set out. It was but a sad 
 omen of success in their other projects that 
 forming this coalition, as they professed to 
 do, to preserve some very dear opinions, 
 they should have begun it by an aft which 
 3
 
 ( 1 84 ) 
 
 destroys the most valuable- of them all. If 
 they so much dreaded the prevalence of that 
 insolent mob government which in common 
 with every other distinction has pulled dqwrt 
 that of character in France,- could there have 
 been a more fatal step than the ranging them-, 
 selves under the banners, of those whoae 
 lives have been spent in persuading the peo-, 
 pie that no such thing as character exifted ? 
 Jf the doctrine of equality, as-, practised in 
 another country, was in truth so terrible to 
 them, how can we account for their acceding 
 to the political pre-eminence of a faction in 
 this, who have so extensively corrupted the 
 sentiments of our own public, and made 
 them converts to doctrines derived from one 
 common source with the purest, most ge- 
 nuine, unadulterated Jacobinism ? What 
 therefore, is it less than suicide in men, to 
 defeat whose pretensions to power these he- 
 resies have been inculcated among the lower 
 orders, to incorporate and identify them- 
 selves with the inventors of them, and under 
 a weak hope of keeping at a distance prin- 
 ciples which tend to equalize rank and pro- 
 perty, give the sanction of their example to 
 those which subvert from its /andation the 
 only security they possess .for rank, proper- 
 ty, estimation, or ccrnfort of any kind ? I 
 aik, what remains to them when the opinion 
 ot their public virtue is no more? I aik, in 
 defiance of the flimsy conceits, and vain
 
 metaphysics on which Mr. Pitt's adminis- 
 tration was erected, I demand, in the well- 
 known accents of those who have left us to 
 make a part of it, what laws, what esta- 
 blishments, what distinctions, nay even 
 how long the liberal arts, or commerce it- 
 self can survive those perverted manners, 
 and that vitiated state of society in which it 
 is a received opinion that all men are alike, 
 that the service of our country corrupts our 
 morals that politicians and statesmen are 
 all rogues, and the rest of those compen- 
 dious maxims of calumny which form the 
 basis and groundwork of the power of Mr. 
 Pitt and his friends ? To have been able to 
 shew that in joining him they departed no-* 
 thing from their own principle, they should 
 have produced to the public a fair recanta- 
 tion, and a distinct, specific disavowal on 
 the part of the minister, of all such notions. 
 This act was necessary not by way of gra- 
 tification to their own pride, but in order to 
 discountenance those dangerous opinions 
 which his elevation to office had rendered 
 current. Instead of doing homage to him, 
 the Whigs should have made him do pe- 
 nance to the constitution. I see no princi- 
 ple on which they could join Mr. Pitt before 
 having exacted from him some sort of atone- 
 ment, which circumstances perhaps might 
 mitigate but could never supersede, except 
 that which confounds all distinction of right 
 Bb
 
 and wrong, and submits whatever we have 
 been used to look to- as fixed upon the ctcr- 
 rial maxims of justice, to the discretion of a 
 capricious and arbitrary convenience. You 
 a-fk me, whether 1 call this a desertion of 
 principle ? or whether it is any thing worse 
 than a mistake ? What can be worse than a 
 mistake on a subject so serious, I cannot 
 well imagine. If it will gratify any of them 
 to- have it believed by one of their old friends 
 that they have not a (fled from sordid motives, 
 eertainly I will not be the person to with- 
 hold the testimony of my sincere conviction 
 of it. What will be surmised by others who 
 have not the same opportunities of knowing 
 them, is not so clear. If the most uncha- 
 ritable opinions should prevail, they may 
 thank the industry of those to whom they 
 have united themselves. If the labours oi 
 their whole lives should be resolved at last 
 into an unworthy struggle for power, let 
 them remember to whom it is owing that 
 this habit of thinking is become general 
 among the common people, and applied to 
 all men, and all parties alike. 
 
 But the mischief of this ill-starred union 
 does not stop here. It is not that it puts an 
 end to a party combined for certain objects 
 agreed among us all to have been highly be- 
 neficial, but that it discourages the hope of 
 forming any similar combinations in future. 
 It is pot the public alone who willafk what 
 
 7
 
 confidence can be placed in party profes- 
 sions ? Men who devote themselves to 'po- 
 litical life will aik what security there is in 
 party connexions ? It is mighty .well to an- 
 swer that a truly independent mind will look 
 to no security from such quarters, but con- 
 fide in its own reditude. All experience is 
 against these refined notions, and fanciful 
 modes of considering human actions as di- 
 vested of human motives. There are too 
 many discouraging impediments in the way 
 of those who resolve to fulfil their duties to- 
 wards you, to admit of our lessening those 
 aids which are derived from the countenance 
 of illustrious names, and the general applause 
 of pur fellow citizens. Much has been 
 written in favour of, and against, party con- 
 nexions ; and generally speaking, 1 have rea- 
 son to think we differ very little in our opi- 
 nions respecting them. Assuredly there is 
 no method which our conftitution tolerates, 
 of resisting with such good .effed the daily 
 encroachments of aspiring power : because 
 the resistance of party is continued ; where- 
 as if you trust the cure of your public griev- 
 ances to the general operation .of a spirit of 
 liberty, that cure will be uncertain, but your 
 risques without number. It wi.ll be always 
 a chance whether you can excite that spirit ; 
 but a question deeply doubtful indeed, how 
 you can govern it. We must not conceal 
 however, that party connexions, by which it is
 
 always best preserved and regulated, although 
 directed towards a popular service, never were 
 of an highly popular estimation. At court 
 they were in worse order still. A marked 
 proscription has very generally attended all 
 such engagements during the present reign. 
 Now figure to yourself, if you can, a situa- 
 tion more unpromising to those who mean 
 fairly your service, if, persecuted by the court 
 for steadily pursuing that service, and dis- 
 countenanced by the people under the im- 
 pression that we mean only to serve ourselves, 
 ourselves should be the persons whom least 
 of all we can trust ? Think what must be 
 the effect of rendering, as inevitably you will 
 when you destroy the principle of party 
 union, a feeble, intriguing, and distempered 
 court, the only market for the learning and 
 abilities of the kingdom? All but the mere 
 mechanism of politics will vanish from the 
 stage. No competition ; no emulation; no 
 sense of glory j no fear of shame ; nothing 
 to engage mankind to the state through the 
 medium of their virtues. No more shall we 
 distinguish in the mental attainments of those 
 who aspire, or are destined to eminent sta- 
 tions, that high cultivation so conspicuous in 
 the youth of our present day. The dull 
 stream of despotism will float down weeds 
 and rubbish to choak up every fountain of 
 intelligence. Literature ' will have no em- 
 ployment but an abject adulation of those.
 
 who alone, and scantily, dole out the means 
 of its precarious existence. With every sense 
 of decent pride will perish all the energies of 
 manly genius. No little mischief will fol- 
 low the total change in the object of our pub- 
 lic animosities. Our contests, instead of 
 being continual but always confined to the 
 modes of administering a fixed constitution, 
 will be rare, but terrible, and every change 
 portend a revolution. Dark conspiracy will 
 succeed to open combination, and from the 
 principles of conspiracy, the gradation is but 
 too obvious to its weapons. Thus are the peo- 
 ple separated from their legitimate guardians, 
 and delivered up to the artifices of every dar- 
 ing adventurer. In vain will it be hoped 
 that among so many opposite minds there 
 can be no union. When once these mistaken 
 men who have sought their own safety in the 
 destruction of their party have simplified 
 their differences with those they style the po- 
 pulace by reducing them all to one question, 
 and that a question between property and 
 numbers, the first projector that starts up 
 will give them all the union they need to 
 shew them their prey, and teach them how 
 to seize it. 
 
 1 know there is a disposition to accede, 
 in the abstract, to most of these opinions. 
 But the times, it is said, call for unanimity, 
 and the oblivion of all former disputes in 
 order to save the state. Men who call upon
 
 f 19 ; 
 
 us for this in the loud tone of authority, 
 think they have said enough when they de- 
 clare this great work to be no party business. 
 1 am not so much surprised at hearing this 
 language from the quarter from whence it 
 -comes, as at the sudden, easy simplicity 
 with which it is adopted by .those to whom 
 it is addressed. A&ing all my life in a 
 party, and acting with them, I never under- 
 stood, although I have often heard the sen- 
 timent pressed upon us by way of reproach, 
 that when any one act particularly wise, 
 just, or salutary: was to be carried through, it 
 became a matter with which party not only 
 could have no concern, but which conside- 
 rations of that nature would rather prejudice 
 than advance. This is, allow me to say, a 
 mere way of talking; a flale phrase picked 
 out of that vocabulary of cant which we 
 see now a days in the hands of every 
 upftart pretender to public virtue. Party 
 engagements are .derived from no such 
 sources of illiberality and bigotry. On the 
 contrary; they are of aquality so opposite, 
 as absolutely to exclude the influence of the 
 /nearest and the dearest ties unless associated 
 with public principles, There have been 
 times in our history when party was lo^t 
 in the violence of civil convulsions. I do 
 not think these have bettered your constitu- 
 tion. On the contra ry : it always found great 
 Difficulty afterwards to recover its tone, 
 3 "
 
 ( '9' ) 
 
 These, and other reflections upon the sub- 
 ject which the length my letter is grown 
 to obliges me to retrench, have, long induced 
 me to consider party, as a benefit and not as 
 an evil. It is good in its separation. It 
 is good, too, in its union with others ; 
 when such union is proposed with a .view 
 of preserving party in its objects, and 
 not oi destroying those objects. .Men who 
 engage with each other on these principles 
 are not at liberty to give up the. public cause, 
 blended and made one with their private 
 honour, on any such hacknied invitations. 
 If at any time they should see a necessity 
 for assisting, an administration they have 
 been used to oppose, they must beware of 
 taking a step which by destroying -their own 
 characters will wholly preclude them from 
 bringing to government any accession of 
 useful strength. They must first be well 
 assured of that degree of change of system 
 which may leave them to the pursuit of 
 their own measures, without fear of in- 
 terruption. For this they must take se- 
 curities in the name of the .public, by pos- 
 sessing themselves of those official situa- 
 tions which, commanding an enlarged view 
 of the whole of our political situation, may in- 
 sure the means of carrying prompt succour to 
 its weaker parts. There are occasions, too, 
 on which they must insist upon examples. If 
 the minister whose meaiures they have 
 been resisting shall, with a view to his own
 
 ( '92 ) 
 
 personal schemes, have raised and let loose 1 
 against their party a wide, prescriptive, per- 
 secuting spirit, which operating possibly be- 
 yond his original design, threatens at length 
 to subvert the whole fabric of our mixed 
 government, he is not to be indulged in la- 
 menting the difficulty of restraining it, or 
 encouraged to call out to them for help with- 
 out a fair recognition of his error, testified 
 by descending from his post. This is no 
 vain punctilio. It is to demand a sacrifice 
 for the constitution. It is the point of ho- 
 nour, where honour is all. 
 
 Such were the only terms on which any 
 union of the Whigs with Mr. Pitt could 
 promise either safety to themselves, or even- 
 tual of stability to the government. They 
 can scarcely be aware of the extent of what 
 they have conceded. Instead of discovering 
 any circumstances in these times which 
 called for the oblivion of party animosities, 
 they seemed to me to demand of us that we 
 should preserve, with more than usual care, 
 every trace and vestige of them. I thought 
 it infinitely better to go on, as long as we 
 could, with the old dispute of Whig and 
 Tory, than teach men to refer all their 
 causes of complaint to the distinctions of 
 society, and to see only two classes in the 
 state, and those the rich, and the poor. I 
 know of nothing but party which can save, 
 and treasure up the sentiments which help to
 
 < '93 ) 
 
 keep these extreme disputes at a distance ; 
 nor can a true, party spirit, such as we have 
 been used to recognize in this island, be ex- 
 tinguished, except through the operation of 
 the most frightful changes. It is not that 
 these changes can only be produced by pub- 
 lic contusion. Dispositions to this 'effect 
 may be silently and systematically encou- 
 raged among the people, teaching them in- 
 discriminate mistrust in the professions of 
 every man. When once their cast of think- 
 ing is thoroughly tainted with these suspi- 
 cions, then is a revolution accomplished, 
 without its tumults indeed but with all its 
 consequences. 
 
 We used, my friend, to agree in better 
 days, that the foundation for such a revolu- 
 tion was laid by Mr. Pitt in the year 1784. 
 In my conscience 1 think that we owe, to 
 the example of that calamitous period, every 
 mischief the country has suffered from the 
 debility of its government at the beginning 
 of these troubles, and from its intemperance 
 now. Then began in effect, and was avow- 
 ed with all the insolence of power, that 
 system of proscription and monopoly through 
 which a corrupt court draws to its own use 
 the whole authority of the state, which it 
 divides and parcels out by a rule of favour- 
 itism to the exclusion of all claim from 
 birth, merit, or services of any kind. To 
 f^eep this engrossing spirit alive, the worst of 
 Cc
 
 all factions was nourished among the most 
 infatuated of all people. The House of 
 Commons, not in its construction but in 
 its institution, was treated with still less 
 ceremony than ever it has been fince in the 
 speculations of the most fanciful refor-r 
 mers. The constituent body was encou- 
 raged to look for direct aid from the 
 crown in all disputes with its representative. 
 These thoughtless politicians reserved no 
 provision for cases in which they should 
 have to maintain their own ground against a 
 faction they were ftirring up to destroy the 
 influence of the middle ranks. What has 
 followed was natural. The fair, Whig aris- 
 tocracy is nearly reduced j the court and 
 the mob have quarrelled j and it is now next 
 to a question whether the whole of your 
 government shall not be demolished. To, 
 this issue at least they are bringing the con- 
 test, unless means be found to stop them in 
 the course of their insane guilt. 
 
 You have here, Sir, the reasons of a very 
 plain man, a friend to practical politics, for 
 adhering with what has been esteemed a cri- 
 minal pertinacity to the principles in which 
 he was educated : who pretends to know 
 little of their abstract value j but having 
 always found that they led him to consis- 
 tency in your service, feels that he has no 
 other wish than that they should continue to 
 govern his conduct. What would be a re-
 
 95 
 
 medy for the evils of which he thinks your 
 situation full, is more than he has the pre- 
 sumption to pronounce. He is far from 
 confident that all remedies will not come too 
 late. One opinion he is not afraid to risque 
 at all events, and that is, that no very great 
 good is. to be expected from an unlimited and 
 implicit confidence in the king's ministers. 
 : Whether any better issue may be looked for 
 from a change of men and' measures, is a 
 point on which he is by no means unreason- 
 ably sanguine. Such an event alone, and 
 supposing it not to arise from a conviction 
 of past errors on the part of both crown and 
 people, he is satisfied would produce only a 
 short suspension of calamity. But the peo- 
 ple have much to atone for towards others, 
 before they can be true even to themselves. 
 Suddenly to demand the services of men 
 against whom they have sucked in with 
 malicious relish every species of calumny for 
 these last ten years, to receive that service 
 with ungracious hesitation, to dwell upon 
 its benefits with cold applause, and then 
 probably, in conjunction with a treacherous 
 court and a fawning faction, to turn short 
 round upon us with some cry of fancied 
 mischief, and consign us to disgrace and 
 banishment for the rest of our lives, this, 
 let me tell you, is neither in the right of any 
 .people to require, nor, I sincerely hope, in 
 C c i
 
 the folly of any men who value their repu- 
 tation to comply with. They who are in 
 earnest must come fairly forward with the 
 symbols of penitence as well as conciliation. 
 They who now discover the mischief ot tear- 
 ing asunder the legitimate ties which bound 
 them to the constitution, must resume them 
 with fresh endearments, renovated by a sense 
 of their former folly and misconduct. With 
 gratitude in their hearts, and an honest wel- 
 come in their looks, they must turn towards 
 the man whom no threats, no temptation, 
 no injury, no galling memory of ill-requited 
 service, whom not the sacred voice of friend- 
 bhip itself has for one moment biassed from 
 the steady line of his public duty. But un- 
 less they resolve to co-operate with him ef- 
 fectually, all effort will be vain : without 
 retarding the fate of our country it will only 
 enhance its severity, and sharpen the appe- 
 tite of our enemies with the desire of revenge 
 as well as dominion. 
 
 If I could see a prospect of their doing 
 this, I should not so entirely despair of the 
 commonwealth. But while there exists a 
 disposition either in the court, or among the 
 people, to, temporise with the vanity of a 
 minister, and to pass by all other services 
 lest the delicacy of his ambition should surfer 
 the pain of some humiliation, then is there a 
 ruinous infatuation, and far-gone depravity 
 indeed in our general habit, against which all
 
 ( '97 ) 
 
 further conflict is useless. Who will an- 
 swer for the consequences ? These can be 
 measured by the times alone. With no me- 
 diatorial party to modify the pretensions of 
 an irritated and ill-governed people against a 
 weak and misguided court, if those to whom 
 we look for support fail us at this crisis of 
 their fate and our's, if they go on trusting 
 these men until the wide questions of popu- 
 lar rights gain the ascendancy, who will un- 
 dertake that the multitude shall distinguish 
 the mischief from its cause, or settle, in the 
 balance of their inflamed passions, the blame 
 due to the faults of their government, and 
 that which belongs to the administrators of 
 it ? This, whenever it comes, will be the 
 worst of all dangers. We shall not even 
 come to a question upon our constitution. 
 It will slip from under our hands : leaving 
 us to lament the ignominy of so losing it, 
 with the aggravated misfortune of discover- 
 ing that we shall not have avoided the horrors 
 of civil strife. 
 
 It is your business to look to this. For 
 me, whatever may be our common destiny, 
 J shall be numbered with those who have 
 done their utmost to avert this, and every 
 other calamity which has already befallen 
 you. I shall reflect with comfort on having 
 seen to their end the public obligations 1 had 
 contracted with you. With no hand in the 
 rash measures which precipitated the fall of
 
 the Whig party, I have followed it to the grave 
 in sorrow and mortification. In attending 
 its obsequies I have borne, it is my firm 
 opinion, my share in the last mournful rites 
 of the constitution itself. Death can push 
 his victory no further. Farewcl, Sir! After 
 all, I think we have meant the same thing; 
 and that if the present situation of our coun- 
 try left any room for hope, we should not 
 differ in devoutly wishing for an adminis- 
 tration which could give us an honourabic 
 peace, upon safe terms, which could defend 
 us against France after peace, and provide, 
 both in precept and practice, for the perpe- 
 tuity, as far as it is in human wisdom, of 
 the free government of this country in all its- 
 branches. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
 5- 
 
 9- 
 
 la. 
 
 *9- 
 do. 
 
 70, 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 4. for e<ven read ever. 
 
 12. forfupprefs rez^ 
 
 29. for tnifche'vious read mifchtewufj 
 
 8. for this debate read the debate. 
 
 i S. for meditate read mediate. 
 
 1 1 . for in read to. 
 
 24. for as the degree read as to tbf degree.
 
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