even beyond any of his former invectives, against every power with whom
we were then, and are now, acting against France. In the _moral_ forum
some of these powers certainly deserve all the ill he said of them; but
the _political_ effect aimed at, evidently, was to turn our indignation
from France, with whom we were at war, upon Russia, or Prussia, or
Austria, or Sardinia, or all of them together. In consequence of his
knowledge that we _could_ not effectually do _without_ them, and his
resolution that we _should_ not act _with_ them, he proposed, that,
having, as he asserted, "obtained the only avowed object of the war (the
evacuation of Holland) we ought to conclude an instant peace."
28. Mr. Fox could not be ignorant of the mistaken basis upon which his
motion was grounded. He was not ignorant, that, though the attempt of
Dumouriez on Holland, (so very near succeeding,) and the navigation of
the Scheldt, (a part of the same piece,) were among the _immediate_
causes, they were by no means the only causes, alleged for Parliament's
taking that offence at the proceedings of France, for which the Jacobins
were so prompt in declaring war upon this kingdom. Other full as weighty
causes had been alleged: they were,--1. The general overbearing and
desperate ambition of that faction; 2. Their actual attacks on every
nation in Europe; 3. Their usurpation of territories in the Empire with
the governments of which they had no pretence of quarrel; 4. Their
perpetual and irrevocable consolidation with their own dominions of
every territory of the Netherlands, of Germany, and of Italy, of which
they got a temporary possession; 5. The mischiefs attending the
prevalence of their system, which would make the success of their
ambitious designs a new and peculiar species of calamity in the world;
6. Their formal, public decrees, particularly those of the 19th of
November and 15th and 25th of December; 7. Their notorious attempts to
undermine the Constitution of this country; 8. Their public reception of
deputations of traitors for that direct purpose; 9. Their murder of
their sovereign, declared by most of the members of the Convention, who
spoke with their vote, (without a disavowal from any,) to be perpetrated
as an example to _all_ kings and a precedent for _all_ subjects to
follow. All these, and not the Scheldt alone, or the invasion of
Holland, were urged by the minister, and by Mr. Windham, by myself, and
by others who spoke in those debates, as causes for bringing France to a
sense of her wrong in the war which she declared against us. Mr. Fox
well knew that not one man argued for the necessity of a vigorous
resistance to France, who did not state the war as being for the very
existence of the social order here, and in every part of Europe,--who
did not state his opinion that this war was not at all a foreign war of
empire, but as much for our liberties, properties, laws, and religion,
and even more so, than any we had ever been engaged in. This was the war
which, according to Mr. Fox and Mr. Gurney, we were to abandon before
the enemy had felt in the slightest degree the impression of our arms.
29. Had Mr. Fox's disgraceful proposal been complied with, this kingdom
would have been stained with a blot of perfidy hitherto without an
example in our history, and with far less excuse than any act of perfidy
which we find in the history of any other nation. The moment when, by
the incredible exertions of Austria, (very little through ours,) the
temporary deliverance of Holland (in effect our own deliverance) had
been achieved, he advised the House instantly to abandon her to that
very enemy from whose arms she had freed ourselves and the closest of
our allies.
30. But we are not to be imposed on by forms of language. We must act on
the substance of things. To abandon Austria in this manner was to
abandon Holland itself. For suppose France, encouraged and strengthened
as she must have been by our treacherous desertion,--suppose France, I
say, to succeed against Austria, (as she had succeeded the very year
before,) England would, after its disarmament, have nothing in the world
but the inviolable faith of Jacobinism and the steady politics of
anarchy to depend upon, against France's renewing the very same attempts
upon Holland, and renewing them (considering what Holland was and is)
with much better prospects of success. Mr. Fox must have been well
aware, that, if we were to break with the greater Continental powers,
and particularly to come to a rupture with them, in the violent and
intemperate mode in which he would have made the breach, the defence of
Holland against a foreign enemy and a strong domestic faction must
hereafter rest solely upon England, without the chance of a single ally,
either on that or on any other occasion. So far as to the pretended sole
object of the war, which Mr. Fox supposed to be so completely obtained
(but which then was not at all, and at this day is not completely
obtained) as to leave us nothing else to do than to cultivate a
peaceful, quiet correspondence with those quiet, peaceable, and moderate
people, the Jacobins of France.
31. To induce us to this, Mr. Fox labored hard to make it appear that
the powers with whom we acted were full as ambitious and as perfidious
as the French. This might be true as to _other_ nations. They had not,
however, been so to _us_ or to Holland. He produced no proof of active
ambition and ill faith against Austria. But supposing the combined
powers had been all thus faithless, and been all alike so, there was one
circumstance which made an essential difference between them and
France. I need not, therefore, be at the trouble of contesting this
point,--which, however, in this latitude, and as at all affecting Great
Britain and Holland, I deny utterly. Be it so. But the great monarchies
have it in their power to keep their faith, _if they please_, because
they are governments of established and recognized authority at home and
abroad. France had, in reality, no government. The very factions who
exercised power had no stability. The French Convention had no powers of
peace or war. Supposing the Convention to be free, (most assuredly it
was not,) they had shown no disposition to abandon their projects.
Though long driven out of Liege, it was not many days before Mr. Fox's
motion that they still continued to claim it as a country which their
principles of fraternity bound them to protect,--that is, to subdue and
to regulate at their pleasure. That party which Mr. Fox inclined most to
favor and trust, and from which he must have received his assurances,
(if any he did receive,) that is, the _Brissotins_, were then either
prisoners or fugitives. The party which prevailed over them (that of
Danton and Marat) was itself in a tottering condition, and was disowned
by a very great part of France. To say nothing of the royal party, who
were powerful and growing, and who had full as good a right to claim to
be the legitimate government as any of the Parisian factions with whom
he proposed to treat,--or rather, (as it seemed to me,) to surrender at
discretion.
32. But when Mr. Fox began to come from his general hopes of the
moderation of the Jacobins to particulars, he put the case that they
might not perhaps be willing to surrender Savoy. He certainly was not
willing to contest that point with them, but plainly and explicitly (as
I understood him) proposed to let them keep it,--though he knew (or he
was much worse informed than he would be thought) that England had at
the very time agreed on the terms of a treaty with the King of Sardinia,
of which the recovery of Savoy was the _casus fœderis_. In the teeth of
this treaty, Mr. Fox proposed a direct and most scandalous breach of our
faith, formally and recently given. But to surrender Savoy was to
surrender a great deal more than so many square acres of land or so much
revenue. In its consequences, the surrender of Savoy was to make a
surrender to France of Switzerland and Italy, of both which countries
Savoy is the key,--as it is known to ordinary speculators in politics,
though it may not be known to the weavers in Norwich, who, it seems, are
by Mr. Fox called to be the judges in this matter.
A sure way, indeed, to encourage France not to make a surrender of this
key of Italy and Switzerland, or of Mentz, the key of Germany, or of any
other object whatsoever which she holds, is to let her see _that the
people of England raise a clamor against the war before terms are so
much as proposed on any side_. From that moment the Jacobins would be
masters of the terms. They would know that Parliament, at all hazards,
would force the king to a separate peace. The crown could not, in that
case, have any use of its judgment. Parliament could not possess more
judgment than the crown, when besieged (as Mr. Fox proposed to Mr.
Gurney) by the cries of the manufacturers. This description of men Mr.
Fox endeavored in his speech by every method to irritate and inflame. In
effect, his two speeches were, through the whole, nothing more than an
amplification of the Norwich handbill. He rested the greatest part of
his argument on the distress of trade, which he attributed to the war;
though it was obvious to any tolerably good observation, and, much more,
must have been clear to such an observation as his, that the then
difficulties of the trade and manufacture could have no sort of
connection with our share in it. The war had hardly begun. We had
suffered neither by spoil, nor by defeat, nor by disgrace of any kind.
Public credit was so little impaired, that, instead of being supported
by any extraordinary aids from individuals, it advanced a credit to
individuals to the amount of five millions for the support of trade and
manufactures under their temporary difficulties, a thing before never
heard of,--a thing of which I do not commend the policy, but only state
it, to show that Mr. Fox's ideas of the effects of war were without any
trace of foundation.
33. It is impossible not to connect the arguments and proceedings of a
party with that of its leader,--especially when not disavowed or
controlled by him. Mr. Fox's partisans declaim against all the powers of
Europe, except the Jacobins, just as he does; but not having the same
reasons for management and caution which he has, they speak out. He
satisfies himself merely with making his invectives, and leaves others
to draw the conclusion. But they produce their Polish interposition for
the express purpose of leading to a French alliance. They urge their
French peace in order to make a junction with the Jacobins to oppose the
powers, whom, in their language, they call despots, and their leagues, a
combination of despots. Indeed, no man can look on the present posture
of Europe with the least degree of discernment, who will not be
thoroughly convinced that England must be the fast friend or the
determined enemy of France. There is no medium; and I do not think Mr.
Fox to be so dull as not to observe this. His peace would have involved
us instantly in the most extensive and most ruinous wars, at the same
time that it would have made a broad highway (across which no human
wisdom could put an effectual barrier) for a mutual intercourse with the
fraternizing Jacobins on both sides, the consequences of which those
will certainly not provide against who do not dread or dislike them.
34. It is not amiss in this place to enter a little more fully into the
spirit of the principal arguments on which Mr. Fox thought proper to
rest this his grand and concluding motion, particularly such as were
drawn from the internal state of our affairs. Under a specious
appearance, (not uncommonly put on by men of unscrupulous ambition,)
that of tenderness and compassion to the poor, he did his best to appeal
to the judgments of the meanest and most ignorant of the people on the
merits of the war. He had before done something of the same dangerous
kind in his printed letter. The ground of a political war is of all
things that which the poor laborer and manufacturer are the least
capable of conceiving. This sort of people know in general that they
must suffer by war. It is a matter to which they are sufficiently
competent, because it is a matter of feeling. The _causes_ of a war are
not matters of feeling, but of reason and foresight, and often of remote
considerations, and of a very great combination of circumstances which
_they_ are utterly incapable of comprehending: and, indeed, it is not
every man in the highest classes who is altogether equal to it. Nothing,
in a general sense, appears to me less fair and justifiable (even if no
attempt were made to inflame the passions) than to submit a matter on
discussion to a tribunal incapable of judging of more than _one side_ of
the question. It is at least as unjustifiable to inflame the passions of
such judges against _that side_ in favor of which they cannot so much as
comprehend the arguments. Before the prevalence of the French system,
(which, as far as it has gone, has extinguished the salutary prejudice
called our country,) nobody was more sensible of this important truth
than Mr. Fox; and nothing was more proper and pertinent, or was more
felt at the time, than his reprimand to Mr. Wilberforce for an
inconsiderate expression which tended to call in the judgment of the
poor to estimate the policy of war upon the standard of the taxes they
may be obliged to pay towards its support.
35. It is fatally known that the great object of the Jacobin system is,
to excite the lowest description of the people to range themselves under
ambitious men for the pillage and destruction of the more eminent orders
and classes of the community. The thing, therefore, that a man not
fanatically attached to that dreadful project would most studiously
avoid is, to act a part with the French _Propagandists_, in attributing
(as they constantly do) all wars, and all the consequences of wars, to
the pride of those orders, and to their contempt of the weak and
indigent part of the society. The ruling Jacobins insist upon it, that
even the wars which they carry on with so much obstinacy against all
nations are made to prevent the poor from any longer being the
instruments and victims of kings, nobles, and the aristocracy of
burghers and rich men. They pretend that the destruction of kings,
nobles, and the aristocracy of burghers and rich men is the only means
of establishing an universal and perpetual peace. This is the great
drift of all their writings, from the time of the meeting of the states
of France, in 1789, to the publication of the last Morning Chronicle.
They insist that even the war which with so much boldness they have
declared against all nations is to prevent the poor from becoming the
instruments and victims of these persons and descriptions. It is but too
easy, if you once teach poor laborers and mechanics to defy their
prejudices, and, as this has been done with an industry scarcely
credible, to substitute the principles of fraternity in the room of that
salutary prejudice called our country,--it is, I say, but too easy to
persuade them, agreeably to what Mr. Fox hints in his public letter,
that this war is, and that the other wars have been, the wars of kings;
it is easy to persuade them that the terrors even of a foreign conquest
are not terrors for _them_; it is easy to persuade them, that, for their
part, _they_ have nothing to lose,--and that their condition is not
likely to be altered for the worse, whatever party may happen to prevail
in the war. Under any circumstances this doctrine is highly dangerous,
as it tends to make separate parties of the higher and lower orders, and
to put their interests on a different bottom. But if the enemy you have
to deal with should appear, as France now appears, under the very name
and title of the deliverer of the poor and the chastiser of the rich,
the former class would readily become not an indifferent spectator of
the war, but would be ready to enlist in the faction of the
enemy,--which they would consider, though under a foreign name, to be
more connected with them than an adverse description in the same land.
All the props of society would be drawn from us by these doctrines, and
the very foundations of the public defence would give way in an instant.
36. There is no point which the faction of fraternity in England have
labored more than to excite in the poor the horror of any war with
France upon any occasion. When they found that their open attacks upon
our Constitution in favor of a French republic were for the present
repelled, they put that matter out of sight, and have taken up the more
plausible and popular ground of general peace, upon merely general
principles; although these very men, in the correspondence of their
clubs with those of France, had reprobated the neutrality which now they
so earnestly press. But, in reality, their maxim was, and is, "Peace and
alliance with France, and war with the rest of the world."
37. This last motion of Mr. Fox bound up the whole of his politics
during the session. This motion had many circumstances, particularly in
the Norwich correspondence, by which the mischief of all the others was
aggravated beyond measure. Yet this last motion, far the worst of Mr.
Fox's proceedings, was the best supported of any of them, except his
amendment to the address. The Duke of Portland had directly engaged to
support the war;--here was a motion as directly made to force the crown
to put an end to it before a blow had been struck. The efforts of the
faction have so prevailed that some of his Grace's nearest friends have
actually voted for that motion; some, after showing themselves, went
away; others did not appear at all. So it must be, where a man is for
any time supported from personal considerations, without reference to
his public conduct. Through the whole of this business, the spirit of
fraternity appears to me to have been the governing principle. It might
be shameful for any man, above the vulgar, to show so blind a partiality
even to his own country as Mr. Fox appears, on all occasions, this
session, to have shown to France. Had Mr. Fox been a minister, and
proceeded on the principles laid down by him, I believe there is little
doubt he would have been considered as the most criminal statesman that
ever lived in this country. I do not know why a statesman out of place
is not to be judged in the same manner, unless we can excuse him by
pleading in his favor a total indifference to principle, and that he
would act and think in quite a different way, if he were in office. This
I will not suppose. One may think better of him, and that, in case of
his power, he might change his mind. But supposing, that, from better or
from worse motives, he might change his mind on his acquisition of the
favor of the crown, I seriously fear, that, if the king should to-morrow
put power into his hands, and that his good genius would inspire him
with maxims very different from those he has promulgated, he would not
be able to get the better of the ill temper and the ill doctrines he has
been the means of exciting and propagating throughout the kingdom. From
the very beginning of their inhuman and unprovoked rebellion and
tyrannic usurpation, he has covered the predominant faction in France,
and their adherents here, with the most exaggerated panegyrics; neither
has he missed a single opportunity of abusing and vilifying those who,
in uniform concurrence with the Duke of Portland's and Lord
Fitzwilliam's opinion, have maintained the true grounds of the
Revolution Settlement in 1688. He lamented all the defeats of the
French; he rejoiced in all their victories,--even when these victories
threatened to overwhelm the continent of Europe, and, by facilitating
their means of penetrating into Holland, to bring this most dreadful of
all evils with irresistible force to the very doors, if not into the
very heart, of our country. To this hour he always speaks of every
thought of overturning the French Jacobinism by force, on the part of
any power whatsoever, as an attempt unjust and cruel, and which he
reprobates with horror. If any of the French Jacobin leaders are spoken
of with hatred or scorn, he falls upon those who take that liberty with
all the zeal and warmth with which men of honor defend their particular
and bosom friends, when attacked. He always represents their cause as a
cause of liberty, and all who oppose it as partisans of despotism. He
obstinately continues to consider the great and growing vices, crimes,
and disorders of that country as only evils of passage, which are to
produce a permanently happy state of order and freedom. He represents
these disorders exactly in the same way and with the same limitations
which are used by one of the two great Jacobin factions: I mean that of
Pétion and Brissot. Like them, he studiously confines his horror and
reprobation only to the massacres of the 2d of September, and passes by
those of the 10th of August, as well as the imprisonment and deposition
of the king, which were the consequences of that day, as indeed were the
massacres themselves to which he confines his censure, though they were
not actually perpetrated till early in September. Like that faction, he
condemns, not the deposition, or the proposed exile or perpetual
imprisonment, but only the murder of the king. Mr. Sheridan, on every
occasion, palliates all their massacres committed in every part of
France, as the effects of a natural indignation at the exorbitances of
despotism, and of the dread of the people of returning under that yoke.
He has thus taken occasion to load, not the actors in this wickedness,
but the government of a mild, merciful, beneficent, and patriotic
prince, and his suffering, faithful subjects, with all the crimes of the
new anarchical tyranny under which the one has been murdered and the
others are oppressed. Those continual either praises or palliating
apologies of everything done in France, and those invectives as
uniformly vomited out upon all those who venture to express their
disapprobation of such proceedings, coming from a man of Mr. Fox's fame
and authority, and one who is considered as the person to whom a great
party of the wealthiest men of the kingdom look up, have been the cause
why the principle of French fraternity formerly gained the ground which
at one time it had obtained in this country. It will infallibly recover
itself again, and in ten times a greater degree, if the kind of peace,
in the manner which he preaches, ever shall be established with the
reigning faction in France.
38. So far as to the French practices with regard to France and the
other powers of Europe. As to their principles and doctrines with
regard to the constitution of states, Mr. Fox studiously, on all
occasions, and indeed when no occasion calls for it, (as on the debate
of the petition for reform,) brings forward and asserts their
fundamental and fatal principle, pregnant with every mischief and every
crime, namely, that "in every country the people is the legitimate
sovereign": exactly conformable to the declaration of the French clubs
and legislators:--"La souveraineté est _une, indivisible, inalienable,
et imprescriptible_; elle appartient à la nation; aucune _section_ du
peuple ni aucun _individu_ ne peut s'en attribuer l'exercise." This
confounds, in a manner equally mischievous and stupid, the origin of a
government from the people with its continuance in their hands. I
believe that no such doctrine has ever been heard of in any public act
of any government whatsoever, until it was adopted (I think from the
writings of Rousseau) by the French Assemblies, who have made it the
basis of their Constitution at home, and of the matter of their
apostolate in every country. These and other wild declarations of
abstract principle, Mr. Fox says, are in themselves perfectly right and
true; though in some cases he allows the French draw absurd consequences
from them. But I conceive he is mistaken. The consequences are most
logically, though most mischievously, drawn from the premises and
principles by that wicked and ungracious faction. The fault is in the
foundation.