of any theatre, not for the decoration of those of Athens and Rome, or
even of this theatre of Paris, from the embroideries of Babylon or from
the loom of the Gobelins, has there been sent any historic tissue so
truly drawn, so closely and so finely wrought, or in which the forms are
brought out in the rich purple of such glowing and blushing colors. It
puts me in mind of the piece of tapestry with which Virgil proposed to
adorn the theatre he was to erect to Augustus upon the banks of the
Mincio, who now hides his head in his reeds, and leads his slow and
melancholy windings through banks wasted by the barbarians of Gaul. He
supposes that the artifice is such, that the figures of the conquered
nations in his tapestry are made to play their part, and are confounded
in the machine,--
utque
Purpurea intexti tollant aulæa Britanni;
or, as Dryden translates it, somewhat paraphrastically, but not less in
the spirit of the prophet than of the poet,--
"Where the proud theatres disclose the scene,
Which interwoven Britons seem to raise,
And show the triumph which their shame displays."
It is something wonderful, that the sagacity shown in the Declaration
and the speech (and, so far as it goes, greater was never shown) should
have failed to discover to the writer and to the speaker the inseparable
relation between the parties to this transaction, and that nothing can
be said to display the imperious arrogance of a base enemy which does
not describe with equal force and equal truth the contemptible figure of
an abject embassy to that imperious power.
It is no less striking, that the same obvious reflection should not
occur to those gentlemen who conducted the opposition to government. But
their thoughts were turned another way. They seem to have been so
entirely occupied with the defence of the French Directory, so very
eager in finding recriminatory; precedents to justify every act of its
intolerable insolence, so animated in their accusations of ministry for
not having at the very outset made concessions proportioned to the
dignity of the great victorious power we had offended, that everything
concerning the sacrifice in this business of national honor, and of the
most fundamental principles in the policy of negotiation, seemed wholly
to have escaped them. To this fatal hour, the contention in Parliament
appeared in another form, and was animated by another spirit. For three
hundred years and more, we have had wars with what stood as government
in France. In all that period, the language of ministers, whether of
boast or of apology, was, that they had left nothing undone for the
assertion of the national honor,--the opposition, whether patriotically
or factiously, contending that the ministers had been oblivious of the
national glory, and had made improper sacrifices of that public interest
which they were bound not only to preserve, but by all fair methods to
augment. This total change of tone on both sides of your House forms
itself no inconsiderable revolution; and I am afraid it prognosticates
others of still greater importance. The ministers exhausted the stores
of their eloquence in demonstrating that they had quitted the safe,
beaten highway of treaty between independent powers,--that, to pacify
the enemy, they had made every sacrifice of the national dignity,--and
that they had offered to immolate at the same shrine the most valuable
of the national acquisitions. The opposition insisted that the victims
were not fat nor fair enough to be offered on the altars of blasphemed
Regicide; and it was inferred from thence, that the sacrifical
ministers, (who were a sort of intruders in the worship of the new
divinity,) in their schismatical devotion, had discovered more of
hypocrisy than zeal. They charged them with a concealed resolution to
persevere in what these gentlemen have (in perfect consistency, indeed,
with themselves, but most irreconcilably with fact and reason) called an
unjust and impolitic war.
That day was, I fear, the fatal term of _local_ patriotism. On that day,
I fear, there was an end of that narrow scheme of relations called our
country, with all its pride, its prejudices, and its partial affections.
All the little quiet rivulets, that watered an humble, a contracted, but
not an unfruitful field, are to be lost in the waste expanse, and
boundless, barren ocean of the homicide philanthropy of France. It is no
longer an object of terror, the aggrandizement of a new power which
teaches as a professor that philanthropy in the chair, whilst it
propagates by arms and establishes by conquest the comprehensive system
of universal fraternity. In what light is all this viewed in a great
assembly? The party which takes the lead there has no longer any
apprehensions, except those that arise from not being admitted to the
closest and most confidential connections with the metropolis of that
fraternity. That reigning party no longer touches on its favorite
subject, the display of those horrors that must attend the existence of
a power with such dispositions and principles, seated in the heart of
Europe. It is satisfied to find some loose, ambiguous expressions in
its former declarations, which may set it free from its professions and
engagements. It always speaks of peace with the Regicides as a great and
an undoubted blessing, and such a blessing as, if obtained, promises, as
much as any human disposition of things can promise, security and
permanence. It holds out nothing at all definite towards this security.
It only seeks, by a restoration to some of their former owners of some
fragments of the general wreck of Europe, to find a plausible plea for a
present retreat from an embarrassing position. As to the future, that
party is content to leave it covered in a night of the most palpable
obscurity. It never once has entered into a particle of detail of what
our own situation, or that of other powers, must be, under the blessings
of the peace we seek. This defect, to my power, I mean to supply,--that,
if any persons should still continue to think an attempt at foresight is
any part of the duty of a statesman, I may contribute my trifle to the
materials of his speculation.
As to the other party, the minority of to-day, possibly the majority of
to-morrow, small in number, but full of talents and every species of
energy, which, upon the avowed ground of being more acceptable to
France, is a candidate for the helm of this kingdom, it has never
changed from the beginning. It has preserved a perennial consistency.
This would be a never failing source of true glory, if springing from
just and right; but it is truly dreadful, if it be an arm of Styx, which
springs out of the profoundest depths of a poisoned soil. The French
maxims were by these gentlemen at no time condemned. I speak of their
language in the most moderate terms. There are many who think that they
have gone much further,--that they have always magnified and extolled
the French maxims,--that; not in the least disgusted or discouraged by
the monstrous evils which have attended these maxims from the moment of
their adoption both at home and abroad, they still continue to predict
that in due time they must produce the greatest good to the poor human
race. They obstinately persist in stating those evils as matter of
accident, as things wholly collateral to the system.
It is observed, that this party has never spoken of an ally of Great
Britain with the smallest degree of respect or regard: on the contrary,
it has generally mentioned them under opprobrious appellations, and in
such terms of contempt or execration as never had been heard
before,--because no such would have formerly been permitted in our
public assemblies. The moment, however, that any of those allies quitted
this obnoxious connection, the party has instantly passed an act of
indemnity and oblivion in their favor. After this, no sort of censure on
their conduct, no imputation on their character. From that moment their
pardon was sealed in a reverential and mysterious silence. With the
gentlemen of this minority, there is no ally, from one end of Europe to
the other, with whom we ought not to be ashamed to act. The whole
college of the states of Europe is no better than a gang of tyrants.
With them all our connections were broken off at once. We ought to have
cultivated France, and France alone, from the moment of her Revolution.
On that happy change, all our dread of that nation as a power was to
cease. She became in an instant dear to our affections and one with our
interests. All other nations we ought to have commanded not to trouble
her sacred throes, whilst in labor to bring into an happy birth her
abundant litter of constitutions. We ought to have acted under her
auspices, in extending her salutary influence upon every side. From that
moment England and France were become natural allies, and all the other
states natural enemies. The whole face of the world was changed. What
was it to us, if she acquired Holland and the Austrian Netherlands? By
her conquests she only enlarged the sphere of her beneficence, she only
extended the blessings of liberty to so many more foolishly reluctant
nations. What was it to England, if, by adding these, among the richest
and most peopled countries of the world, to her territories, she thereby
left no possible link of communication between us and any other power
with whom we could act against her? On this new system of optimism, it
is so much the better: so much the further are we removed from the
contact with infectious despotism. No longer a thought of a barrier in
the Netherlands to Holland against France. All that is obsolete policy.
It is fit that France should have both Holland and the Austrian
Netherlands too, as a barrier to her against the attacks of despotism.
She cannot multiply her securities too much; and as to our security, it
is to be found in hers. Had we cherished her from the beginning, and
felt for her when attacked, she, poor, good soul, would never have
invaded any foreign nation, never murdered her sovereign and his family,
never proscribed, never exiled, never imprisoned, never been guilty of
extra-judicial massacre or of legal murder. All would have been a golden
age, full of peace, order, and liberty,--and philosophy, raying out from
Europe, would have warmed and enlightened the universe; but, unluckily,
irritable philosophy, the most irritable of all things, was pat into a
passion, and provoked into ambition abroad and tyranny at home. They
find all this very natural and very justifiable. They choose to forget
that other nations, struggling for freedom, have been attacked by their
neighbors, or that their neighbors have otherwise interfered in their
affairs. Often have neighbors interfered in favor of princes against
their rebellious subjects, and often in favor of subjects against their
prince. Such cases fill half the pages of history; yet never were they
used as an apology, much less as a justification, for atrocious cruelty
in princes, or for general massacre and confiscation on the part of
revolted subjects,--never as a politic cause for suffering any such
powers to aggrandize themselves without limit and without measure. A
thousand times have we seen it asserted in public prints and pamphlets,
that, if the nobility and priesthood of France had stayed at home, their
property never would have been confiscated. One would think that none of
the clergy had been robbed previous to their deportation, or that their
deportation had, on their part, been a voluntary act. One would think
that the nobility and gentry, and merchants and bankers, who stayed at
home, had enjoyed their property in security and repose. The assertors
of these positions well know that the lot of thousands who remained at
home was far more terrible, that the most cruel imprisonment was only a
harbinger of a cruel and ignominious death, and that in this mother
country of freedom there were no less than _three hundred thousand_ at
one time in prison. I go no further. I instance only these
representations of the party, as staring indications of partiality to
that sect to whose dominion they would have left this country nothing to
oppose but her own naked force, and consequently subjected us, on every
reverse of fortune, to the imminent danger of falling under those very
evils, in that very system, which are attributed, not to its own nature,
but to the perverseness of others. There is nothing in the world so
difficult as to put men in a state of judicial neutrality. A leaning
there must ever be, and it is of the first importance to any nation to
observe to what side that leaning inclines,--whether to our own
community, or to one with which it is in a state of hostility.
Men are rarely without some sympathy in the sufferings of others; but in
the immense and diversified mass of human misery, which may be pitied,
but cannot be relieved, in the gross, the mind must make a choice. Our
sympathy is always more forcibly attracted towards the misfortunes of
certain persons, and in certain descriptions: and this sympathetic
attraction discovers, beyond a possibility of mistake, our mental
affinities and elective affections. It is a much surer proof than the
strongest declaration of a real connection and of an overruling bias in
the mind. I am told that the active sympathies of this party have been
chiefly, if not wholly, attracted to the sufferings of the patriarchal
rebels who were amongst the promulgators of the maxims of the French
Revolution, and who have suffered from their apt and forward scholars
some part of the evils which they had themselves so liberally
distributed to all the other parts of the community. Some of these men,
flying from the knives which they had sharpened against their country
and its laws, rebelling against the very powers they had set over
themselves by their rebellion against their sovereign, given up by those
very armies to whose faithful attachment they trusted for their safety
and support, after they had completely debauched all military fidelity
in its source,--some of these men, I say, had fallen into the hands of
the head of that family the most illustrious person of which they had
three times cruelly imprisoned, and delivered in that state of captivity
to those hands from which they were able to relieve neither her, nor
their own nearest and most venerable kindred. One of these men,
connected with this country by no circumstance of birth,--not related to
any distinguished families here,--recommended by no service,--endeared
to this nation by no act or even expression of kindness,--comprehended
in no league or common cause,--embraced by no laws of public
hospitality,--this man was the only one to be found in Europe, in whose
favor the British nation, passing judgment without hearing on its almost
only ally, was to force (and that not by soothing interposition, but
with every reproach for inhumanity, cruelty, and breach of the laws of
war) from prison. We were to release him from that prison out of which,
in abuse of the lenity of government amidst its rigor, and in violation
of at least an understood parole, he had attempted an escape,--an escape
excusable, if you will, but naturally productive of strict and vigilant
confinement. The earnestness of gentlemen to free this person was the
more extraordinary because there was full as little in him to raise
admiration, from any eminent qualities he possessed, as there was to
excite an interest, from any that were amiable. A person not only of no
real civil or literary talents, but of no specious appearance of
either,--and in his military profession not marked as a leader in any
one act of able or successful enterprise, unless his leading on (or his
following) the allied army of Amazonian and male cannibal Parisians to
Versailles, on the famous 6th of October, 1789, is to make his glory.
Any otter exploit of his, as a general, I never heard of. But the
triumph of general fraternity was but the more signalized by the total
want of particular claims in that case,--and by postponing all such
claims in a case where they really existed, where they stood embossed,
and in a manner forced themselves on the view of common, shortsighted
benevolence. Whilst, for its improvement, the humanity of these
gentlemen was thus on its travels, and had got as far off as Olmütz,
they never thought of a place and a person much nearer to them, or of
moving an instruction to Lord Malmesbury in favor of their own suffering
countryman, Sir Sydney Smith.
This officer, having attempted, with great gallantry, to cut out a
vessel from one of the enemy's harbors, was taken after an obstinate
resistance,--such as obtained him the marked respect of those who were
witnesses of his valor, and knew the circumstances in which it was
displayed. Upon his arrival at Paris, he was instantly thrown into
prison, where the nature of his situation will best be understood by
knowing that amongst its _mitigations_ was the permission to walk
occasionally in the court and to enjoy the privilege of shaving himself.
On the old system of feelings and principles, his sufferings might have
been entitled to consideration, and, even in a comparison with those of
Citizen La Fayette, to a priority in the order of compassion. If the
ministers had neglected to take any steps in his favor, a declaration of
the sense of the House of Commons would have stimulated them to their
duty. If they had caused a representation to be made, such a proceeding
would have added force to it. If reprisal should be thought advisable,
the address of the House would have given an additional sanction to a
measure which would have been, indeed, justifiable without any other
sanction than its own reason. But no. Nothing at all like it. In fact,
the merit of Sir Sydney Smith, and his claim on British compassion, was
of a kind altogether different from that which interested so deeply the
authors of the motion in favor of Citizen La Fayette. In my humble
opinion, Captain Sir Sydney Smith has another sort of merit with the
British nation, and something of a higher claim on British humanity,
than Citizen La Fayette. Faithful, zealous, and ardent in the service of
his king and country,--full of spirit,--full of resources,--going out of
the beaten road, but going right, because his uncommon enterprise was
not conducted by a vulgar judgment,--in his profession Sir Sydney Smith
might be considered as a distinguished person, if any person could well
be distinguished in a service in which scarce a commander can be named
without putting you in mind of some action of intrepidity, skill, and
vigilance that has given them a fair title to contend with any men and
in any age. But I will say nothing farther of the merits of Sir Sydney
Smith: the mortal animosity of the Regicide enemy supersedes all other
panegyric. Their hatred is a judgment in his favor without appeal. At
present he is lodged in the tower of the Temple, the last prison of
Louis the Sixteenth, and the last but one of Marie Antoinette of
Austria,--the prison of Louis the Seventeenth,--the prison of Elizabeth
of Bourbon. There he lies, unpitied by the grand philanthropy, to
meditate upon the fate of those who are faithful to their king and
country. Whilst this prisoner, secluded from intercourse, was indulging
in these cheering reflections, he might possibly have had the further
consolation of learning (by means of the insolent exultation of his
guards) that there was an English ambassador at Paris; he might have had
the proud comfort of hearing that this ambassador had the honor of
passing his mornings in respectful attendance at the office of a
Regicide pettifogger, and that in the evening he relaxed in the
amusements of the opera, and in the spectacle of an audience totally
new,--an audience in which he had the pleasure of seeing about him not a
single face that he could formerly have known in Paris, but, in the
place of that company, one indeed more than equal to it in display of
gayety, splendor, and luxury,--a set of abandoned wretches, squandering
in insolent riot the spoils of their bleeding country: a subject of
profound reflection both to the prisoner and to the ambassador.
Whether all the matter upon which I have grounded my opinion of this
last party be fully authenticated or not must be left to those who have
had the opportunity of a nearer view of its conduct, and who have been
more attentive in their perusal of the writings which have appeared in
its favor. But for my part, I have never heard the gross facts on which
I ground my idea of their marked partiality to the reigning tyranny in
France in any part denied. I am not surprised at all this. Opinions, as
they sometimes follow, so they frequently guide and direct the
affections; and men may become more attached to the country of their
principles than to the country of their birth. What I have stated here
is only to mark the spirit which seems to me, though in somewhat
different ways, to actuate our great party-leaders, and to trace this
first pattern of a negotiation to its true source.
Such is the present state of our public councils. Well might I be
ashamed of what seems to be a censure of two great factions, with the
two most eloquent men which this country ever saw at the head of them,
if I had found that either of them could support their conduct by any
example in the history of their country. I should very much prefer their
judgment to my own, if I were not obliged, by an infinitely
overbalancing weight of authority, to prefer the collected wisdom, of
ages to the abilities of any two men living.--I return to the
Declaration, with which the history of the abortion of a treaty with the
Regicides is closed.