own weakness, and of the tyrannous temper of his grand enemy. That
prince has known both the one and the other from the beginning. The
artists of the French Revolution had given their very first essays and
sketches of robbery and desolation against his territories, in a far
more cruel "murdering piece" than had over entered into the imagination
of painter or poet. Without ceremony they tore from his cherishing arms
the possessions which he held for five hundred years, undisturbed by all
the ambition of all the ambitious monarchs who during that period have
reigned in France. Is it to him, in whose wrong we have in our late
negotiation ceded his now unhappy countries near the Rhone, lately
amongst the most flourishing (perhaps the most flourishing for their
extent) of all the countries upon earth, that we are to prove the
sincerity of our resolution to make peace with the Republic of
Barbarism? That venerable potentate and pontiff is sunk deep into the
vale of years; he is half disarmed by his peaceful character; his
dominions are more than half disarmed by a peace of two hundred years,
defended as they were, not by force, but by reverence: yet, in all these
straits, we see him display, amidst the recent ruins and the new
defacements of his plundered capital, along with the mild and decorated
piety of the modern, all the spirit and magnanimity of ancient Rome.
Does he, who, though himself unable to defend them, nobly refused to
receive pecuniary compensations for the protection he owed to his people
of Avignon, Carpentras, and the Venaissin,--does he want proofs of our
good disposition to deliver over that people, without any security for
them, or any compensation to their sovereign, to this cruel enemy? Does
he want to be satisfied of the sincerity of our humiliation to France,
who has seen his free, fertile, and happy city and state of Bologna, the
cradle of regenerated law, the seat of sciences and of arts, so
hideously metamorphosed, whilst he was crying to Great Britain for aid,
and offering to purchase that aid at any price? Is it him, who sees that
chosen spot of plenty and delight converted into a Jacobin ferocious
republic, dependent on the homicides of France,--is it him, who, from
the miracles of his beneficent industry, has done a work which defied
the power of the Roman emperors, though with an enthralled world to
labor for them,--is it him, who has drained and cultivated the Pontine
Marshes, that we are to satisfy of our cordial spirit of conciliation
with those who, in their equity, are restoring Holland again to the
seas, whose maxims poison more than the exhalations of the most deadly
fens, and who turn all the fertilities of Nature and of Art into an
howling desert? Is it to him that we are to demonstrate the good faith
of our submissions to the Cannibal Republic,--to him, who is commanded
to deliver up into their hands Ancona and Civita Vecchia, seats of
commerce raised by the wise and liberal labors and expenses of the
present and late pontiffs, ports not more belonging to the
Ecclesiastical State than to the commerce of Great Britain, thus
wresting from his hands the power of the keys of the centre of Italy, as
before they had taken possession of the keys of the northern part from
the hands of the unhappy King of Sardinia, the natural ally of England?
Is it to him we are to prove our good faith in the peace which we are
soliciting to receive from the hands of his and our robbers, the enemies
of all arts, all sciences, all civilization, and all commerce?
Is it to the Cispadane or to the Transpadane republics, which have been
forced to bow under the galling yoke of French liberty, that we address
all these pledges of our sincerity and love of peace with their
unnatural parents?
Are we by this Declaration to satisfy the King of Naples, whom we have
left to struggle as he can, after our abdication of Corsica, and the
flight of the whole naval force of England out of the whole circuit of
the Mediterranean, abandoning our allies, our commerce, and the honor of
a nation once the protectress of all other nations, because strengthened
by the independence and enriched by the commerce of them all? By the
express provisions of a recent treaty, we had engaged with the King of
Naples to keep a naval force in the Mediterranean. But, good God! was a
treaty at all necessary for this? The uniform policy of this kingdom as
a state, and eminently so as a commercial state, has at all times led us
to keep a powerful squadron and a commodious naval station in that
central sea, which borders upon and which connects a far greater number
and variety of states, European, Asiatic, and African, than any other.
Without such a naval force, France must become despotic mistress of that
sea, and of all the countries whose shores it washes. Our commerce must
become vassal to her and dependent on her will. Since we are come no
longer to trust to our force in arms, but to our dexterity in
negotiation, and begin to pay a desperate court to a proud and coy
usurpation, and have finally sent an ambassador to the Bourbon Regicides
at Paris, the King of Naples, who saw that no reliance was to be placed
on our engagements, or on any pledge of our adherence to our nearest and
dearest interests, has been obliged to send his ambassador also to join
the rest of the squalid tribe of the representatives of degraded kings.
This monarch, surely, does not want any proof of the sincerity of our
amicable dispositions to that amicable republic, into whose arms he has
been given by our desertion of him.
To look to the powers of the North.--It is not to the Danish ambassador,
insolently treated in his own character and in ours, that we are to give
proofs of the Regicide arrogance, and of our disposition to submit to
it.
With regard to Sweden I cannot say much. The French influence is
struggling with her independence; and they who consider the manner in
which the ambassador of that power was treated not long since at Paris,
and the manner in which the father of the present King of Sweden
(himself the victim of regicide principles and passions) would have
looked on the present assassins of France, will not be very prompt to
believe that the young King of Sweden has made this kind of requisition
to the King of Great Britain, and has given this kind of auspice of his
new government.
I speak last of the most important of all. It certainly was not the late
Empress of Russia at whose instance we have given this pledge. It is not
the new Emperor, the inheritor of so much glory, and placed in a
situation of so much delicacy and difficulty for the preservation of
that inheritance, who calls on England, the natural ally of his
dominions, to deprive herself of her power of action, and to bind
herself to France. France at no time, and in none of its fashions, least
of all in its last, has been ever looked upon as the friend either of
Russia or of Great Britain. Everything good, I trust, is to be expected
from this prince,--whatever may be without authority given out of an
influence over his mind possessed by that only potentate from whom he
has anything to apprehend or with whom he has much even to discuss.
This sovereign knows, I have no doubt, and feels, on what sort of bottom
is to be laid the foundation of a Russian throne. He knows what a rock
of native granite is to form the pedestal of his statue who is to
emulate Peter the Great. His renown will be in continuing with ease and
safety what his predecessor was obliged to achieve through mighty
struggles. He is sensible that his business is not to innovate, out to
secure and to establish,--that reformations at this day are attempts at
best of ambiguous utility. He will revere his father with the piety of
a son, but in his government he will imitate the policy of his mother.
His father, with many excellent qualities, had a short reign,--because,
being a native Russian, he was unfortunately advised to act in the
spirit of a foreigner. His mother reigned over Russia three-and-thirty
years with the greatest glory,--because, with the disadvantage of being
a foreigner born, she made herself a Russian. A wise prince like the
present will improve his country; but it will be cautiously and
progressively, upon its own native groundwork of religion, manners,
habitudes, and alliances. If I prognosticate right, it is not the
Emperor of Russia that ever will call for extravagant proofs of our
desire to reconcile ourselves to the irreconcilable enemy of all
thrones.
I do not know why I should not include America among the European
powers,--because she is of European origin, and has not yet, like
France, destroyed all traces of manners, laws, opinions, and usages
which she drew from Europe. As long as that Europe shall have any
possessions either in the southern or the northern parts of that
America, even separated as it is by the ocean, it must be considered as
a part of the European system. It is not America, menaced with internal
ruin from the attempts to plant Jacobinism instead of liberty in that
country,--it is not America, whose independence is directly attacked by
the French, the enemies of the independence of all nations, that calls
upon us to give security by disarming ourselves in a treacherous peace.
By such a peace, we shall deliver the Americans, their liberty, and
their order, without resource, to the mercy of their imperious allies,
who will have peace or neutrality with no state which is not ready to
join her in war against England.
Having run round the whole circle of the European system, wherever it
acts, I must affirm that all the foreign powers who are not leagued with
France for the utter destruction of all balance through Europe and
throughout the world demand other assurances from this kingdom than are
given in that Declaration. They require assurances, not of the sincerity
of our good dispositions towards the usurpation in France, but of our
affection towards the college of the ancient states of Europe, and
pledges of our constancy, our fidelity, and of our fortitude in
resisting to the last the power that menaces them all. The apprehension
from which they wish to be delivered cannot be from anything they dread
in the ambition of England. Our power must be their strength. They hope
more from us than they fear. I am sure the only ground of their hope,
and of our hope, is in the greatness of mind hitherto shown by the
people of this nation, and its adherence to the unalterable principles
of its ancient policy, whatever government may finally prevail in
France. I have entered into this detail of the wishes and expectations
of the European powers, in order to point out more clearly not so much
what their disposition as (a consideration of far greater importance)
what their situation demands, according as that situation is related to
the Regicide Republic and to this kingdom.
Then, if it is not to satisfy the foreign powers we make this assurance,
to what power at home is it that we pay all this humiliating court? Not
to the old Whigs or to the ancient Tories of this kingdom,--if any
memory of such ancient divisions still exists amongst us. To which of
the principles of these parties is this assurance agreeable? Is it to
the Whigs we are to recommend the aggrandizement of France, and the
subversion of the balance of power? Is it to the Tories we are to
recommend our eagerness to cement ourselves with the enemies of royalty
and religion? But if these parties, which by their dissensions have so
often distracted the kingdom, which by their union have once saved it,
and which by their collision and mutual resistance have preserved the
variety of this Constitution in its unity, be (as I believe they are)
nearly extinct by the growth of new ones, which have their roots in the
present circumstances of the times, I wish to know to which of these new
descriptions this Declaration is addressed. It can hardly be to those
persons who, in the new distribution of parties, consider the
conservation in England of the ancient order of things as necessary to
preserve order everywhere else, and who regard the general conservation
of order in other countries as reciprocally necessary to preserve the
same state of things in these islands. That party never can wish to see
Great Britain pledge herself to give the lead and the ground of
advantage and superiority to the France of to-day, in any treaty which
is to settle Europe. I insist upon it, that, so far from expecting such
an engagement, they are generally stupefied and confounded with it. That
the other party, which demands great changes here, and is so pleased to
see them everywhere else, which party I call Jacobin, that this faction
does, from the bottom of its heart, approve the Declaration, and does
erect its crest upon the engagement, there can be little doubt. To them
it may be addressed with propriety, for it answers their purposes in
every point.
The party in opposition within the House of Lords and Commons it is
irreverent, and half a breach of privilege, (far from my thoughts,) to
consider as Jacobin. This party has always denied the existence of such
a faction, and has treated the machinations of those whom you and I call
Jacobins as so many forgeries and fictions of the minister and his
adherents, to find a pretext for destroying freedom and setting up an
arbitrary power in this kingdom. However, whether this minority has a
leaning towards the French system or only a charitable toleration of
those who lean that way, it is certain that they have always attacked
the sincerity of the minister in the same modes, and on the very same
grounds, and nearly in the same terms, with the Directory. It must
therefore be at the tribunal of the minority (from the whole tenor of
the speech) that the minister appeared to consider himself obliged to
purge himself of duplicity. It was at their bar that he held up his
hand; it was on their _sellette_ that he seemed to answer
interrogatories; it was on their principles that he defended his whole
conduct. They certainly take what the French call the _haut du pavé_.
They have loudly called for the negotiation. It was accorded to them.
They engaged their support of the war with vigor, in case peace was not
granted on honorable terms. Peace was not granted on any terms,
honorable or shameful. Whether these judges, few in number, but powerful
in jurisdiction, are satisfied,--whether they to whom this new pledge is
hypothecated have redeemed their own,--whether they have given one
particle more of their support to ministry, or even, favored them with
their good opinion or their candid construction, I leave it to those who
recollect that memorable debate to determine.
The fact is, that neither this Declaration, nor the negotiation which is
its subject, could serve any one good purpose, foreign or domestic; it
could conduce to no end, either with regard to allies or neutrals. It
tends neither to bring back the misled, nor to give courage to the
fearful, nor to animate and confirm those who are hearty and zealous in
the cause.
I hear it has been said (though I can scarcely believe it) by a
distinguished person, in an assembly where, if there be less of the
torrent and tempest of eloquence, more guarded expression is to be
expected, that, indeed, there was no just ground of hope in this
business from the beginning.
It is plain that this noble person, however conversant in negotiation,
having been employed in no less than four embassies, and in two
hemispheres, and in one of those negotiations having fully experienced
what it was to proceed to treaty without previous encouragement, was not
at all consulted in this experiment. For his Majesty's principal
minister declared, on the very same day, in another House, "his
Majesty's deep and sincere regret at its unfortunate and abrupt
termination, so different from the wishes and _hopes_ that were
entertained,"--and in other parts of the speech speaks of this abrupt
termination as a great disappointment, and as a fall from sincere
endeavors and sanguine expectation. Here are, indeed, sentiments
diametrically opposite, as to the hopes with which the negotiation was
commenced and carried on; and what is curious is, the grounds of the
hopes on the one side and the despair on the other are exactly the same.
The logical conclusion from the common premises is, indeed, in favor of
the noble lord; for they are agreed that the enemy was far from giving
the least degree of countenance to any such hopes, and that they
proceeded in spite of every discouragement which the enemy had thrown in
their way. But there is another material point in which they do not seem
to differ: that is to say, the result of the desperate experiment of the
noble lord, and of the promising attempt of the great minister, in
satisfying the people of England, and in causing discontent to the
people of France,--or, as the minister expresses it, "in uniting England
and in dividing France."
For my own part, though I perfectly agreed with the noble lord that the
attempt was desperate, so desperate, indeed, as to deserve _his_ name of
an experiment, yet no fair man can possibly doubt that the minister was
perfectly sincere in his proceeding, and that, from his ardent wishes
for peace with the Regicides, he was led to conceive hopes which were
founded rather in his vehement desires than in any rational ground of
political speculation. Convinced as I am of this, it had been better, in
my humble opinion, that persons of great name and authority had
abstained from those topics which had been used to call the minister's
sincerity into doubt, and had not adopted the sentiments of the
Directory upon the subject of all our negotiations: for the noble lord
expressly says that the experiment was made for the satisfaction of the
country. The Directory says exactly the same thing. Upon granting, in
consequence of our supplications, the passport to Lord Malmesbury, in
order to remove all sort of hope from its success, they charged all our
previous steps, even to that moment of submissive demand to be admitted
to their presence, on duplicity and perfidy, and assumed that the object
of all the steps we had taken was that "of justifying the continuance of
the war in the eyes of the English nation, and of throwing all the odium
of it upon the French." "The English nation" (said they) "supports
impatiently the continuance of the war, and _a reply must be made to its
complaints and its reproaches_; the Parliament is about to be opened,
_and the mouths of the orators who will declaim against the war must be
shut; the demands for new taxes must be justified; and to obtain these
results, it is necessary to be able to advance that the French
government refuses every reasonable proposition for peace_." I am sorry
that the language of the friends to ministry and the enemies to mankind
should be so much in unison.
As to the fact in which these parties are so well agreed, that the
experiment ought to have been made for the satisfaction of this country,
(meaning the country of England,) it were well to be wished that persons
of eminence would cease to make themselves representatives of the people
of England, without a letter of attorney, or any other act of
procuration. In legal construction, the sense of the people of England
is to be collected from the House of Commons; and though I do not deny
the possibility of an abuse of this trust as well as any other, yet I
think, without the most weighty reasons and in the most urgent
exigencies, it is highly dangerous to suppose that the House speaks
anything contrary to the sense of the people, or that the representative
is silent, when the sense of the constituent, strongly, decidedly, and
upon long deliberation, speaks audibly upon any topic of moment. If
there is a doubt whether the House of Commons represents perfectly the
whole commons of Great Britain, (I think there is none,) there can be no
question but that the Lords and the Commons together represent the sense
of the whole people to the crown and to the world. Thus it is, when we
speak legally and constitutionally. In a great measure it is equally
true, when we speak prudentially. But I do not pretend to assert that
there are no other principles to guide discretion than those which are
or can be fixed by some law or some constitution: yet before the legally
presumed sense of the people should be superseded by a supposition of
one more real, (as in all cases where a legal presumption is to be
ascertained,) some strong proofs ought to exist of a contrary
disposition in the people at large, and some decisive indications of
their desire upon this subject. There can be no question, that,
previously to a direct message from the crown, neither House of
Parliament did indicate anything like a wish for such advances as we
have made or such negotiations as we have carried on. The Parliament has
assented to ministry; it is not ministry that has obeyed the impulse of
Parliament. The people at large have their organs through which they can
speak to Parliament and to the crown by a respectful petition, and
though not with absolute authority, yet with weight, they can instruct
their representatives. The freeholders and other electors in this
kingdom have another and a surer mode of expressing their sentiments
concerning the conduct which is held by members of Parliament. In the
middle of these transactions this last opportunity has been held out to
them. In all these points of view I positively assert that the people
have nowhere and in no way expressed their wish of throwing themselves
and their sovereign at the feet of a wicked and rancorous foe, to
supplicate mercy, which, from the nature of that foe, and from the
circumstances of affairs, we had no sort of ground to expect. It is
undoubtedly the business of ministers very much to consult the
inclinations of the people, but they ought to take great care that they
do not receive that inclination from the few persons who may happen to
approach them. The petty interests of such gentlemen, their low
conceptions of things, their fears arising from the danger to which the
very arduous and critical situation of public affairs may expose their
places, their apprehensions from the hazards to which the discontents of
a few popular men at elections may expose their seats in
Parliament,--all these causes trouble and confuse the representations
which they make to ministers of the real temper of the nation. If
ministers, instead of following the great indications of the
Constitution, proceed on such reports, they will take the whispers of a
cabal for the voice of the people, and the counsels of imprudent
timidity for the wisdom of a nation.
I well remember, that, when the fortune of the war began (and it began
pretty early) to turn, as it is common and natural, we were dejected by
the losses that had been sustained, and with the doubtful issue of the
contests that were foreseen. But not a word was uttered that supposed
peace upon any proper terms was in our power, or therefore that it
should be in our desire. As usual, with or without reason, we
criticized the conduct of the war, and compared our fortunes with our
measures. The mass of the nation went no further. For I suppose that you
always understood me as speaking of that very preponderating part of the
nation which had always been equally adverse to the French principles
and to the general progress of their Revolution throughout
Europe,--considering the final success of their arms and the triumph of
their principles as one and the same thing.
The first means that were used, by any one professing our principles, to
change the minds of this party upon that subject, appeared in a small
pamphlet circulated with considerable industry. It was commonly given to
the noble person himself who has passed judgment upon all hopes from
negotiation, and justified our late abortive attempt only as an
experiment made to satisfy the country; and yet that pamphlet led the
way in endeavoring to dissatisfy that very country with the continuance
of the war, and to raise in the people the most sanguine expectations
from some such course of negotiation as has been fatally pursued. This
leads me to suppose (and I am glad to have reason for supposing) that
there was no foundation for attributing the performance in question to
that author; but without mentioning his name in the title-page, it
passed for his, and does still pass uncontradicted. It was entitled,
"Some Remarks on the Apparent Circumstances of the War in the Fourth
Week of October, 1795."
This sanguine little king's-fisher, (not prescient of the storm, as by
his instinct he ought to be,) appearing at that uncertain season before
the rigs of old Michaelmas were yet well composed, and when the
inclement storms of winter were approaching, began to flicker over the
seas, and was busy in building its halcyon nest, as if the angry ocean
had been soothed by the genial breath of May. Very unfortunately, this
auspice was instantly followed by a speech from the throne in the very
spirit and principles of that pamphlet.