and which are supposed by some to be directly or indirectly under the
influence of ministers, and which, with less authority than the pamphlet
I speak of, had indeed for some time before held a similar language, in
direct contradiction to their more early tone: insomuch that I can speak
it with a certain assurance, that very many, who wished to
administration as well as you and I do, thought, that, in giving their
opinion in favor of this peace, they followed the opinion of
ministry;--they were conscious that they did not lead it. My inference,
therefore, is this: that the negotiation, whatever its merits may be, in
the general principle and policy of undertaking it, is, what every
political measure in general ought to be, the sole work of
administration; and that, if it was an experiment to satisfy anybody, it
was to satisfy those whom the ministers were in the daily habit of
condemning, and by whom they were daily condemned,--I mean the _leaders_
of the _opposition_ in _Parliament_. I am certain that the ministers
were then, and are now, invested with the fullest confidence of the
major part of the nation, to pursue such measures of peace or war as the
nature of things shall suggest as most adapted to the public safety. It
is in this light, therefore, as a measure which ought to have been
avoided and ought not to be repeated, that I take the liberty of
discussing the merits of this system of Regicide negotiations. It is not
a matter of light experiment, that leaves us where it found us. Peace or
war are the great hinges upon which the very being of nations turns.
Negotiations are the means of making peace or preventing war, and are
therefore of more serious importance than almost any single event of war
can possibly be.
At the very outset, I do not hesitate to affirm, that this country in
particular, and the public law in general, have suffered more by this
negotiation of experiment than by all the battles together that we have
lost from the commencement of this century to this time, when it touches
so nearly to its close. I therefore have the misfortune not to coincide
in opinion with the great statesman who set on foot a negotiation, as he
said, "in spite of the constant opposition he had met with from Prance."
He admits, "that the difficulty in this negotiation became most
seriously increased, indeed, by the situation in which we were placed,
and the manner in which alone the enemy would _admit_ of a negotiation."
This situation so described, and so truly described, rendered our
solicitation not only degrading, but from the very outset evidently
hopeless.
I find it asserted, and even a merit taken for it, "that this country
surmounted every difficulty of form and etiquette which the enemy had
thrown in our way." An odd way of surmounting a difficulty, by cowering
under it! I find it asserted that an heroic resolution had been taken,
and avowed in Parliament, previous to this negotiation, "that no
consideration of etiquette should stand in the way of it."
Etiquette, if I understand rightly the term, which in any extent is of
modern usage, had its original application to those ceremonial and
formal observances practised at courts, which had been established by
long usage, in order to preserve the sovereign power from the rude
intrusion of licentious familiarity, as well as to preserve majesty
itself from a disposition to consult its ease at the expense of its
dignity. The term came afterwards to have a greater latitude, and to be
employed to signify certain formal methods used in the transactions
between sovereign states.
In the more limited, as well as in the larger sense of the term, without
knowing what the etiquette is, it is impossible to determine whether it
is a vain and captious punctilio, or a form necessary to preserve
decorum in character and order in business. I readily admit that nothing
tends to facilitate the issue of all public transactions more than a
mutual disposition in the parties treating to waive all ceremony. But
the use of this temporary suspension of the recognized modes of respect
consists in its being mutual, and in the spirit of conciliation in which
all ceremony is laid aside. On the contrary, when one of the parties to
a treaty intrenches himself up to the chin in these ceremonies, and will
not on his side abate a single punctilio, and that all the concessions
are upon one side only, the party so conceding does by this act place
himself in a relation of inferiority, and thereby fundamentally subverts
that equality which is of the very essence of all treaty.
After this formal act of degradation, it was but a matter of course that
gross insult should be offered to our ambassador, and that he should
tamely submit to it. He found himself provoked to complain of the
atrocious libels against his public character and his person which
appeared in a paper under the avowed patronage of that government. The
Regicide Directory, on this complaint, did not recognize the paper: and
that was all. They did not punish, they did not dismiss, they did not
even reprimand the writer. As to our ambassador, this total want of
reparation for the injury was passed by under the pretence of despising
it.
In this but too serious business, it is not possible here to avoid a
smile. Contempt is not a thing to be despised. It may be borne with a
calm and equal mind, but no man by lifting his head high can pretend
that he does not perceive the scorns that are poured down upon him from
above. All these sudden complaints of injury, and all these deliberate
submissions to it, are the inevitable consequences of the situation in
which we had placed ourselves: a situation wherein the insults were such
as Nature would not enable us to bear, and circumstances would not
permit us to resent.
It was not long, however, after this contempt of contempt upon the part
of our ambassador, (who by the way represented his sovereign,) that a
new object was furnished for displaying sentiments of the same kind,
though the case was infinitely aggravated. Not the ambassador, but the
king himself, was libelled and insulted,--libelled, not by a creature of
the Directory, but by the Directory itself. At least, so Lord Malmesbury
understood it, and so he answered it in his note of the 12th November,
1796, in which he says,--"With regard to the _offensive and injurious_
insinuations which are contained in that paper, and which are only
calculated to throw new obstacles in the way of the accommodation which
the French government professes to desire, THE KING HAS DEEMED IT FAR
BENEATH HIS DIGNITY to permit an answer to be made to them on his part,
in any manner whatsoever."
I am of opinion, that, if his Majesty had kept aloof from that wash and
offscouring of everything that is low and barbarous in the world, it
might be well thought unworthy of his dignity to take notice of such
scurrilities: they must be considered as much the natural expression of
that kind of animal as it is the expression of the feelings of a dog to
bark. But when the king had been advised to recognize not only the
monstrous composition as a sovereign power, but, in conduct, to admit
something in it like a superiority,--when the bench of Regicide was made
at least coordinate with his throne, and raised upon a platform full as
elevated, this treatment could not be passed by under the appearance of
despising it. It would not, indeed, have been proper to keep up a war of
the same kind; but an immediate, manly, and decided resentment ought to
have been the consequence. We ought not to have waited for the
disgraceful dismissal of our ambassador. There are cases in which we may
pretend to sleep; but the wittol rule has some sense in it, _Non omnibus
dormio_. We might, however, have seemed ignorant of the affront; but
what was the fact? Did we dissemble or pass it by in silence? When
dignity is talked of, a language which I did not expect to hear in such
a transaction, I must say, what all the world must feel, that it was not
for the king's dignity to notice this insult and not to resent it. This
mode of proceeding is formed on new ideas of the correspondence between
sovereign powers.
This was far from the only ill effect of the policy of degradation. The
state of inferiority in which we were placed, in this vain attempt at
treaty, drove us headlong from error into error, and led us to wander
far away, not only from all the paths which have been beaten in the old
course of political communication between mankind, but out of the ways
even of the most common prudence. Against all rules, after we had met
nothing but rebuffs in return to all our proposals, we made _two
confidential communications_ to those in whom we had no confidence and
who reposed no confidence in us. What was worse, we were fully aware of
the madness of the step we were taking. Ambassadors are not sent to a
hostile power, persevering in sentiments of hostility, to make candid,
confidential, and amicable communications. Hitherto the world has
considered it as the duty of an ambassador in such a situation to be
cautious, guarded, dexterous, and circumspect. It is true that mutual
confidence and common interest dispense with all rules, smooth the
rugged way, remove every obstacle, and make all things plain and level.
When, in the last century, Temple and De Witt negotiated the famous
Triple Alliance, their candor, their freedom, and the most
_confidential_ disclosures were the result of true policy. Accordingly,
in spite of all the dilatory forms of the complex government of the
United Provinces, the treaty was concluded in three days. It did not
take a much longer time to bring the same state (that of Holland)
through a still more complicated transaction,--that of the _Grand
Alliance_. But in the present case, this unparalleled candor, this
unpardonable want of reserve, produced, what might have been expected
from it, the most serious evils. It instructed the enemy in the whole
plan of our demands and concessions. It made the most fatal discoveries.
And first, it induced us to lay down the basis of a treaty which itself
had nothing to rest upon. It seems, we thought we had gained a great
point in getting this basis admitted,--that is, a basis of mutual
compensation and exchange of conquests. If a disposition to peace, and
with any reasonable assurance, had been previously indicated, such a
plan of arrangement might with propriety and safety be proposed; because
these arrangements were not, in effect, to make the basis, but a part of
the superstructure, of the fabric of pacification. The order of things
would thus be reversed. The mutual disposition to peace would form the
reasonable base, upon which the scheme of compensation upon one side or
the other might be constructed. This truly fundamental base being once
laid, all differences arising from the spirit of huckstering and barter
might be easily adjusted. If the restoration of peace, with a view to
the establishment of a fair balance of power in Europe, had been made
the real basis of the treaty, the reciprocal value of the compensations
could not be estimated according to their proportion to each other, but
according to their proportionate relation to that end: to that great end
the whole would be subservient. The effect of the treaty would be in a
manner secured before the detail of particulars was begun, and for a
plain reason,--because the hostile spirit on both sides had been
conjured down; but if, in the full fury and unappeased rancor of war, a
little traffic is attempted, it is easy to divine what must be the
consequence to those who endeavor to open that kind of petty commerce.
To illustrate what I have said, I go back no further than to the two
last Treaties of Paris, and to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which
preceded the first of these two Treaties of Paris by about fourteen or
fifteen years. I do not mean here to criticize any of them. My opinions
upon some particulars of the Treaty of Paris in 1763 are published in a
pamphlet[39] which your recollection will readily bring into your view.
I recur to them only to show that their basis had not been, and never
could have been, a mere dealing of truck and barter, but that the
parties being willing, from common fatigue or common suffering, to put
an end to a war the first object of which had either been obtained or
despaired of, the lesser objects were not thought worth the price of
further contest. The parties understanding one another, so much was
given away without considering from whose budget it came, not as the
value of the objects, but as the value of peace to the parties might
require.
At the last Treaty of Paris, the subjugation of America being despaired
of on the part of Great Britain, and the independence of America being
looked upon as secure on the part of France, the main cause of the war
was removed; and then the conquests which France had made upon us (for
we had made none of importance upon her) were surrendered with
sufficient facility. Peace was restored as peace. In America the parties
stood as they were possessed. A limit was to be settled, but settled as
a limit to secure that peace, and not at all on a system of equivalents,
for which, as we then stood with the United States, there were little or
no materials.
At the preceding Treaty of Paris, I mean that of 1763, there was
nothing at all on which to fix a basis of compensation from reciprocal
cession of conquests. They were all on one side. The question with us
was not what we were to receive, and on what consideration, but what we
were to keep for indemnity or to cede for peace. Accordingly, no place
being left for barter, sacrifices were made on our side to peace; and we
surrendered to the French their most valuable possessions in the West
Indies without any equivalent. The rest of Europe fell soon after into
its ancient order; and the German war ended exactly where it had begun.
The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was built upon a similar basis. All the
conquests in Europe had been made by France. She had subdued the
Austrian Netherlands, and broken open the gates of Holland. We had taken
nothing in the West Indies; and Cape Breton was a trifling business
indeed. France gave up all for peace. The Allies had given up all that
was ceded at Utrecht. Louis the Fourteenth made all, or nearly all, the
cessions at Ryswick, and at Nimeguen. In all those treaties, and in all
the preceding, as well as in the others which intervened, the question
never had been that of barter. The balance of power had been ever
assumed as the known common law of Europe at all times and by all
powers: the question had only been (as it must happen) on the more or
less inclination of that balance.
This general balance was regarded in four principal points of view: the
GREAT MIDDLE BALANCE, which comprehended Great Britain, France, and
Spain; the BALANCE OF THE NORTH; the BALANCE, external and internal, of
GERMANY; and the BALANCE OF ITALY. In all those systems of balance,
England was the power to whose custody it was thought it might be most
safely committed.
France, as she happened to stand, secured the balance or endangered it.
Without question, she had been long the security for the balance of
Germany, and, under her auspices, the system, if not formed, had been at
least perfected. She was so in some measure with regard to Italy, more
than occasionally. She had a clear interest in the balance of the North,
and had endeavored to preserve it. But when we began to treat with the
present France, or, more properly, to prostrate ourselves to her, and to
try if we should be admitted to ransom our allies, upon a system of
mutual concession and compensation, we had not one of the usual
facilities. For, first, we had not the smallest indication of a desire
for peace on the part of the enemy, but rather the direct contrary. Men
do not make sacrifices to obtain what they do not desire: and as for the
balance of power, it was so far from being admitted by France, either on
the general system, or with regard to the particular systems that I have
mentioned, that, in the whole body of their authorized or encouraged
reports and discussions upon the theory of the diplomatic system, they
constantly rejected the very idea of the balance of power, and treated
it as the true cause of all the wars and calamities that had afflicted
Europe; and their practice was correspondent to the dogmatic positions
they had laid down. The Empire and the Papacy it was their great object
to destroy; and this, now openly avowed and steadfastly acted upon,
might have been discerned with very little acuteness of sight, from the
very first dawnings of the Revolution, to be the main drift of their
policy: for they professed a resolution to destroy everything which can
hold states together by the tie of opinion.
Exploding, therefore, all sorts of balances, they avow their design to
erect themselves into a new description of empire, which is not grounded
on any balance, but forms a sort of impious hierarchy, of which France
is to be the head and the guardian. The law of this their empire is
anything rather than the public law of Europe, the ancient conventions
of its several states, or the ancient opinions which assign to them
superiority or preëminence of any sort, or any other kind of connection
in virtue of ancient relations. They permit, and that is all, the
temporary existence of some of the old communities: but whilst they give
to these tolerated states this temporary respite, in order to secure
them in a condition of real dependence on themselves, they invest them
on every side by a body of republics, formed on the model, and dependent
ostensibly, as well as substantially, on the will of the mother republic
to which they owe their origin. These are to be so many garrisons to
check and control the states which are to be permitted to remain on the
old model until they are ripe for a change. It is in this manner that
France, on her new system, means to form an universal empire, by
producing an universal revolution. By this means, forming a new code of
communities according to what she calls the natural rights of man and of
states, she pretends to secure eternal peace to the world, guarantied by
her generosity and justice, which are to grow with the extent of her
power. To talk of the balance of power to the governors of such a
country was a jargon which they could not understand even through an
interpreter. Before men can transact any affair, they must have a
common language to speak, and some common, recognized principles on
which they can argue; otherwise all is cross purpose and confusion. It
was, therefore, an essential preliminary to the whole proceeding, to fix
whether the balance of power, the liberties and laws of the Empire, and
the treaties of different belligerent powers in past times, when they
put an end to hostilities, were to be considered as the basis of the
present negotiation.
The whole of the enemy's plan was known when Lord Malmesbury was sent
with his scrap of equivalents to Paris. Yet, in this unfortunate attempt
at negotiation, instead of fixing these points, and assuming the balance
of power and the peace of Europe as the basis to which all cessions on
all sides were to be subservient, our solicitor for peace was directed
to reverse that order. He was directed to make mutual concessions, on a
mere comparison of their marketable value, the base of treaty. The
balance of power was to be thrown in as an inducement, and a sort of
make-weight to supply the manifest deficiency, which must stare him and
the world in the face, between those objects which he was to require the
enemy to surrender and those which he had to offer as a fair equivalent.
To give any force to this inducement, and to make it answer even the
secondary purpose of equalizing equivalents having in themselves no
natural proportionate value, it supposed that the enemy, contrary to the
most notorious fact, did admit this balance of power to be of some
value, great or small; whereas it is plain, that, in the enemy's
estimate of things, the consideration of the balance of power, as we
have said before, was so far from going in diminution of the value of
what the Directory was desired to surrender, or of giving an additional
price to our objects offered in exchange, that the hope of the utter
destruction of that balance became a new motive to the junto of
Regicides for preserving, as a means for realizing that hope, what we
wished them to abandon.
Thus stood the basis of the treaty, on laying the first stone of the
foundation. At the very best, upon our side, the question stood upon a
mere naked bargain and sale. Unthinking people here triumphed, when they
thought they had obtained it; whereas, when obtained as a basis of a
treaty, it was just the worst we could possibly have chosen. As to our
offer to cede a most unprofitable, and, indeed, beggarly, chargeable
counting-house or two in the East Indies, we ought not to presume that
they would consider this as anything else than a mockery. As to anything
of real value, we had nothing under heaven to offer, (for which we were
not ourselves in a very dubious struggle,) except the island of
Martinico only. When this object was to be weighed against the
Directorial conquests, merely as an object of a value at market, the
principle of barter became perfectly ridiculous: a single quarter in the
single city of Amsterdam was worth ten Martinicos, and would have sold
for many more years' purchase in any market overt in Europe. How was
this gross and glaring defect in the objects of exchange to be supplied?
It was to be made up by argument. And what was that argument? The
extreme utility of possessions in the West Indies to the augmentation of
the naval power of France. A very curious topic of argument to be
proposed and insisted on by an ambassador of Great Britain! It is
directly and plainly this:--"Come, we know that of all things you wish a
naval power, and it is natural you should, who wish to destroy the very
sources of the British greatness, to overpower our marine, to destroy
our commerce, to eradicate our foreign influence, and to lay us open to
an invasion, which at one stroke may complete our servitude and ruin and
expunge us from among the nations of the earth. Here I have it in my
budget, the infallible arcanum for that purpose. You are but novices in
the art of naval resources. Let you have the West Indies back, and your
maritime preponderance is secured, for which you would do well to be
moderate in your demands upon the Austrian Netherlands."
Under any circumstances, this is a most extraordinary topic of argument;
but it is rendered by much the more unaccountable, when we are told,
that, if the war has been diverted from the great object of establishing
society and good order in Europe by destroying the usurpation in France,
this diversion was made to increase the naval resources and power of
Great Britain, and to lower, if not annihilate, those of the marine of
France. I leave all this to the very serious reflection of every
Englishman.
This basis was no sooner admitted than the rejection of a treaty upon
that sole foundation was a thing of course. The enemy did not think it
worthy of a discussion, as in truth it was not; and immediately, as
usual, they began, in the most opprobrious and most insolent manner, to
question our sincerity and good faith: whereas, in truth, there was no
one symptom wanting of openness and fair dealing. What could be more
fair than to lay open to an enemy all that you wished to obtain, and the
price you meant to pay for it, and to desire him to imitate your
ingenuous proceeding, and in the same manner to open his honest heart to
you? Here was no want of fair dealing, but there was too evidently a
fault of another kind: there was much weakness,--there was an eager and
impotent desire of associating with this unsocial power, and of
attempting the connection by any means, however manifestly feeble and
ineffectual. The event was committed to chance,--that is, to such a
manifestation of the desire of France for peace as would induce the
Directory to forget the advantages they had in the system of barter.
Accordingly, the general desire for such a peace was triumphantly
reported from the moment that Lord Malmesbury had set his foot on shore
at Calais.