It happens frequently that pride may reject a public advance, while
interest listens to a secret suggestion of advantage. The opportunity
has been afforded. At a very early period in the diplomacy of
humiliation, a gentleman was sent on an errand, of which, from the
motive of it, whatever the event might be, we can never be ashamed.
Humanity cannot be degraded by humiliation. It is its very character to
submit to such things. There is a consanguinity between benevolence and
humility. They are virtues of the same stock. Dignity is of as good a
race; but it belongs to the family of fortitude. In the spirit of that
benevolence we sent a gentleman to beseech the Directory of regicide not
to be quite so prodigal as their republic had been of judicial murder.
We solicited them to spare the lives of some unhappy persons of the
first distinction, whose safety at other times could not have been an
object of solicitation. They had quitted France on the faith of the
declaration of the rights of citizens. They never had been in the
service of the regicides, nor at their hands had received any stipend.
The very system and constitution of government that now prevails was
settled subsequently to their emigration. They were under the protection
of Great Britain, and in his majesty's pay and service. Not an hostile
invasion, but the disasters of the sea, had thrown them upon a shore
more barbarous and inhospitable than the inclement ocean under the most
pitiless of its storms. Here was an opportunity to express a feeling for
the miseries of war; and to open some sort of conversation, which (after
our public overtures had glutted their pride), at a cautious and jealous
distance, might lead to something like an accommodation. What was the
event? A strange uncouth thing, a theatrical figure of the opera, his
head shaded with three-coloured plumes, his body fantastically habited,
strutted from the back scenes, and, after a short speech, in the mock
heroic falsetto of stupid tragedy, delivered the gentleman who came to
make the representation into the custody of a guard, with directions not
to lose sight of him for a moment; and then ordered him to be sent from
Paris in two hours.