was the management of the negotiation taken from him? Was he too proud for this service? No man is too proud to do his duty; and of all our foreign ministers, Mr Whitworth* I should think the very last to whom it could be reproached that he is remiss in fulfilling the directions he receives, in their utmost strictness. But a new man was to be found; one whose reputation for talents and honour might operate, as they hoped, as a sort of set-off against the incapacity he was to cure, and the national honour he was deputed to surrender. Was it thus determined, because, in looking round their diplomatic body, there was no man to be selected from it, whose character assimilated with the dirty job he was to execute? As there was honour to be sacrificed, a stain to be fixed upon the national character, engagements to be retracted, and a friend to be abandoned, did it never occur to them that there was one man upon their diplomatic list who would have been pronounced by general acclamation thoroughly qualified in soul and qualities for this service? Such a person they might have found, and not so occupied as to make it inconvenient to employ him. They would have found him absent from his station, under the pretence of attending his duty in this House, though he does not choose often to make his appearance here. Instead of this, however, they increased the dishonour that they doomed us to suffer, by sending a gentleman endowed with every virtue and accomplishment, who had acquired, in the service of the Empress of Russia, at an early period of his life, a character for bravery and enterprise that rendered him personally esteemed by her, and in whom fine talents and elegant manners, ripened by habit and experience, had confirmed the flattering promise of his youth. Did they think that the shabbiness of their message was to be done away by the worth of the messenger? If I were to send a humiliating apology to any person, would it change its quality by being entrusted to Lord Rodney, Admiral Pigot, my honourable friend behind me [General Burgoyne], Lord Cornwallis, Sir Henry Clinton, Sir William Howe, or any other gallant and brave officer? Certainly not. It was my fortune, in very early life, to have set out in habits of particular intimacy with Mr Faulkener, and however circumstances may have intervened to suspend that intimacy, circumstances arising from wide differences in political opinion, they never have altered the sentiments of private esteem which I have uniformly felt for him; and with every amiable and conciliating quality that belongs to man, I know him to be one from whom improper submissions are the least to be expected. Well, sir, these gentlemen, Mr Whitworth and Mr Faulkener, commence the negotiation by the offer of three distinct proposi * Afterward Lord Whitworth, and ambassador at the court of Bonaparte during the peace of Amiens. † Lord Auckland, tions, each of them better than the other, and accompany it with an expression somewhat remarkable, namely, that this negotiation is to be as unlike all the others as possible, and to be "founded in perfect candour." To prove this, they submit at once to the Russian ministers "all that their instructions enable them to propose." Who would not have imagined, according to the plain import of these words, that unless the empress had assented to one of these propositions, all amicable interposition would have been at an end, and war the issue? The "perfect candour" promised in the beginning of their note, leads them to declare explicitly, that unless the fortifications of Oczakow be razed, or the Turks are allowed, as an equivalent, to keep both the banks of the Dniester, the allies cannot propose any terms to them. What answer do they receive? An unequivocal rejection of every one of their propositions; accompanied, however, with a declaration, to which I shall soon return, that the navigation of that river shall be free to all the world, and a reference to those maxims of policy which have invariably actuated the Empress of Russia in her intercourse with neutral nations, whose commerce she has at all times protected and encouraged. With this declaration the British plenipotentiaries declare themselves perfectly contented; nay more, they engage that if the Turks should refuse these conditions, and continue obstinate longer than four months, the allied courts "will abandon the termination of the war to the events it may produce." And here ends for ever all care for the Ottoman empire, all solicitude about the balance of power. The right honourable gentleman will interpose no further to save either, but rests the whole of a measure, once so indispensable to our safety, upon this doubtful issue, whether the Turks will accept in December those very terms which in July the British ministers could not venture to propose to them! Sir, we may look in vain to the events of former times for a disgrace parallel to what we have suffered. Louis XIV., a monarch often named in our debates, and whose reign exhibits more than any other the extremes of prosperous and of adverse fortune, never, in the midst of his most humiliating distresses, stooped to so despicable a sacrifice of all that can be dear to man. The war of the succession, unjustly begun by him, had reduced his power, had swallowed up his armies and his navies, had desolated his provinces, had drained his treasures, and deluged the earth with the blood of the best and most faithful of his subjects. Exhausted by his various calamities, he offered his enemies at one time to relinquish all the objects for which he had begun the war. That proud monarch sued for peace, and was content to receive it from our moderation. But when it was made a condition of that peace, that he should turn his arms against his grandson, and compel him by force to relinquish the throne of Spain, humbled, exhausted, conquered as he was, misfortune had not yet bowed his spirit to conditions so hard as these. We know the event. He persisted still in the war, until the folly and wickedness of Queen Anne's ministers enabled him to conclude the peace of Utrecht, on terms considerably less disadvantageous even than those he had himself proposed. And shall we, sir, the pride of our age, the terror of Europe, submit to this humiliating sacrifice of our honour? Have we suffered a defeat at Blenheim? Shall we, with our increasing prosperity, our widely diffused capital, our navy, the just subject of our common exultation, ever-flowing coffers, that enable us to give back to the people what, in the hour of calamity, we were compelled to take from them; flushed with a recent triumph over Spain [respecting Nootka Sound], and yet more than all, while our old rival and enemy was incapable of disturbing us, shall it be for us to yield to what France disdained in the hour of her sharpest distress, and exhibit ourselves to the world, the sole example in its annals of such an abjeet and pitiful degradation? VII. But gentlemen inform us now, in justification, as I suppose they mean it, of all these measures, that to effect a peace between Russia and the Porte was only the ostensible cause of our armament, or at least was not the sole cause; and that ministers were under some apprehension lest the Emperor of Germany, if the allies were to disarm, should insist on better terms from the Turks than he had agreed to accept by the convention of Reichenbach. This I cannot believe. When his Majesty sends a message to inform his Parliament that he thinks it necessary to arm for a specific purpose, I cannot suppose that a falsehood has been put into his Majesty's mouth, and that the armament which he proposes as necessary for one purpose is intended for another! If the right honourable gentleman shall tell me, that although the war between Russia and the Porte was the real cause of equipping the armament, yet that being once equipped, it was wise to keep it up when no longer wanted on that account, because the emperor seemed inclined to depart from the convention of Reichenbach; then I answer, that it was his duty to have come with a second message to Parliament, expressly stating this new object, with the necessary information to enable the House to judge of its propriety. Another of the arguments for continuing the armament after the object was relinquished, is, that Russia might have insisted on harder terms, not conceiving herself bound by offers which we had refused to accept. I perfectly agree with gentlemen, that after the repeated offer of those terms on the part of Russia, and the rejection of them by us, the empress was not bound to adhere to them in all possible events and contingencies. If the war had continued, she would have had a right to further indemnification for the expense of it. But was it not worth the minister's while to try the good faith of the Empress of Russia, after she had so solemnly pledged herself to all Europe that she would not rise in her demands? The experiment would have been made with little trouble, by the simple expedient of sending a messenger to ask the question. The object of his armament would have suffered little by the delay, as an answer from the Russian court might have been had in five or six weeks. Was it reasonable in ministers to suppose, that because, in the early part of the negotiation, the empress had shown so much regard to us as actually to give up whatever pretensions she had formed to other provinces of the Turkish empire, solely with the view of obtaining our concurrence to the principle on which she offered to make peace, she would revert to those very pretensions the instant she had obtained that concurrence on our part, for the benefit of which she had sacrificed them? Surely, as I have said, it was worth while to make the experiment; but simple and obvious as this was, a very different course was adopted. Oczakow, indeed, was relinquished before the armament began, as we may find by comparing the date of the press warrants with that of the Duke of Leeds' resignation. As soon as the king's message was delivered to Parliament, a messenger was despatched to Berlin with an intimation of the resolution to arm. This, perhaps, was rashly done, as the ministry might have foreseen that the measure would probably meet with opposi tion, and much time could not have been lost by waiting the event of the first debate. No sooner was the division [upon the debate] known, than a second messenger was sent off to overtake and stop the despatches of the first; and this brings me to another argument, which I confess appears to me very unlikely to help them out. They tell us that the King of Prussia having armed in consequence of our assurances of support, we could not disarm before we knew the sentiments of the court of Berlin, without the imputation of leaving our ally in the lurch. Did we wait for the sentiments of that court to determine whether Oczakow was to be given up or not? Sir, when that measure was resolved upon, the right honourable gentleman actually had abandoned his ally; and that such was the sense of the court of Berlin, I believe can be testified by every Englishman who was there at the time. No sooner did the second messenger arrive, and the contents of his despatches become known, than a general indignation rose against the conduct of the right honourable gentleman; and I am well enough informed on the subject to state to this House, that not an Englishman could show his face in that capital without exposing himself to mortification, perhaps to insult. But, between the 28th of March 1791, when the mes sage was brought down to this House, and the 2d or 3d of April, when the second messenger was despatched with the news that ministers had abandoned the object of it, the armament could not have been materially advanced. Why, then, was it persisted in? The right honourable gentleman cannot argue that he kept up the armament in compliance with his engagements with Prussia, when the armament, in fact, did not exist, and when it had been begun but four or five days previous to his renouncing the object of it. That could not have been his motive. What then was the motive? Why, that he was too proud to own his error, and valued less the money and tranquillity of the people than the appearance of firmness, when he had renounced the reality. False shame is the parent of many crimes. By false shame a man may be tempted to commit a murder, to conceal a robbery. Influenced by this false shame, the ministers robbed the people of their money, the seamen of their liberty, their families of support and protection, and all this to conceal that they had undertaken a system which was not fit to be pursued. If they say that they did this, apprehensive that, without the terror of an armament, Russia would not stand to the terms which they had refused to accept, they do no more than acknowledge that, by the insolence of their arming and the precipitancy of their submission, they had either so provoked her resentment, or excited her contempt, that she would not even condescend to agree to her own propositions when approved by them. But however they might have thought her disposed to act on this subject, it was at least their duty to try whether such would have been her conduct or not. VIII. To prove that the terms to which they agreed at last were the same with those they before rejected, all I feel it necessary for me to observe is, that the free navigation of the river Dniester, the only novelty introduced into them, was implied in proposing it as a boundary; for it is a well-known rule that the boundary between two powers must be as free to the one as to the other. True, says the minister, but we have got the free navigation for the subjects of other powers, particularly for those of Poland. If this be an advantage, it is one which he has gained by concession; for if he had not agreed that the river should be the boundary, the navigation would not have been free. The Turks offered no such stipulation, had they been put in possession of both the banks. Besides which, as a noble duke, whom I have already quoted, well observed, it is an advantage, whatever may be its value, which can subsist only in time of peace. It is not, I suppose, imagined that the navigation will be free in time of war. They have, then, got nothing that deserves the name of a "modification," a term, I must here observe, the use of which is not justified even by the original memorial, where the sense is more accurately expressed by the French word "radoucissement." Was it, then, for some radoucissement [softening] that they continued their armament? Was it to say to the empress, when they had conceded everything, "We have given you all you asked, give us something that we may hold out to the public, something that we may use against the minority, that minority whom we have endeavoured to represent as your allies. We have sacrificed our allies, the Turks, to you. You can do no less than sacrifice your allies, the minority, to us?" If I had been to advise the empress on the subject, I would have counselled her to grant the British minister something of this sort. I would even have advised her to raze the fortifications of Oczakow, if he had insisted on it. I would have appealed from her policy to her generosity, and said, "Grant him this as an apology, for he stands much in need of it. His whole object was to appear to gain something, no matter what, by continuing the armament; and even in this last pitiful and miserable object he has failed." If, after all, I ask, whether these terms are contained in the peace that we have concluded for the Turks, or rather which the Turks concluded for themselves, the answer is, "We have no authentic copy of it." Is this what we have got by our arms, by distressing our commerce, dragging our seamen from their homes and occupations, and squandering our money? Is this the efficacy of our interference, and the triumph of our wisdom and our firmness? The Turks have at length concluded a peace, of which they do not even condescend to favour us with a copy, so that we know what it is only by report, and the balance of Europe, late in so much danger, and of so much importance, is left for them to settle without consulting us! Is it for this that we employed such men as Mr Faulkener and Mr Whitworth? They were sent to negotiate for the materials of a speech, and failed. But what are the complaints that private friendship has a right to make, compared with those of an insulted public? Half a million of money is spent, the people alarmed and interrupted in their proper pursuits by the apprehension of a war, and for what? For the restoration of Oczakow? No! Oczakow is not restored. To save the Turks from being too much humbled? No. They are now in a worse situation than they would have been had we never armed at all. If Russia had persevered in that system of encroachment of which she is accused, we could, as I observed before, then bave assisted them unembarrassed. We are now tied down by treaties, and fettered by stipulations. We have even guaranteed to Russia what we before said it would be unsafe for the Turks to yield, and dangerous to the peace of Europe for Russia to possess. This is what the public have got by the armament. What, then, was the private motive? "Scilicet, ut Turno contingat regia conjux, Nos, animæ viles, inhumata infletaque turba, Sternamur campis." ("That Turnus may obtain a royal spouse, We abject souls, unburied and unwept, Lie scattered on the plains.") -Eneid of Virgil, xi. 371. IX. The minister gained, or thought he was to gain, an excuse for his rashness and misconduct; and to purchase this excuse was the public money and the public quiet wantonly sacrificed. There are some effects, which to combine with their causes, is almost sufficient to drive men mad! That the pride, the folly, the presumption of a single person shall be able to involve a whole people in wretchedness and disgrace, is more than philosophy can teach mortal patience to endure. Here are the true weapons of the enemies of our constitution! Here may we search for the source of those seditious writings, meant either to weaken our attachment to the constitution, by depreciating its value, or which loudly tell us that we have no constitution at all. We may blame, we may reprobate such doctrines; but while we furnish those who circulate them with arguments such as these; while the example of this day shows us to what degree the fact is true, we must not wonder if the purposes they are meant to answer be but too successful. They argue that a constitution cannot be right where such things are possible, much less so when they are practised without punishment. This, sir, is a serious reflection to every man who loves the constitution of England. Against the vain theories of men, who project fundamental alterations upon grounds of mere speculative objection, I can easily defend it; but when they recur to these facts, and show me how we may be doomed to all the horrors of war by the caprice of an individual who will not even condescend to explain his reasons, I can only fly to this House, and exhort you to rouse from your lethargy of confidence into the active mistrust and vigilant control which is your duty and your office. Without recurring to the dust to which the minister has been humbled, and the dirt he has been dragged through, if we ask, for what has the peace of the public been disturbed? for what is that man pressed and dragged like a felon to a service that should be honourable? we must be answered, for some three-quarters of a mile of barren territory on the banks of the Dniester! In the name of all we value, give us, when such instances are quoted in derogation of our constitution, some right to answer, that these are not its principles, but the monstrous abuses intruded into its practice. Let it not be said, that because the executive power, for an adequate and evident cause, may adopt measures that require expense without consulting Parliament, we are to convert the exception into a rule; to reverse the principle; and that it is now to be assumed that the people's money may be spent for any cause, or for none, without either submitting the exigency to the judgment of their representatives, or inquiring into it afterwards, unless we can make out ground for a criminal charge against the executive government. Let us disclaim these abuses, and return to the constitution. I am not one of those who lay down rules as universal and absolute, because I think there is hardly a political or moral maxim which is universally true; but I maintain the general rule to be, that before the public money be voted away, the occasion that calls for it should be fairly stated, for the consideration of those who are the proper guardians of the public money. Had the minister explained his system to Parliament before he called for money to support it, and Parliament had decided that it was not worth supporting, he would have been saved the mortification and disgrace in which his own honour is involved, and, by being furnished with a just excuse to Prussia for withdrawing from the prosecution of it, have saved that of his sovereign and his country, which he has irrevoc ably tarnished. Is unanimity necessary to his plans? He can be sure of it in no manner, unless he explains them to this House, who are certainly much better judges than he is of the degree of unanimity with which they are likely to be received. Why, then, did he not consult us? Because he had other purposes to answer in the use he meant to make of his majority. Had he opened himself to the House at first, and had we declared against him, he might have been stopped in the first instance: had we declared for him, we might have held him too firmly to his principle to suffer his receding from it as he has done. Either of these alternatives he dreaded. It was his policy to decline our opinions, and to exact our confidence; that thus having the means of acting either way, according to the exigencies of his personal situation, he might come to Parliament and tell us what our opinions ought to be; which set of principles would be most expedient to shelter him from inquiry and from punishment. It is for this he comes before us with a poor and pitiful excuse, that for want of the unanimity he expected, there was reason to fear, if the war should go to a second campaign, that it might be obstructed. Why not speak out, and own the real fact? He feared that a second campaign might occasion the loss of his place. Let him keep but his place, he cares not what else he loses. With other men, reputation and glory are the objects of ambition; power and place are coveted but as the means of these. For the minister, power and place are sufficient of them. selves. With them he is content; for them he can calmly sacrifice every proud distinction that ambition covets, and every noble prospect to which it points the way! X. Sir, there is yet an argument which I have not sufficiently noticed. It has been said, as a ground for his defence, that he was prevented from gaining what he demanded by our opposition; and, but for this, Russia would have complied, and never would have hazarded a war. Sir, I believe the direct contrary, and my belief is as good as their assertion, unless they will give us some proof of its correctness. Until then, I have a right to ask them, what if Russia had not complied? Worse and worse for him! He must have gone on, redoubling his menaces and expenses, the Empress of Russia continuing inflexible as ever, but for the salutary opposition which preserved him from his extremity of shame. I am not contending that armaments are never necessary to enforce negotiations; but it is one, and that not the least, of the evils attending the right honourable gentleman's misconduct, that by keeping up the parade of an armament, never meant to be employed, he has, in a great measure, deprived us of the use of this method of negotiating, whenever it may be necessary to apply it effectually; for if you propose to arm in concert with any foreign power, that power will answer, "What security can you give me that you will persevere in that system? You say you cannot go to war unless your people are unanimous." If you aim to negotiate against a foreign power, that power will say, "I have only to persist-the British minister may threaten, but he dare not act he will not hazard the loss of his place by a war." A right honourable gentleman [Mr Dundas], in excuse for withholding papers, asked what foreign power would nego tiate with an English cabinet, if their secrets were likely to be developed, and exposed to the idle curiosity of a House of Commons? I do not dread such a consequence, but if I must be pushed to extremes, if nothing were left me but an option between opposite evils, I should have no hesitation in choosing. "Better have no dealings with them at all," I should answer, "if the right of inquiry into every part of a negotiation they think fit, and of knowing why they are to vote the money of their constituents, be denied the House of Commons." But there is something like a reason why no foreign power will negotiate with us, and that a much better reason than a dread of disclosing their secrets, in the right honourable gentleman's example. I declare, therefore, for the genius of our constitution, against the practice of his Majesty's ministers; I declare that the duties of this House are, vigilance in preference to secrecy, deliberation in preference to despatch. Sir, I have given my reasons for supporting the motion for a vote of censure on the minister. I will listen to his defence with attention, and I will retract wherever he shall prove me to be wrong. [The debate was closed by Pitt, who insisted on the necessity of restraining the ambition of Russia. The vote was taken; it stood 244 in his favour, and 116 against him. The same jealousy at the growing power of Russia, which animated the Government at that time, seems to have been repeated and preserved during the agitation upon the Eastern question, 1876-77.] JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN. 1750-1817. A VINDICATION OF IRISH PARLIAMEN. TARY REFORM.* GENTLEMEN,-The representation of your people is the vital principle of their political existence. Without it they are dead, or they live only in servitude. Without it there are two estates acting upon and against the third, instead of acting in co-operation with it. Without it, if the people are oppressed by their judges, where is the tribunal to which their judges can be amenable? Without it, if they are trampled upon and plundered by a minister, where is the tribunal to which the offender shall be amenable? Without it, where is the ear to hear, or the heart to feel, or the hand to redress their sufferings? Shall they be found, let me ask you, in the * From a speech in behalf of Michael Hamilton Rowan, when indicted for the publication of a seditious libel, delivered 29th January 1791. accursed bands of imps and minions that bask in their disgrace, and fatten upon their spoils, and flourish upon their ruin? But let me not put this to you as a merely speculative question. It is a plain question of fact; rely upon it, physical man is everywhere the same; it is only the various operations of moral causes that gives variety to the social or individual character and condition. How otherwise happens it that modern slavery looks quietly at the despot, on the very spot where Leonidas expired? The answer is easy; Sparta has not changed her climate, but she has lost that government which her liberty could not survive. I call you, therefore, to the plain question of fact. This paper recommends a reform in Parliament: I put that question to your conscience; do you think it needs that reform? I put it boldly and fairly to you; do you think the people of Ireland are represented as they |