the utmost zeal in the maintenance of the honour of his majesty's crown, and the vindication of the rights of his people; and nothing shall be wanting on their part that can contribute to that firm and effectual support which his majesty has so much reason to expect from a brave and loyal people, in repelling every hostile attempt against this country, and in such other exertions as may be necessary to induce France to consent to such terms of pacification as may be consistent with the honour of his majesty's crown, the security of his allies, and the interests of his people."

Mr. Fox's amendment was rejected, and the address proposed · by Mr. Pitt agreed to without a division.

MR. FOX'S RESOLUTIONS AGAINST THE WAR WITH FRANCE.

February 18.

THIS day, in pursuance of the notice he had given,

Mr. Fox rose. He said that he had delivered his sentiments so frequently on the several points included in his intended motion, that the House could not expect him to add much that was new. Having been accused in the last debate with repeating the same things over and over, he should now content himself with referring to the opinions he had formerly delivered; and hoped that he should not be again reproached, in the same breath that reminded him of repetition, with failing to repeat any one of those opinions to whatever part of the subject it might relate. The present crisis was awful. He had done every thing in his power to avert the calamity of war; and he did intend to have made one more attempt, if he had not been most unaccountably prevented by the failure of public business for a whole week. That opportunity was unfortunately lost. We were now actually engaged in war; and being so engaged, there could be no difference of opinion as to the necessity of supporting it with vigour. No want of disposition to support it could be imputed to him; for, in the debate on his majesty's message announcing that we were at war, he had moved an amendment to the address, as much pledging the House to a vigorous support of it, as the address proposed by his majesty's ministers, and better calculated to

ensure unanimity. But the more he felt himself bound to support the war, the more he felt himself bound to object to the measures which, as far as yet appeared, had unnecessarily led to it.

The necessity of the war might be defended on two principles: first, the malus animus, or general bad disposition of the French towards this country; the crimes they have committed among themselves; the systems they have endeavoured to establish, if systems they might be called; in short, the internal government of their country. On this principle, there were few indeed that would venture to defend it: and this being disavowed as the cause of war by his majesty's ministers, it was unnecessary for him to dwell upon it. Secondly, that various things have been done by the French, manifestly extending beyond their own country, and affecting the interests of us and our allies; for which, unless satisfaction was given, we must enforce satisfaction by arms. This he considered as the only principle on which the necessity of the war could be truly defended, and in this he was sure the great majority of the House and of the country were of the same opinion. His object was to record this in an address; and whatever objection there might be as to time or circumstances, could he obtain the sense of the House purely upon the principle, he should be very sanguine in his hopes of success. Such a record would be a guide to their conduct in the war, and a landmark on which to fix their attention for the attainment of peace. In examining the alleged cases of provocation, he had maintained that they were all objects of negociation, and such as, till satisfaction was explicitly demanded and refused, did not justify resorting to the last extremity. He had perhaps also said, that ministers did not appear to have pursued the course which was naturally to be expected from their professions. He did not mean to charge them with adopting one principle for debate and another for action; but he thought they had suffered themselves to be imposed upon, and misled by those who wished to go to war with France on account of her internal government, and therefore took all occasions of representing the French as utterly and irreconcileably hostile to this country. It was always fair to compare the conduct of men in any particular instance with their conduct on other occasions. If the rights of neutral nations were now loudly held forth; if the danger to be apprehended from the aggrandizement of any power was magnified as the just cause of the present war; and if, on looking to another quarter, we saw the rights of Poland, of a neutral and independent nation, openly trampled upon, its territory invaded, and all this for the manifest aggrandizement of other powers, and no war de

clared or menaced, not even a remonstrance interposed-for if any had been interposed, it was yet a secret-could we be blamed for suspecting that the pretended was not the real object of the present war-that what we were not told, was in fact the object, and what we were told, only the colour and pretext?

The war, however, be the real cause what it might, would be much less calamitous to this country, if, in the prosecution of it, we could do without allying ourselves with those who had made war on France, for the avowed purpose of interfering in her internal government; if we could avoid entering into engagements that might fetter us in our negociations for peace; since negociation must be the issue of every war that was not a war of absolute conquest, if we should shun the disgrace of becoming parties with those who in first attempting to invade France, and some of them in since invading Poland, had violated all the rights of nations, all the principles of justice and of honour.

On the first principle, he had already stated, as one of two on which it might be attempted to justify the necessity of the present war, as it was most studiously disclaimed by ministers, and all but a very few members of that House, it was unnecessary for him to say any thing. On the second he had said, that the alleged causes of complaint were not causes of war previons to negociation, and on this point his opinions were not new, as they had formerly been called, but such as he had always entertained, from the first moment of his forming opinions upon such subjects; neither were they singular. He had since looked into the writers on the law of nations, and by all the most approved it was laid down as an axiom, that injuries, be they what they may, are not the just cause of war, till reparation and satisfaction have been fairly and openly demanded and evaded, or refused. Some of them even went so far as to say, that reparation and satisfaction ought to be demanded, both previous and subsequent to the declaration of war, in order to make that war just.

着

Our causes of complaint against France were, first, the attempt to open the navigation of the Scheldt; second, the decree of the 19th of November, supposed to be directed against the peace of other nations; third, the extension of their territory by conquest. The first of these was obviously and confessedly an object of negociation. The second was also to be accommodated by negociation; because an explanation that they did not mean what we understood by it, and a stipulation that it should not be acted upon in the sense in which we understood it, was all that could be obtained even by war. The third was somewhat more difficult, for it in

volved in it the evacuation of the countries conquered, and security that they should in no sense be annexed to France; and no such security could, perhaps, at present be devised. But if we were aware of this; if we saw that during the war the French are engaged in with other powers, they had no such security to offer; if we knew that we were asking what could not be given, the whole of our pretended negociation, such as it had been, was a farce and a delusion; not an honest endeavour to preserve the blessings of peace, but a fraudulent expedient to throw dust in the eyes of the people of this country, in order that they might be hurried blindly into a war. The more he attended to the printed correspondence, the oftener he read Lord Grenville's letter to M. Chauvelin, so repeatedly alluded to, the more convinced he was how extremely deficient we had been in communicating the terms on which we thought peace might be maintained. We told them they must keep within their own territory; but how were they to do this when attacked by two armies, that retired out of their territory only to repair the losses of their first miscarriage, and prepare for a fresh irruption? When to this studied concealment of terms were added the haughty language of all our communications, and the difficulties thrown in the way of all negociation, we must surely admit, that it was not easy for the French to know with what we would be satisfied, nor to discover on what terms our amity (not our alliance, for that he had never suggested, though the imputation had been boldly made,)- could be conciliated. When to all these he added the language held in that House by ministers, although he by no means admitted that speeches in that House were to be sifted for causes of war by foreign powers, any more than speeches in the French convention by us; and last of all, the paper transmitted by Lord Auckland at the Hague, to the States General - a paper which, for the contempt and ridicule it expressed of the French, stood unparalleled in diplomatic history a paper, in which the whole of them, without distinction, who had been in the exercise of power since the commencement of the Revolution, were styled "a set of wretches investing themselves with the title of philosophers, and presuming in the dream of their vanity to think themselves capable of establishing a new order of society, &c." -how could we hope the French, who where thus wantonly insulted, to expect that any thing would be considered as satisfactory, or any pledge a sufficient security? Let the House compare Lord Auckland's language at the Hague with the pacific conduct of ministers at home, as represented by themselves. While they were trying every means to conciliate; while with moderation to an excess, which they could

not help thinking culpable, they were publicly ordering M. Chauvelin to quit the kingdom within eight days, but privately telling him that he might stay and negociate; while they were waiting for propositions from M. Maret, which M. Maret did not make; while they were sending instructions to Lord Auckland to negociate with General Dumourier, Lord Auckland was writing that silly and insulting paper by their instructions; for if he had written such a paper without instructions, he was very unfit for his situation, and must have been instantly recalled. Thus, while, as they pretended, they were courting peace, they were using every manœuvre to provoke war. For these reasons, he should move, that ministers had not employed proper means for preserving peace, without sacrificing the honour or the safety of this country.

He came next to consider their conduct with respect to Poland. He had formerly said, that he wished not to speak harshly of foreign princes in that House, although the period had not long since passed, when it was thought perfectly allowable to talk of the Empress of Russia as a princess of insatiable ambition, and of the late emperor, as a prince too faithless to be relied upon. But when he spoke of the King of Prussia, he desired to be understood as speaking of the cabinet of the court of Berlin, whose conduct he was as free to criticise, as other gentlemen the conduct of the executive council of France. In May 1791, a revolution took place in Poland, on the suggestion, certainly with the concurrence, of the King of Prussia; and, as was pretty generally imagined, although not authentically known, with the court of London. By a dispatch to his minister at Warsaw, the King of Prussia expressed the lively interest which he had always taken in the happiness of Poland, a confirmation of her new constitution, and his approbation of the choice of the Elector of Saxony, and his descendants, to fill the throne of Poland, made hereditary by the new order of things, after the death of the reigning king. In 1792, the Empress of Russia, without the least plausible pretext, but this change in the internal government of the country, invaded Poland. Poland called upon the King of Prussia, with whose express approbation this change had been effected, for the stipulated succours of an existing treaty of alliance. He replied, that the state of things being entirely changed since that alliance, and the present conjuncture brought on by the revolution of May 1791, posterior to his treaty, it did not become him to give Poland any assistance, unless, indeed, she chose to retrace all the steps of that revolution, and then he would interpose his good offices both with Russia and the emperor to reconcile