The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 05 (of 12). Edmund Burke

all of them together. In consequence of his knowledge that we could not effectually do without them, and his resolution that we should not act with them, he proposed, that, having, as he asserted, "obtained the only avowed object of the war (the evacuation of Holland) we ought to conclude an instant peace."

      28. Mr. Fox could not be ignorant of the mistaken basis upon which his motion was grounded. He was not ignorant, that, though the attempt of Dumouriez on Holland, (so very near succeeding,) and the navigation of the Scheldt, (a part of the same piece,) were among the immediate causes, they were by no means the only causes, alleged for Parliament's taking that offence at the proceedings of France, for which the Jacobins were so prompt in declaring war upon this kingdom. Other full as weighty causes had been alleged: they were,—1. The general overbearing and desperate ambition of that faction; 2. Their actual attacks on every nation in Europe; 3. Their usurpation of territories in the Empire with the governments of which they had no pretence of quarrel; 4. Their perpetual and irrevocable consolidation with their own dominions of every territory of the Netherlands, of Germany, and of Italy, of which they got a temporary possession; 5. The mischiefs attending the prevalence of their system, which would make the success of their ambitious designs a new and peculiar species of calamity in the world; 6. Their formal, public decrees, particularly those of the 19th of November and 15th and 25th of December; 7. Their notorious attempts to undermine the Constitution of this country; 8. Their public reception of deputations of traitors for that direct purpose; 9. Their murder of their sovereign, declared by most of the members of the Convention, who spoke with their vote, (without a disavowal from any,) to be perpetrated as an example to all kings and a precedent for all subjects to follow. All these, and not the Scheldt alone, or the invasion of Holland, were urged by the minister, and by Mr. Windham, by myself, and by others who spoke in those debates, as causes for bringing France to a sense of her wrong in the war which she declared against us. Mr. Fox well knew that not one man argued for the necessity of a vigorous resistance to France, who did not state the war as being for the very existence of the social order here, and in every part of Europe,—who did not state his opinion that this war was not at all a foreign war of empire, but as much for our liberties, properties, laws, and religion, and even more so, than any we had ever been engaged in. This was the war which, according to Mr. Fox and Mr. Gurney, we were to abandon before the enemy had felt in the slightest degree the impression of our arms.

      29. Had Mr. Fox's disgraceful proposal been complied with, this kingdom would have been stained with a blot of perfidy hitherto without an example in our history, and with far less excuse than any act of perfidy which we find in the history of any other nation. The moment when, by the incredible exertions of Austria, (very little through ours,) the temporary deliverance of Holland (in effect our own deliverance) had been achieved, he advised the House instantly to abandon her to that very enemy from whose arms she had freed ourselves and the closest of our allies.

      30. But we are not to be imposed on by forms of language. We must act on the substance of things. To abandon Austria in this manner was to abandon Holland itself. For suppose France, encouraged and strengthened as she must have been by our treacherous desertion,—suppose France, I say, to succeed against Austria, (as she had succeeded the very year before,) England would, after its disarmament, have nothing in the world but the inviolable faith of Jacobinism and the steady politics of anarchy to depend upon, against France's renewing the very same attempts upon Holland, and renewing them (considering what Holland was and is) with much better prospects of success. Mr. Fox must have been well aware, that, if we were to break with the greater Continental powers, and particularly to come to a rupture with them, in the violent and intemperate mode in which he would have made the breach, the defence of Holland against a foreign enemy and a strong domestic faction must hereafter rest solely upon England, without the chance of a single ally, either on that or on any other occasion. So far as to the pretended sole object of the war, which Mr. Fox supposed to be so completely obtained (but which then was not at all, and at this day is not completely obtained) as to leave us nothing else to do than to cultivate a peaceful, quiet correspondence with those quiet, peaceable, and moderate people, the Jacobins of France.

      31. To induce us to this, Mr. Fox labored hard to make it appear that the powers with whom we acted were full as ambitious and as perfidious as the French. This might be true as to other nations. They had not, however, been so to us or to Holland. He produced no proof of active ambition and ill faith against Austria. But supposing the combined powers had been all thus faithless, and been all alike so, there was one circumstance which made an essential difference between them and France. I need not, therefore, be at the trouble of contesting this point,—which, however, in this latitude, and as at all affecting Great Britain and Holland, I deny utterly. Be it so. But the great monarchies have it in their power to keep their faith, if they please, because they are governments of established and recognized authority at home and abroad. France had, in reality, no government. The very factions who exercised power had no stability. The French Convention had no powers of peace or war. Supposing the Convention to be free, (most assuredly it was not,) they had shown no disposition to abandon their projects. Though long driven out of Liege, it was not many days before Mr. Fox's motion that they still continued to claim it as a country which their principles of fraternity bound them to protect,—that is, to subdue and to regulate at their pleasure. That party which Mr. Fox inclined most to favor and trust, and from which he must have received his assurances, (if any he did receive,) that is, the Brissotins, were then either prisoners or fugitives. The party which prevailed over them (that of Danton and Marat) was itself in a tottering condition, and was disowned by a very great part of France. To say nothing of the royal party, who were powerful and growing, and who had full as good a right to claim to be the legitimate government as any of the Parisian factions with whom he proposed to treat,—or rather, (as it seemed to me,) to surrender at discretion.

      32. But when Mr. Fox began to come from his general hopes of the moderation of the Jacobins to particulars, he put the case that they might not perhaps be willing to surrender Savoy. He certainly was not willing to contest that point with them, but plainly and explicitly (as I understood him) proposed to let them keep it,—though he knew (or he was much worse informed than he would be thought) that England had at the very time agreed on the terms of a treaty with the King of Sardinia, of which the recovery of Savoy was the casus fœderis. In the teeth of this treaty, Mr. Fox proposed a direct and most scandalous breach of our faith, formally and recently given. But to surrender Savoy was to surrender a great deal more than so many square acres of land or so much revenue. In its consequences, the surrender of Savoy was to make a surrender to France of Switzerland and Italy, of both which countries Savoy is the key,—as it is known to ordinary speculators in politics, though it may not be known to the weavers in Norwich, who, it seems, are by Mr. Fox called to be the judges in this matter.

      A sure way, indeed, to encourage France not to make a surrender of this key of Italy and Switzerland, or of Mentz, the key of Germany, or of any other object whatsoever which she holds, is to let her see that the people of England raise a clamor against the war before terms are so much as proposed on any side. From that moment the Jacobins would be masters of the terms. They would know that Parliament, at all hazards, would force the king to a separate peace. The crown could not, in that case, have any use of its judgment. Parliament could not possess more judgment than the crown, when besieged (as Mr. Fox proposed to Mr. Gurney) by the cries of the manufacturers. This description of men Mr. Fox endeavored in his speech by every method to irritate and inflame. In effect, his two speeches were, through the whole, nothing more than an amplification of the Norwich handbill. He rested the greatest part of his argument on the distress of trade, which he attributed to the war; though it was obvious to any tolerably good observation, and, much more, must have been clear to such an observation as his, that the then difficulties of the trade and manufacture could have no sort of connection with our share in it. The war had hardly begun. We had suffered neither by spoil, nor by defeat, nor by disgrace of any kind. Public credit was so little impaired, that, instead of being supported by any extraordinary aids from individuals, it advanced a credit to individuals to the amount of five millions for the support of trade and manufactures under their temporary difficulties, a thing before never heard of,—a thing of which I do not commend the policy, but only state it, to show that Mr. Fox's ideas of the effects of war were without any trace of foundation.

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