Volume V Part 14 (2/2)

FOOTNOTES:

[22] ”Mussabat tacito medicina timore.”

[23] Mr. Bird, sent to state the real situation of the Duc de Choiseul.

[24] Boissy d'Anglas.

[25] ”This Court has seen, with regret, how far the tone and spirit of that answer, the nature and extent of the demands which it contains, and the manner of announcing them, are remote from any disposition for peace.

”The inadmissible pretension is there avowed of appropriating to France all that the laws actually existing there may have comprised under the denomination of French territory. To a demand such as this is added an express declaration that no proposal contrary to it will be made or even listened to: and this, under the pretence of an internal regulation, the provisions of which are wholly foreign to all other nations.

”While these dispositions shall be persisted in, nothing is left for the king but to prosecute a war equally just and necessary.

”Whenever his enemies shall manifest more pacific sentiments, his Majesty will at all times be eager to concur in them, by lending himself, in concert with his allies, to all such measures as shall be best calculated to reestablish general tranquillity on conditions just, honorable, and permanent: either by the establishment of a congress, which has been so often and so happily the means of restoring peace to Europe; or by a preliminary discussion of the principles which may be proposed, on either side, as a foundation of a general pacification; or, lastly, by an impartial examination of any other way which may be pointed out to him for arriving at the same salutary end.

”_Downing Street, April 10th_, 1796.”

[26] _Official Note, extracted from the Journal of the Defenders of the Country_.

”EXECUTIVE DIRECTORY.

”Different journals have advanced that an English plenipotentiary had reached Paris, and had presented himself to the Executive Directory, but that, his propositions not having appeared satisfactory, he had received orders instantly to quit France.

”All these a.s.sertions are equally false.

”The notices given in the English papers of a minister having been sent to Paris, there to treat of peace, bring to recollection the overtures of Mr. Wickham to the amba.s.sador of the Republic at Basle, and the rumors circulated relative to the mission of Mr. Hammond to the Court of Prussia. The _insignificance_, or rather the _subtle duplicity_, the PUNIC _style_ of Mr. Wickham's note, is not forgotten. According to the partisans of the English ministry, it was to Paris that Mr.

Hammond was to come to speak for peace. When his destination became public, and it was known that he went to Prussia, the same writer repeated that it was to accelerate a peace, and not withstanding the object, now well known, of this negotiation was to engage Prussia to break her treaties with the Republic, and to return into the coalition. The Court of Berlin, faithful to its engagements, repulsed these _perfidious_ propositions. But in converting this intrigue into a mission for peace, the English ministry joined to the hope of giving a new enemy to France _that of justifying the continuance of the war in the eyes of the English nation, and of throwing all the odium of it on the French, government_. Such was also the aim of Mr.

Wickham's note. _Such is still, that of the notices given at this time in the English papers_.

This aim will appear evident, if we reflect how difficult it is that the ambitious government of England should sincerely wish for a, peace that would _s.n.a.t.c.h from it its maritime preponderancy, would reestablish the freedom of the seas, would give a new impulse to the Spanish, Dutch, and French marines_, and would carry to the highest degree of prosperity the industry and commerce of those nations in, which it has always found _rivals_, and which it has considered as _enemies_ of its commerce, when they were tired of being its _dupes_.

”_But there will no longer be any credit given to the pacific intentions of the English ministry when it is known that its gold and its intrigues, its open practices and its insinuations, besiege more than ever the Cabinet of Vienna, and are one of the princ.i.p.al obstacles to the negotiation which, that Cabinet would of itself be induced to enter on for peace_.

”They will no longer _be credited_, finally, when the moment of the rumor of these overtures being circulated is considered.

_The English nation supports impatiently the continuance of the war; a reply must be made to its complaints, its reproaches_: the Parliament is about to reopen, its sittings; the mouths of the orators who will declaim against the war must be shut, the demand of new taxes must be justified; and to obtain these results, it is necessary to be enabled to advance, that the French government refuses every reasonable proposition of peace.”

[27] ”In their place has succeeded a system destructive of all public order, maintained by proscriptions, exiles, and confiscations without number,--by arbitrary imprisonments,--by ma.s.sacres which cannot be remembered without horror,--and at length by the execrable murder of a just and beneficent sovereign, and of the ill.u.s.trious princess, who with, an unshaken firmness has shared all the misfortunes of her royal consort, his protracted sufferings, his cruel captivity, his ignominious death.”--”They [the Allies] have had to encounter acts of aggression without pretext, open violations of all treaties, unprovoked declarations of war,--in a word, whatever corruption, intrigue, or violence could effect, for the purpose, so openly avowed, of subverting all the inst.i.tutions of society, and of extending' over all the nations of Europe that confusion which has produced the misery of France. This state of things cannot exist in France, without involving all the surrounding powers in one common danger,--without giving them the right, without imposing it upon them as a duty, to stop the progress of an evil which exists only by the successive violation of all law and all property, and which attacks the Fundamental principles by which mankind is united in the bonds of civil society.”--”The king would propose none other than equitable and moderate conditions: not such as the expenses, the risks, and the sacrifices of the war might justify, but such as his Majesty thinks himself under the indispensable necessity of requiring, with a view to these considerations, and still more to that of his own security and of the future tranquillity of Europe. His Majesty desires nothing more sincerely than thus to terminate a war which he in vain endeavored to avoid, and all the calamities of which, as now experienced by France, are to be attributed only to the ambition, the perfidy, and the violence of those whose crimes have involved their own country in misery and disgraced all civilized nations.”--”The king promises on his part the suspension of hostilities, friends.h.i.+p, and (as far as the course of events will allow, of which the will of man cannot dispose) security and protection to all those who, by declaring for a monarchical government, shall shake off the yoke of a sanguinary anarchy: of that anarchy which, has broken all the most sacred bonds of society, dissolved all the relations of civil life, violated every right, confounded every duty; which uses the name of liberty to exercise the most cruel tyranny, to annihilate all property, to seize on all possessions; which founds its power on the pretended consent of the people, and itself carries fire and sword through extensive provinces for having demanded their laws, their religion, and their _lawful sovereign_.”

Declaration sent by his Majesty's command to the commanders of his Majesty's fleets and armies employed against France and to his Majesty's ministers employed at foreign courts. _Whitehall, Oct_. 29, 1793

[28] ”Ut lethargicus hic, c.u.m fit pugil, et medic.u.m urget.”--HOB.

[29] See the Declaration.

[30] See Declaration, Whitehall, October 29, 1793.

[31] Nothing could be more solemn than their promulgation of this principle, as a preamble to the destructive code of their famous articles for the decomposition of society, into whatever country they should enter. ”La Convention Nationale, apres avoir entendu le rapport de ses comites de finances, de la guerre, et diplomatiques reunis, fidele au _principe de souverainete de peuples, qui ne lui permet pas de reconnaitre aucune inst.i.tution qui y porte atteinte_” &c., &c.--_Decree sur le Rapport de Cambon, Dec. 18, 1702_. And see the subsequent proclamation.

[32] ”This state of things cannot exist in France, without involving all the surrounding powers in one common danger,--without giving them the right, without imposing it upon them as a duty, to stop the progress of an evil which ... attacks the fundamental principles by which mankind is united in the bonds of civil society.”--_Declaration 29th Oct., 1793_.

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