Transcriber's Notes:

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William Pitt, in later life. (From a painting by Hoppner in the National Portrait Gallery)

WILLIAM PITT
AND
THE GREAT WAR

BY

J. HOLLAND ROSE, Litt.D.

England and France have held in their hands the fate of the world, especially that of European civilization. How much harm we have done one another: how much good we might have done!—Napoleon to Colonel Wilks, 20th April 1816.

LONDON
G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
1911

CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.

PREFACE

In the former volume, entitled "William Pitt and National Revival," I sought to trace the career of Pitt the Younger up to the year 1791. Until then he was occupied almost entirely with attempts to repair the evils arising out of the old order of things. Retrenchment and Reform were his first watchwords; and though in the year 1785 he failed in his efforts to renovate the life of Parliament and to improve the fiscal relations with Ireland, yet his domestic policy in the main achieved a surprising success. Scarcely less eminent, though far less known, were his services in the sphere of diplomacy. In the year 1783, when he became First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, nearly half of the British Empire was torn away, and the remainder seemed to be at the mercy of the allied Houses of Bourbon. France, enjoying the alliance of Spain and Austria and the diplomatic wooings of Catharine II and Frederick the Great, gave the law to Europe.

By the year 1790 all had changed. In 1787 Pitt supported Frederick William II of Prussia in overthrowing French supremacy in the Dutch Netherlands; and a year later he framed with those two States an alliance which not only dictated terms to Austria at the Congress of Reichenbach but also compelled her to forego her far-reaching schemes on the lower Danube, and to restore the status quo in Central Europe and in her Belgian provinces. British policy triumphed over that of Spain in the Nootka Sound dispute of the year 1790, thereby securing for the Empire the coast of what is now British Columbia; it also saved Sweden from a position of acute danger; and Pitt cherished the hope of forming a league of the smaller States, including the Dutch Republic, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, and, if possible, Turkey, which, with support from Great Britain and Prussia, would withstand the almost revolutionary schemes of the Russian and Austrian Courts.

These larger aims were unattainable. The duplicity of the Court of Berlin, the triumphs of the Russian arms on the Danube, and changes in the general diplomatic situation, enabled Catharine II to foil the efforts of Pitt in 1791. She worked her will on the Turks and not long after on the Poles; Sweden came to an understanding with her; and Prussia, slighting the British alliance, drew near to the new Hapsburg Sovereign, Leopold II. In fact, the events of the French Revolution in the year 1791 served to focus attention more and more upon Paris; and monarchs who had thought of little but the conquest or partition of weaker States now talked of a crusade to restore order at Paris, with Gustavus III of Sweden as the new Cœur de Lion. This occidentation of diplomacy became pronounced at the time of the attempted escape of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to the eastern frontier at Midsummer 1791. Their capture at Varennes and their ignominious return to Paris are in several respects the central event of the French Revolution. The incident aroused both democrats and royalists to a fury which foredoomed to failure all attempts at compromise between the old order and the new. The fierceness of the strife in France incited monarchists in all lands to importunate demands for the extirpation of "the French plague"; and hence were set in motion forces which Pitt vainly strove to curb. War soon broke out in Central Europe. His endeavours to localize it were fruitless; and thenceforth his chief task was to bring to an honourable close a conflict which he had not sought. It is therefore fitting that this study of the latter, less felicitous, but equally glorious part of his career should begin with a survey of the situation in Great Britain and on the Continent at the time of the incident at Varennes which opened a new chapter in the history of Europe.

In the present volume I have sought to narrate faithfully and as fully as is possible the story of the dispute with France, the chief episodes of the war, and the varied influences which it exerted upon political developments in these islands, including the early Radical movement, the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and other events which brought about the Union of the British and Irish Parliaments, the break up of the great national party at Westminster in 1801, and the collapse of the strength of Pitt early in the course of the struggle with the concentrated might of Napoleon.

That mighty drama dwarfs the actors. Even the French Emperor could not sustain the rôle which he aspired to play, and, failing to discern the signs of the times, was whirled aside by the forces which he claimed to control. Is it surprising that Pitt, more slightly endowed by nature, and beset by the many limitations which hampered the advisers of George III, should have sunk beneath burdens such as no other English statesman has been called upon to bear? The success or failure of such a career is, however, to be measured by the final success or failure of his policy; and in this respect, as I have shown, the victor in the Great War was not Napoleon but Pitt.

To that high enterprise he consecrated all the powers of his being. His public life is everything; his private life, unfortunately, counts for little. The materials for reconstructing it are meagre. I have been able here and there to throw new light on his friendships, difficulties, trials, and, in particular, on the love episode of the year 1797. But in the main the story of the life of Pitt must soar high above the club and the salon to

... the toppling heights of Duty scaled.

Again I must express my hearty thanks to those who have generously placed at my disposal new materials of great value, especially to His Grace the Duke of Portland, the Earl of Harrowby, Earl Stanhope, E. G. Pretyman, Esq., M.P., and A. M. Broadley, Esq.; also to the Rev. William Hunt, D.Litt., and Colonel E. M. Lloyd, late R.E., for valuable advice tendered during the correction of the proofs, and to Mr. Hubert Hall of H.M. Public Record Office for assistance during my researches there. I am also indebted to Lord Auckland and to Messrs. Longmans for permission to reproduce the miniature of the Hon. Miss Eden which appeared in Lord Ashbourne's "Pitt, Some Chapters of his Life and Times," and to Mr. and Mrs. Doulton for permission to my daughter to make the sketch of Bowling Green House, the last residence of Pitt, which is reproduced near the end of this volume. In the preface to the former volume I expressed my acknowledgements to recent works bearing on this subject; and I need only add that numerous new letters of George III, Pitt, Grenville, Burke, Canning, etc., which could only be referred to here, will be published in a work entitled "Pitt and Napoleon Miscellanies," including also essays and notes.

J. H. R.

March 1911.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[William Pitt, in later life. (From a painting by Hoppner in the National Portrait Gallery)]

[Seat of war in Flanders.]

[The Siege of Toulon. (By Emmanuel Toulougeon, Paris)]

[The House of Commons in 1793. (From a painting in the National Portrait Gallery by K. A. Hickel)]

[The Hon. Eleanor Eden. (From a miniature)]

[Henry Dundas, First Viscount Melville. (From a painting by Sir T. Lawrence)]

[Bowling Green House, Putney Heath. (From a pencil sketch by Elsie H. Rose)]

ERRATA

Page [180],ad fin., for "Hamilton, Rowan" read "Hamilton Rowan."

Page [311], line 1, for "formerly" read "brother of."

Page [311], line 2, for "Lord Hood" read "Sir Alexander Hood."

Page [551], line 11 from end, for "6th" read "4th."

ABBREVIATIONS OF THE TITLES OF THE CHIEF WORKS REFERRED TO IN THIS VOLUME

WILLIAM PITT AND THE GREAT WAR

CHAPTER I

ROYALISTS AND RADICALS[1]

Détruire l'anarchie française, c'est se préparer une gloire immortelle.—Catharine II, 1791.

The pretended Rights of Man, which have made this havoc, cannot be the rights of the people. For to be a people and to have these rights are incompatible. The one supposes the presence, the other the absence, of a state of civil society.—Burke, Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.

A constitution is the property of a nation and not of those who exercise the Government.—T. Paine, Rights of Man, part ii.

In the midst of a maze of events there may sometimes be found one which serves as a clue, revealing hidden paths, connecting ways which seem far apart, and leading to a clear issue. Such was the attempted flight of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to the eastern frontier of France at midsummer 1791, which may be termed the central event of the French Revolution, at least in its first phases. The aim of joining the armed bands of émigrés and the forces held in readiness by Austria was so obvious as to dispel the myth of "a patriot King" misled for a time by evil counsellors. True, the moderates, from sheer alarm, still sought to save the monarchy, and for a time with surprising success. But bolder men, possessed both of insight and humour, perceived the futility of all such efforts to hold down on the throne the father of his people lest he should again run away. In this perception the young Republican party found its genesis and its inspiration. In truth, the attempted flight of the King was a death-blow to the moderate party, into which the lamented leader, Mirabeau, had sought to infuse some of his masterful energy. Thenceforth, the future belonged either to the Jacobins or to the out and out royalists.

These last saw the horizon brighten in the East. Louis XVI being under constraint in Paris, their leaders were the French Princes, the Comte de Provence (afterwards Louis XVIII) and the Comte d'Artois (Charles X). Around them at Coblentz there clustered angry swarms of French nobles, gentlemen, and orthodox priests, whose zeal was reckoned by the earliness of the date at which they had "emigrated." For many months the agents of these émigrés had vainly urged the Chanceries of the Continent to a royalist crusade against the French rebels; and it seemed appropriate that Gustavus III of Sweden should be their only convert. Now of a sudden their demands appeared, instinct with statecraft; and courtiers everywhere exclaimed that "the French pest" must be stamped out. In that thought lay in germ a quarter of a century of war.

Already the Prussian and Austrian Governments had vaguely discussed the need of a joint intervention in France. In fact this subject formed one of the pretexts for the missions of the Prussian envoy, Bischoffswerder, to the Emperor Leopold in February and June 1791.[2] As was shown at the close of the former volume, "William Pitt and National Revival," neither Court took the matter seriously, the Eastern Question being then their chief concern. But the flight to Varennes, which Leopold had helped to arrange, imposed on him the duty of avenging the ensuing insults to his sister. He prepared to do so with a degree of caution highly characteristic of him. He refused to move until he knew the disposition of the Powers, especially of England. From Padua, where the news of the capture of Louis at Varennes reached him, he wrote an autograph letter to George III, dated 6th July, urging him to join in a general demand for the liberation of the King and Queen of France. He also invited the monarchs of Europe to launch a Declaration, that they regarded the cause of Louis as their own, and in the last resort to put down a usurpation of power which it behoved all Governments to repress.[3]

The reply of George, dated St. James's, 23rd July, bears the imprint of the cool and cautious personality of Pitt and Grenville, who in this matter may be counted as one. The King avowed his sympathy with the French Royal Family and his interest in the present proposals, but declared that his attitude must depend on his relations to other Powers. He therefore cherished the hope that the Emperor would consult the welfare of the whole of Europe by aiding in the work of pacification between Austria and Turkey now proceeding at Sistova. So soon as those negotiations were completed, he would instruct his Ministers to consider the best means of cementing a union between the Allies and the Emperor.[4]

Leopold must have gnashed his teeth on reading this reply, which beat him at his own game of finesse. He had used the difficulties of England as a means of escaping from the pledges plighted at the Conference of Reichenbach in July 1790. Pitt and Grenville retorted by ironically refusing all help until he fulfilled those pledges. As we have seen, they succeeded; and the pacification in the East, as also in Belgium, was the result.

Equally chilling was the conduct of Pitt towards the émigrés. The French Princes at Coblentz had sent over the former French Minister, Calonne, "to solicit from His Majesty an assurance of his neutrality in the event ... of an attempt being made by the Emperor and other Powers in support of the royal party in France." Pitt and Grenville refused to receive Calonne, and sent to the Comte d'Artois a letter expressing sympathy with the situation of the King and Queen of France, but declining to give any promise as to the line of conduct which the British Government might pursue.[5]

No less vague were the terms in which George III replied to a letter of the King of Sweden. Gustavus had for some little time been at Aix-la-Chapelle in the hope of leading a royalist crusade into France as a sequel to the expected escape of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. As readers of Carlyle will remember, the Swedish noble, Count Fersen, chivalrously helped their flight towards Metz; and deep was the chagrin of Gustavus and his squire on hearing the news from Varennes. They longed to strike at once. But how could they strike while Leopold, Catharine, and Frederick William declared that everything must depend on the action of England? The following significant sentence in Fersen's diary shows the feeling prevalent at Brussels, as elsewhere, respecting England: "We must know if that Power regards the continuation of anarchy in France as more advantageous than order."[6] Fersen had imbibed this notion at Brussels from Count Mercy d'Argenteau, the Austrian Minister, whose letters often harp on this string. Thus on 7th March 1791 he writes: "The worst obstacles for the King of France will always come from England, which wishes to prolong the horrors in France and ruin her." A little later he avers that the only way to save the French monarchy is by a civil war, "and England (unless won over) will support the popular party."[7]

In order to win Pitt over to the cause of neutrality from which he never intended to swerve, Gustavus and Fersen persuaded an Englishman named Crawford to proceed to London with letters for George III and Pitt, dated 22nd July.[8] To the King he described the danger to all Governments which must ensue if the French revolted with impunity. He therefore begged to know speedily whether His Majesty would accord full liberty "to the Princes of Germany and to those, who, owing to the long distance, can only arrive by sea."[9] Evidently, then, Gustavus feared lest England might stop the fleet in which he intended to convey Swedish and Russian troops to the coast of Normandy for a dash at Paris. The answer of George soothed these fears, and that of Pitt, dated August 1791, was a model of courtly complaisance.

Compared with the shrewd balancings of the Emperor Leopold and the cold neutrality of Pitt, the policy of Frederick William II of Prussia seemed for a time to be instinct with generosity. Despite the fears of his counsellors that a rapprochement to Austria would involve Prussia in the ruin which the friendship of the Hapsburgs had brought on France, the King turned eagerly towards Vienna; and on 25th July Kaunitz and Bischoffswerder signed a preliminary treaty of alliance mutually guaranteeing their territories, and agreeing to further the aims of the Emperor respecting France. Frederick William was on fire for the royalist crusade. He even assured Baron Rolle, the agent of the French princes, that something would be done in that season.[10] Pitt and Grenville disapproved the action of Prussia in signing this compact, impairing as it did the validity of the Anglo-Prussian alliance of the year 1788; but Frederick William peevishly asserted his right to make what treaties he thought good, and remarked that he was now quits with England for the bad turns she had played him.[11] On their side, the British Ministers, by way of marking their disapproval of the warlike counsels of Berlin and Vienna, decided not to send an envoy to Pilnitz, the summer abode of the Elector of Saxony, where a conference was arranged between Leopold and Frederick William.

As is well known, the Comte d'Artois and Calonne now cherished lofty hopes of decisive action by all the monarchs against the French rebels. But Leopold, with his usual caution, repelled alike the solicitations of Artois and the warlike counsels of Frederick William, the result of their deliberations being the famous Declaration of Pilnitz (27th August). In it they expressed the hope that all the sovereigns of Europe

will not refuse to employ, in conjunction with their said Majesties, the most efficient means in proportion to their resources, to place the King of France in a position to establish with the most absolute freedom, the foundations of a monarchical form of government, which shall at once be in harmony with the rights of sovereigns and promote the welfare of the French nation. In that case [alors et dans ce cas] their said Majesties, the Emperor and the King of Prussia, are resolved to act promptly and in common accord with the forces necessary to attain the desired common end.

Obviously, the gist of the whole Declaration lay in the words alors et dans ce cas. If they be emphasized, they destroy the force of the document; for a union of all the monarchs was an impossibility, it being well known that England would not, and Sardinia, and Naples (probably also Spain) could not, take up arms. In fact, on that very evening Leopold wrote to Kaunitz that he had not in the least committed himself.—"Alors et dans ce cas is with me the law and the prophets. If England fails us, the case is non-existent." Further, when the Comte d'Artois, two days later, urged the Emperor to give effect to the Declaration by ordering his troops to march westwards, he sent a sharp retort, asserted that he would not go beyond the Declaration, and forbade the French Princes to do so.[12]

To the good sense and insight of Grenville and Pitt, the Pilnitz Declaration was one of the comédies augustes of history, as Mallet du Pan termed it. Grenville saw that Leopold would stay his hand until England chose to act, meanwhile alleging her neutrality as an excuse for doing nothing.[13] Thus, the resolve of Catharine to give nothing but fair words being already surmised, the émigrés found to their annoyance that Pitt's passivity clogged their efforts—the chief reason why they shrilly upbraided him for his insular egotism. Certainly his attitude was far from romantic; but surely, after the sharp lesson which he had received from the House of Commons in the spring of 1791 during the dispute with Russia, caution was needful; and he probably discerned a truth hidden from the émigrés, that an invasion of France for the rescue of the King and Queen would seal their doom and increase the welter in that unhappy land.

Pitt and Grenville spent the middle of September at Weymouth in attendance on George III; and we can imagine their satisfaction at the prospect of universal peace and prosperity. Pitt consoled himself for the not very creditable end to the Russian negotiation by reflecting that our revenue was steadily rising. "We are already £178,000 gainers in this quarter," he wrote to George Rose on 10th August.[14] In fact, the cyclonic disturbances of the past few years now gave place to a lull. The Russo-Turkish War had virtually ended; Catharine and Gustavus were on friendly terms; the ferment in the Hapsburg dominions had died down, except in Brabant; the Poles were working their new constitution well; and, but for Jacobin propaganda in Italy and the Rhineland, the outlook was serene.

At this time, too, there seemed a chance of a reconciliation between Louis XVI and his people. On 14th September he accepted the new democratic constitution, a step which filled France with rejoicing and furnished the desired excuse for Leopold to remain passive. Kaunitz, who had consistently opposed intervention in France, now asserted that Louis had voluntarily accepted the constitution. The action of Louis and Marie Antoinette was in reality forced. Amidst the Queen's expressions of contempt for the French Princes at Coblentz, the suppressed fire of her fury against her captors flashes forth in this sentence written to Mercy d'Argenteau (28th August)—"The only question for us is to lull them to sleep and inspire them with confidence so as to trick them the better afterwards."—And again (12th September)—"My God! Must I, with this blood in my veins, pass my days among such beings as these, and in such an age as this?" Leopold must have known her real feelings; but he chose to abide by the official language of Louis, and to advise the Powers to accept the new situation.[15]

This peaceful turn of affairs sorely troubled the French Princes and Burke. In August and September 1791 his son Richard was at Coblentz, and informed his father of the consternation of the émigrés on hearing that the Emperor declined to draw the sword. Burke himself was equally agitated, and on or about 24th September had a long interview with Pitt and Grenville, at the house of the latter. We gather from Burke's "Letters on the Conduct of our Domestic Parties," that it was the first time he had met Pitt in private; and the meeting must have been somewhat awkward. After dining, with Grenville as host, the three men conferred together till eleven o'clock, discussing the whole situation "very calmly" (says Burke); but we can fancy the tumult of feelings in the breast of the old man when he found both Ministers firm as adamant against intervention in France. "They are certainly right as to their general inclinations," he wrote to his son, "perfectly so, I have not a shadow of doubt; but at the same time they are cold and dead as to any attempt whatsoever to give them effect." The heat of the Irish royalist failed to kindle a spark of feeling in the two cousins. He found that their "deadness" proceeded from a rooted distrust of the Emperor Leopold, and from a conviction that Britain had nothing to fear from Jacobinical propaganda. Above all they believed that the present was not the time for action, especially as the imminence of bankruptcy in France would discredit the new Legislative Assembly, and render an invasion easier in the near future.

Are we to infer from this that Pitt and his cousin looked forward to a time when the monarchs could invade France with safety? Such an inference would be rash. It is more probable that they here found an excuse for postponing their decision and a means of calming an insistent visitor. Certainly they impressed Burke with a belief in their sincere but secret sympathy with the royalist cause. The three men also agreed in suspecting Leopold, though Burke tried to prove that his treachery was not premeditated, but sprang from "some complexional inconstancy." Pitt and Grenville, knowing the doggedness with which the Emperor pushed towards his goal, amidst many a shift and turn, evidently were not convinced.

At this time they had special reasons for distrusting Leopold and his advisers. The Austrian Government had received a letter, dated Dresden, 27th August (the day of the Declaration of Pilnitz), stating that England promised to remain neutral only on condition that the Emperor would not withdraw any troops from his Belgic lands, as they were needed to uphold the arrangements of which she was a guarantee. This extraordinary statement grew out of a remark of Grenville to the Austrian Ambassador in London, that, in view of the unrest in the Netherlands, it might be well not to leave them without troops.[16] The mis-statement was not only accepted at Vienna, but was forwarded to various Courts, the final version being that England might attack Austria if she withdrew her troops from Flanders, and that therefore Leopold could not draw the sword against France until his army on the Turkish borders arrived in Swabia. Some were found who believed this odd farrago; but those who watched the calculating balance of Hapsburg policy saw in it one more excuse for a masterly inactivity.

Still less were our Ministers inclined to unite with Catharine in the universal royalist league then under discussion at St. Petersburg. The Czarina having charged her ambassador, Vorontzoff, to find out the sentiments of Pitt and Grenville on this subject, he replied that England would persevere in the strict neutrality which she had all along observed, "and that, with respect to the measures of active intervention which other Powers might have in contemplation, it was His Majesty's determination not to take any part either in supporting or in opposing them." Now Russia, like Austria and Spain, had decided not to act unless England joined the concert;[17] and this waiting on the action of a Power which had already declared its resolve to do nothing enables us to test the sincerity of the continental monarchs. As for the Czarina, her royalist fervour expended itself in deposing the busts of democrats, in ordering the French Minister to remain away from Court, and in condemning any Russian who had dealings with him to be publicly flogged. Moreover, while thus drilling her own subjects, the quondam friend of Diderot kept her eyes fixed upon Warsaw. The shrewdest diplomatist of the age had already divined her aims, which he thus trenchantly summed up: "The Empress only waits to see Austria and Prussia committed in France, to overturn everything in Poland."[18] Kaunitz lived on to see his cynical prophecy fulfilled to the letter.

The reader will have noticed with some surprise the statement of Burke that Pitt and Grenville had not the slightest fear of the spread of French principles in England. As we know, Burke vehemently maintained the contrary, averring that the French plague, unless crushed at Paris, would infect the world. In his survey of the European States he admitted that we were less liable to infection than Germany, Holland, and Italy, owing to the excellence of our constitution; but he feared that our nearness to France, and our zeal for liberty, would expose us to some danger. Why he should have cherished these fears is hard to say; for to him the French Revolution was "a wild attempt to methodize anarchy," "a foul, impious, monstrous thing, wholly out of the course of moral nature."[19] Surely if British and French principles were so utterly different, we were in no more danger of infection from the Jacobins than of catching swine fever.

This was virtually the view of Pitt and Grenville; for there were no premonitory symptoms of infection, but much the reverse. Londoners showed the utmost joy at the first news of the escape of the King and Queen from Paris, and were equally depressed by the news from Varennes. As we shall presently see, it was with shouts of "Long live the King," "Church and State," "Down with the Dissenters," "No Olivers," "Down with the Rump," "No false Rights of Man," that the rabble of Birmingham wrecked and burnt the houses of Dr. Priestley and other prominent Nonconformists of that town. Only by slow degrees did this loyal enthusiasm give place to opinions which in course of time came to be called Radical. It may be well to trace briefly the fluctuations of public opinion, to which the career of Pitt stands in vital relation.

The growth of discontent in Great Britain may be ascribed to definite evils in the body politic, and it seems to have arisen only secondarily from French propaganda. The first question which kindled the fire of resentment was that of the civic and political disabilities still imposed on Nonconformists by the Corporation and Test Acts of the reign of Charles II. Pitt's decision in the session of 1787 to uphold those Acts ensured the rejection of Beaufoy's motion for their repeal of 176 votes to 98; but undeterred by his defeat, Beaufoy brought the matter before the House on 8th May 1789, and, despite the opposition of Pitt, secured 102 votes against 122. The Prime Minister's chief argument was that if Dissenters were admitted to civic rights they might use their power to overthrow the Church Establishment.[20] Clearly the opinion of the House was drifting away from him on that question; and it is a proof of his growing indifference to questions of Reform that now, four days after the assembly of the States-General of France at Versailles, he should have held to views so repugnant to the spirit of the age.

Thenceforth that question could not be debated solely on its own merits. The attacks made by the French National Assembly on the Church of France, particularly the confiscation of its tithes and landed property, soon aroused heated feelings in this country, though on a subject of a wholly different kind. The result was that, while Dissenters peacefully agitated for permission to act as citizens, they were represented as endeavouring to despoil the Church, after the fashion of Talleyrand and Mirabeau. A work by a Manchester merchant, Thomas Walker, reveals the influence of this question on the political activities of the time. The Nonconformists of that town and county hoped to gain a majority in next session or in the following Parliament, while the High Churchmen, to the cry of "The Church in Danger," declared the two Acts of Charles II to be the bulwarks of the constitution.[21] This cry was everywhere taken up, with the result that in the Parliament elected in 1790 the Tories gained ground. Consequently, even the able advocacy of Fox on behalf of religious liberty failed to save Beaufoy's motion from a crushing defeat. Pitt spoke against the proposal and carried the House with him by 294 votes to 105. This vote illustrates the baleful influence exerted by the French Revolution on the cause of Reform in these islands.

A second example soon occurred. Only three days later Flood brought forward a motion for Parliamentary Reform which the wildest of alarmists could not call revolutionary. He proposed to add to the House of Commons one hundred members, elected by the resident householders of the counties, those areas being far less corrupt than the towns; and he suggested that, if the total number of members were deemed excessive, fifty seats in the smallest boroughs might be declared vacant. This proposal differed but little from that of Pitt in the session of 1785, which aimed at disfranchising thirty-six decayed boroughs and apportioning their seventy-two members to the larger counties, as also to London and Westminster. In a speech which might have been made by Pitt in pre-Revolution times Flood declared that the events in France showed the need of a timely repair of outworn institutions.

This was as a red rag to Windham, a prominent recruit from the Whigs, who now used all the artifices of rhetoric to terrify his hearers. He besought them in turn not to repair their house in the hurricane season, not to imitate the valetudinarian of the "Spectator," who read medical books until he discovered he had every symptom of the gout except the pain. These fallacious similes captivated the squires; and Pitt himself complimented the orator on his ingenious arguments. For himself, he declared his desire of Reform to be as zealous as ever; but he "could see no utility in any gentleman's bringing forward such a motion as the present at that moment," and feared that the cause might thereby suffer disgrace and lose ground. Fox, on the other hand, ridiculed all thought of panic on account of the French Revolution, but he admitted that the majority both in Parliament and the nation did not want Reform. Grenville, Wilberforce, and Burke opposed the motion, while even Duncombe declined to vote for it at present. It was accordingly adjourned sine die.[22]

Disappointment at the course of these debates served to band Nonconformists and reformers in a close alliance. Hitherto they had alike supported Pitt and the royal prerogative, especially at the time of the Regency struggle. In May 1789, when Pitt opposed the Nonconformist claims, Dr. Priestley wrote that Fox would regain his popularity with Dissenters, while Pitt would lose ground.[23] Now, when the doors of the franchise and of civic privilege were fast barred, resentment and indignation began to arouse the groups of the unprivileged left outside. The news that Frenchmen had framed a Departmental System, in which all privileges had vanished, and all men were citizens, with equal rights in the making of laws and local regulations, worked potently in England, furthering the growth of an institution little known in this country, the political club. As the Jacobins had adapted the English idea of a club to political uses, so now the early Radicals re-adapted it to English needs. "The Manchester Constitutional Society"[24] was founded by Walker and others in October 1790, in order to oppose a "Church and King Club," which High Churchmen had started in March, after the news of the triumph of their principles in Parliament. The Manchester reformers struck the key-note of the coming age by asserting in their programme that in every community the authority of the governors must be derived from the consent of the governed, and that the welfare of the people was the true aim of Government. They further declared that honours and rewards were due only for services rendered to the State; that all officials, without exception, were responsible to the people; that "actions only, not opinions, are the proper objects of civil jurisdictions"; that no law is fairly made except by a majority of the people; and that the people of Great Britain were not fully and fairly represented in Parliament.[25]

The Church and King Club, on the contrary, reprobated all change in "one of the most beautiful systems of government that the combined efforts of human wisdom has [sic] ever yet been able to accomplish." The issue between the two parties was thus sharply outlined. The Tories of Manchester gloried in a state of things which shut out about half of their fellow-citizens from civic rights and their whole community from any direct share in the making of laws. In their eyes the Church and the monarchy were in danger if Nonconformists became citizens, and if a score of Cornish villages yielded up their legislative powers to Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, and other hives of industry.

Scotland also began to awake. The torpor of that keen and intellectual people, under a system of misrepresentation which assigned to them forty-five members and forty-four to Cornwall, is incomprehensible, unless we may ascribe it to the waning of all enthusiasm after the "forty-five" and to the supremacy of material interests so characteristic of the age. In any case, this political apathy was now to end; and here, too, as in the case of England, Government applied the spur.

On 10th May 1791 Sir Gilbert Elliot (afterwards Earl of Minto) brought forward a motion in Parliament for the repeal of the Test Act, so far as it concerned Scotland. He voiced a petition of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and declared that the Presbyterians felt the grievance of being excluded from civic offices unless they perverted. On wider grounds also he appealed against this petty form of persecution, which might make men hypocrites but never sincere converts. Henry Dundas and his nephew, Robert Dundas (Lord Advocate for Scotland), opposed the motion, mainly because it would infringe the terms of the Act of Union; but Henry added the curious argument that, if Scottish Presbyterians were relieved from the Test Act, then the English Dissenters would have been "unjustly, harshly, and cruelly used." Pitt avowed himself "not a violent friend, but a firm and steady friend" of the Test Act, as being essential to the security of the Church and therefore of the civil establishment of the country. Accordingly, Elliot's motion was defeated by 149 votes to 62.[26] It is curious that, a month earlier, the House had agreed to a Bill granting slightly wider toleration to "Catholic Dissenters."[27]

While Pitt was thus strengthening the old buttresses of Church and State, the son of a Quaker had subjected the whole fabric to a battery of violent rhetoric. It is scarcely too much to call Thomas Paine the Rousseau of English democracy. For, if his arguments lacked the novelty of those of the Genevese thinker (and even they were far from original), they equalled them in effectiveness, and excelled them in practicability. "The Rights of Man" (Part I) may be termed an insular version of the "Contrat Social," with this difference, that the English writer pointed the way to changes which were far from visionary, while the Genevese seer outlined a polity fit only for a Swiss canton peopled by philosophers. Paine had had the advantage of close contact with men and affairs in both hemispheres. Not even Cobbett, his literary successor, passed through more varied experiences. Born in 1737 at Thetford in Norfolk, Paine divided his early life between stay-making, excise work, the vending of tobacco, and a seafaring life. His keen eyes, lofty brow, prominent nose, proclaimed him a thinker and fighter, and therefore, in that age, a rebel. What more natural than that he, a foe to authority and hater of oppression, should go to America to help on the cause of Washington? There at last he discovered his true vocation. His broadsides struck home. "Rebellious staymaker, unkempt," says Carlyle, "who feels that he, a single needleman, did by his 'Common Sense' pamphlet, free America; that he can, and will free all this world; perhaps even the other." Tom Paine, indeed, had the rare gift of voicing tersely and stridently the dumb desires of the masses. Further, a sojourn in France before and during the early part of the Revolution enabled him to frame a crushing retort to Burke's "Reflections." The result was Part I of the "Rights of Man," which he flung off at the "Angel" in Islington in February 1791.[28]

The general aims of the pamphlet are now as little open to question as the famous Declaration which he sought to vindicate. Paine trenchantly attacked Burke's claim that no people, not even our own, had an inherent right to choose its own ruler, and that the Revolution Settlement of 1688 was binding for ever. Paine, on the contrary, asserted that "every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the ages and generations that preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies." Further, on the general question at issue, Paine remarked: "That men should take up arms, and spend their lives and fortunes, not to maintain their rights, but to maintain they have not rights, is an entirely new species of discovery and suited to the paradoxical genius of Mr. Burke." In reply to the noble passage: "The age of chivalry is gone ...," Paine shrewdly says: "In the rhapsody of his imagination he has discovered a world of windmills, and his sorrows are that there are no Quixotes to attack them."

After thus exposing the weak points of the royalist case, Paine proceeded to defend the mob, firstly, because the aristocratic plots against the French Revolution were really formidable (a very disputable thesis), and secondly, because the mob in all old countries is the outcome of their unfair and brutal system of government. "It is by distortedly exalting some men," he says, "that others are distortedly debased, till the whole is out of nature. A vast mass of mankind are degradedly thrown into the background of the human picture, to bring forward with greater glare the puppet show of State and aristocracy." Here was obviously the Junius of democracy, for whom the only effective answer was the gag and gyve. Indeed, Burke in his "Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs" suggested that the proper refutation was by means of "criminal justice."[29]

Pitt's opinions at this time on French and English democracy tend towards a moderate and reforming royalism—witness his comment on Burke's "Reflections," that the writer would have done well to extol the English constitution rather than to attack the French.[30] In this remark we may detect his preference for construction over destruction, for the allaying, rather than the exciting, of passion. Nevertheless the one-sidedness of the English constitution made for unrest. So soon as one bold voice clearly contrasted those defects with the inspiring precepts of the French Rights of Man, there was an end to political apathy. A proof of this was furnished by the number of replies called forth by Burke's "Reflections." They numbered thirty-eight.[31] Apart from that of Paine, the "Vindiciae Gallicae" of Sir James Mackintosh made the most impression, especially the last chapter, wherein he declared that the conspiracy of the monarchs to crush the liberties of France would recoil on their own heads.

Fear of the alleged royalist league quickened the sympathy of Britons with the French reformers; while the sympathy of friends of order with Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette after the Varennes incident deepened their apprehension of all change. Thus were called into play all the feelings which most deeply move mankind—love of our richly storied past and its embodiment, the English constitution; while on the other hand no small part of our people harboured resentment against the narrow franchise and class legislation at home, and felt a growing fear that the nascent freedom of Frenchmen might expire under the heel of the military Powers of Central Europe. Accordingly clubs and societies grew apace, and many of them helped on the circulation of cheap editions of Paine's pamphlet.

The result of this clash of opinion was seen in the added keenness of party strife and in the disturbances of 14th July 1791. The occasion of these last was the celebration by a subscription dinner of the second anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. Both at Manchester and Birmingham the announcement of this insular and inoffensive function aroused strong feelings either of envy or of opposition. The Tories of Manchester resolved that, if the local Constitutional Club chose to dine on that day it should be at their peril. The populace was urged to pull down the hotel on their heads, "as the brains of every man who dined there would be much improved by being mingled with bricks and mortar." Thomas Walker's control of the local constables sufficed to thwart this pleasantry.

But on that day the forces of reaction broke loose at Birmingham. In the Midland capital political feeling ran as high as at Manchester. The best known of the reformers was Dr. Priestley, a Unitarian minister, whose researches in physical science had gained him a world-wide reputation and a fellowship in the Royal Society. He and many other reformers proposed to feast in public in honour of the French national festival. Unfortunately, the annoyance of the loyalists at this proposal was inflamed by a recent sermon of Priestley on the death of Dr. Price and by the circulation of a seditious handbill. Dr. Keir, a Churchman who was to preside at the dinner, did not prove to the satisfaction of all that this was a trick of the enemy. Public opinion was also excited by the discovery of the words "This barn to let" chalked on some of the churches of the town; and charges were bandied to and fro that this was the work of the Dissenters, or of the most virulent of their opponents.

What is certain is that these hors d'œuvres endangered the rest of the menu. The dinner-committee, however, struggled manfully with their difficulties. They had a Churchman in the chair, and Priestley was not present. The loyalty of the diners also received due scenic warrant in the work of a local artist. The dining-hall of the hotel was "decorated with three emblematical pieces of sculpture, mixed with painting in a new style of composition. The central was a finely executed medallion of His Majesty, surrounded with a Glory, on each side of which was an alabaster obelisk, one exhibiting Gallic Liberty breaking the bonds of Despotism, and the other representing British Liberty in its present enjoyment." The terms in which the fourteen toasts were proposed breathed of the same flamboyant loyalty, the only one open to criticism being the following: "The Prince of Wales! May he have the wisdom to prefer the glory of being the chief of an entire [sic] free people to that of being only the splendid fountain of corruption."[32]

The dinner passed with only occasional rounds of hissing from the loyalists outside. But, as the evening wore on and the speeches inside still continued, the crowd became restive. Stone-throwing began and was not discouraged by the two magistrates, the Rev. Dr. Spencer and John Carles, who had now arrived. In fact, the clergyman with an oath praised a lad who said that Priestley ought to be ducked; Carles also promised the rabble drink; and when a local humourist asked for permission to knock the dust out of Priestley's wig, the champions of order burst out laughing. A witness at the trial averred that he saw an attorney, John Brook, go among the mob and point towards Priestley's chapel. However that may be, the rabble moved off thither and speedily wrecked it. His residence at Fair Hill was next demolished, his library and scientific instruments being burnt or smashed. This was but the prelude to organized attacks on the houses of the leading Nonconformists, whether they had been at the dinner or not. The resulting riots soon involved in ruin a large part of the town. Prominent Churchmen who sought to end these disgraceful scenes suffered both in person and property. A word of remonstrance sufficed to turn into new channels the tide of hatred and greed; for, as happened in the Gordon riots of 1780, rascality speedily rushed in to seize the spoils.

The usually dull archives of the Home Office yield proof of the terror that reigned in the Midland capital. A Mr. Garbett wrote to Dundas on 17th July that the wrecking still went on, that the Nonconformists were in the utmost dread and misery, and all people looked for help from outside to stay the pillage. As for himself, though he was not a "marked man," his hand trembled at the scenes he had witnessed. There can be little doubt that the magistrates from the first acted with culpable weakness, as Whitbread proved in the House of Commons, for they did not enrol special constables until the rioters had got the upper hand. Dundas, as Home Secretary, seems to have done his duty. The news of the riot of the 14th reached him at 10 a.m. on the 15th (Friday); and he at once sent post haste to Nottingham, ordering the immediate despatch of the 15th Dragoons. By dint of a forced march of fifty-six miles the horsemen reached Birmingham on the evening of that same day (Sunday); but two days more elapsed before drunken blackmailers ceased to molest Hagley, Halesowen, and other villages. Few persons lost their lives, except about a dozen of the pillagers who lay helpless with drink in the cellars of houses which their more zealous comrades had given over to the flames.[33]

The verdict of Grenville was as follows: "I do not admire riots in favour of Government much more than riots against it." That of his less cautious brother, the Marquis of Buckingham, is as follows: "I am not sorry for this excess, excessive as it has been." That of Pitt is not recorded. He did not speak during the debate on this subject on 21st May 1792; but the rejection of Whitbread's motion for an inquiry by 189 votes to 46 implies unanimity on the Ministerial side.[34]

In the winter of 1791–2 various incidents occurred which further excited public opinion. On 17th February 1792 appeared the second part of Paine's "Rights of Man." He started from the assumption that the birth of a democratic State in America would herald the advent of Revolutions not only in France, but in all lands; and that British and Hessians would live to bless the day when they were defeated by the soldiers of Washington. He then proceeded to arraign all Governments of the old type, and asserted that constitutions ought to be the natural outcome of the collective activities of the whole people. There was nothing mysterious about Government, if Courts had not hidden away the patent fact that it dealt primarily with the making and administering of laws. We are apt to be impressed by these remarks until we contrast them with the majestic period wherein Burke depicts human society as a venerable and mysterious whole bequeathed by the wisdom of our forefathers. An admirer of Burke cannot but quote the passage in full: "Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory parts; wherein by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenour of perpetual decay, fall, renovation and progression. Thus, by preserving the method of nature in the conduct of the State, in what we improve we are never wholly new; in what we retain we are never wholly obsolete."[35]

This is a majestic conception. But, after all, the practical question at issue is—how much of the old shall we retain and how much must be discarded? Unfortunately for himself and his cause, Burke was now urging his countrymen to support two military Powers in their effort to compel the French people to revert to institutions which were alike obsolete and detested. Is it surprising that Paine, utterly lacking all sense of reverence for the past, should brand this conduct as treasonable to the imperious needs of the present? Viewing monarchy as represented by Versailles or Carlton House, and aristocracy by the intrigues of Coblentz and the orgies of Brooks's Club, he gave short shrift to both forms of Government. Monarchy he pronounced more or less despotic; and under aristocracy (he says) the interests of the whole body necessarily suffer; democracy alone secures the rule of the general will; and this can be thoroughly secured only in a democratic republic. He then attacks the English constitution as unjust and extravagant, claiming that the formation of a close alliance between England, France, and America would enable the expenses of government (Army, Navy, and Civil List inclusive) to be reduced to a million and a half a year.

With regard to the means of raising revenue, Paine sketched a plan of progressive taxation on incomes, ranging from 3d. in the pound on incomes less than £500 to punitive proportions after £10,000 was reached; while in his Spartan arithmetic great wealth appeared so dire a misfortune that he rid the possessors of the whole of incomes of £23,000 and upwards. As for Pitt's financial reforms, he laughed them to scorn. He also accused him of throwing over the fair promises that marked his early career, of advertising for enemies abroad, while at home he toadied to the Court. "The defect lies in the system.... Prop it as you please, it continually sinks into Court government, and ever will." Finally he urged a limitation of armaments, and prophesied that wars would cease when nations had their freely elected Conventions. The cynic will remember with satisfaction that, two months later, began the war between France and Austria, which developed into the most tremendous series of wars recorded in history.

The republican and levelling doctrines frankly advocated in Paine's second pamphlet made a greater sensation than the first part had done; and Fox, who approved the former production, sternly reprobated the latter. It is possible that Government sought to stop its publication; for Chapman, the publisher, to whom Paine first applied, offered him £1,000 for the manuscript, and yet very soon afterwards declared it to be too dangerous for him to print.[36] Certainly the work soon quickened the tone of political thought. Already the London Society for promoting Constitutional Information, which had died of inanition in 1784, had come to life again before the close of the year 1791. And at the end of that year a determined man, Thomas Hardy, a poor shoemaker of Westminster, set to work to interest his comrades in politics. He assembled four men at an ale-house, and they agreed to take action. At their second meeting, on 25th January 1792, they mustered eight strong, and resolved to start "The London Corresponding Society for the Reform of Parliamentary Representation." Its finances were scarcely on a par with its title: they consisted of eightpence, the first weekly subscription. But the idea proved infectious; and amidst the heat engendered by Paine's second pamphlet, the number of members rose to forty-one.[37] The first manifesto of the Society, dated 2nd April, claimed political liberty as the birthright of man, declared the British nation to be misrepresented by its Parliament, and, while repudiating all disorderly methods, demanded a thorough reform of that body.

So far as I have been able to discover, this was the first political club started by English working-men at that time. But now the men of Sheffield also organized themselves. Their "Association" began in an assembly of five or six mechanics, who discussed "the enormous high price of provisions" and "the waste and lavish [sic] of the public property by placemen, pensioners, luxury and debauchery,—sources of the grievous burthens under which the nation groans." The practical character of their lamentations attracted many working men, with the result that they resolved to reprint and circulate 1,600 copies of Paine's "Rights of Man" (Part I), at sixpence a copy. On 15th January 1792 they wrote up to the "London Society for Constitutional Information" to plan co-operation with them.

At first the ideas of the Sheffield Association were somewhat parochial. But the need of common action all over the Kingdom was taking shape in several minds, and when Scotland awoke to political activity (as will appear in [Chapter VII]) the idea of a General Convention took firm root and led to remarkable developments. For the present, the chief work of these clubs was the circulation of Paine's volumes (even in Welsh, Gaelic, and Erse) at the price of sixpence or even less. They also distributed "The Catechism of the French Constitution" (of 1791), drawn up by Christie, a Scot domiciled at Paris, which set forth the beauties of that child of many hopes. Less objectionable was a pamphlet—"The Rights of Men and the Duties of Men." For the most part, however, their literature was acridly republican in tone and of a levelling tendency. Thus, for the first time since the brief attempt of the Cromwellian Levellers, the rich and the poor began to group themselves in hostile camps, at the strident tones of Paine's cry for a graduated Income Tax. Is it surprising that the sight of the free institutions of France and of the forced economy of the Court of the Tuileries should lead our workers to question the utility of the State-paid debaucheries of Carlton House, and of the whole system of patronage and pensions? Burke and Pitt had pruned away a few of the worst excrescences; but now they saw with dismay the whole of the body politic subjected to remorseless criticism by those whose duty was to toil and not to think or question.

This was a new departure in eighteenth-century England. Hitherto working men had taken only a fleeting and fitful interest in politics. How should they do so in days when newspapers were very dear, and their contents had only the remotest bearing on the life of the masses? The London mob had bawled and rioted for "Wilkes and Liberty," but mainly from personal motives and love of horse-play. Now, however, all was changed; and artisans were willing to sacrifice their time and their pence to learn and teach a political catechism, and spread the writings of Paine. Consequently the new Radical Clubs differed widely from the short-lived County Associations of 1780 which charged a substantial fee for membership. Moreover, these Associations expired in the years 1783–4, owing to the disgust at Fox's Coalition with Lord North. We are therefore justified in declaring that English democracy entered on a new lease of life, and did not, as has been asserted,[38] merely continue the movement of 1780. The earlier efforts had been wholly insular in character; they aimed at staying the tide of corruption; their methods were in the main academic, and certainly never affected the great mass of the people. Now reformers were moved by a wider enthusiasm for the rights of humanity, and sought not merely to abolish pocket boroughs and sinecures, but to level up the poor and level down the wealthy. It was this aspect of Paine's teaching that excited men to a frenzy of reprobation or of hope.

A certain continuity of tradition and method is observable in a club, called The Friends of the People, which was founded at Freemasons' Tavern in April 1792, with a subscription of five guineas a year. The members included Cartwright, Erskine, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Philip Francis, Charles Grey, Lambton, the Earl of Lauderdale, Mackintosh, Sheridan, Whitbread, and some sixty others; but Fox refused to join. Their profession of faith was more moderate than that of Hardy's Club; it emphasized the need of avoiding innovation and of restoring the constitution to its original purity.[39] This was in the spirit of the Associations of 1780; but the new club was far less characteristic of the times than the clubs of working men described above.

The appearance of Paine's "Rights of Man" (Part II), the founding of these societies, and the outbreak of war between France and Austria in April 1792 made a deep impression on Pitt. He opposed a notice of a motion of Reform for the following session, brought forward by Grey on 30th April. While affirming his continued interest in that subject, Pitt deprecated its introduction at that time as involving the risk of anarchy.

My object [he continued] always has been, and is now more particularly so, to give permanence to that which we actually enjoy rather than remove subsisting grievances.... I once thought, and still think, upon the point of the representation of the Commons, that, if some mode could be adopted by which the people could have any additional security for a continuance of the blessings which they now enjoy, it would be an improvement in the constitution of this country. That was the extent of my object. Further I never wished to go; and if this can be obtained without the risk of losing what we have, I should think it wise to make the experiment. When I say this, it is not because I believe there is any existing grievance in this country that is felt at this hour.

At the end of the American War (he continued) when bankruptcy seemed imminent, he believed Reform to be necessary in order to restore public confidence and remedy certain notorious grievances. Even then very many moderate men opposed his efforts as involving danger to the State. How much more would they deprecate sweeping proposals which rightly aroused general apprehension? He then censured the action of certain members of the House in joining an Association (the "Friends of the People") which was supported by those who aimed at the overthrowing of hereditary monarchy, titles of nobility, and all ideas of subordination. He would oppose all proposals for Reform rather than run the risk of changes so sweeping.—"All, all may be lost by an indiscreet attempt upon the subject." Clearly, Pitt was about to join the ranks of the alarmists. But members generally were of his opinion. In vain did Fox, Erskine, Grey, and Sheridan deprecate the attempt to confuse moderate Reform with reckless innovation. Burke illogically but effectively dragged in the French spectre, and Windham declared that the public mind here, as in other lands, was in such a state that the slightest scratch might produce a mortal wound.

The gulf between Pitt and the reformers now became impassable. His speech of 10th May against any relaxation of the penal laws against Unitarians is a curious blend of bigotry and panic. Eleven days later a stringent proclamation was issued against all who wrote, printed, and dispersed "divers wicked and seditious writings." It ordered all magistrates to search out the authors and abettors of them, and to take steps for preventing disorder. It also inculcated "a due submission to the laws, and a just confidence in the integrity and wisdom of Parliament." Anything less calculated to beget such a confidence than this proclamation, threatening alike to reformers and levellers, can scarcely be conceived. On 25th May Grey opposed it in an acrid speech; he inveighed against Pitt as an apostate, who never kept his word, and always intended to delude Parliament and people. The sting of the speech lay, not in these reckless charges, but in the citing of Pitt's opinions as expressed in a resolution passed at the Thatched House Tavern in May 1782, which declared that without Parliamentary Reform neither the liberty of the nation nor the permanence of a virtuous administration was secure. Pitt's reply, however, convinced all those whose minds were open to conviction. He proved to demonstration that he had never approved of universal suffrage; yet that was now the goal aimed at by Paine and the Societies founded on the basis of the Rights of Man. The speech of Dundas also showed that the writings of Paine, and the founding of clubs with those ends in view, had led to the present action of the Cabinet.

Undoubtedly those clubs had behaved in a provocative manner. Apart from their correspondence with the Jacobins Club (which will be described later), they advocated aims which then seemed utterly subversive of order. Thus, early in May 1792, the Sheffield Society declared their object to be "a radical Reform of the country, as soon as prudence and discretion would permit, and established on that system which is consistent with the Rights of Man." Further, the hope is expressed that not only the neighbouring towns and villages, most of which were forming similar societies, but also the whole country would be "united in the same cause, which cannot fail of being the case wherever the most excellent works of Thomas Paine find reception."[40]

Now, this banding together of societies and clubs pointed the way to the forming of a National Convention which would truly represent the whole nation. In judging the action of Pitt and his colleagues at this crisis, we must remember that they had before them the alarming example of the Jacobins Club of Paris, which had gained enormous power by its network of affiliated clubs. This body again was modelled on the various societies of the Illuminati in Germany, whose organizer, Weishaupt, summed up his contention in the words: "All their union shall be carried on by the correspondence and visits of the brethren. If we can gain but that point, we shall have succeeded in all we want."[41] This is why the name Corresponding Society stank in the nostrils of all rulers. It implied a parasitic organization which, if allowed to grow, would strangle the established Government. Signs were not wanting that this was the aim of the new Radical Clubs. Thus the delegates of the United Constitutional Societies who met at Norwich drew up on 24th March 1792 resolutions expressing satisfaction at the rapid growth of those bodies, already numbering some hundreds, "which by delegates preserve a mutual intercourse." ... "To Mr. Thomas Paine our thanks are specially due for his first and second parts of the 'Rights of Man'; and we sincerely wish that he may live to see his labours crowned with success in the general diffusion of liberty and happiness among mankind." ... "We ... earnestly entreat our brethren to increase in their Associations in order to form one grand and extensive Union of all the friends of liberty."[42] It is not surprising that this plan of a National Convention of levellers produced something like a panic among the well-to-do; and it is futile to assert that men who avowed their belief in the subversive teaching of Part II of Paine's book were concerned merely with the Reform of Parliament. They put that object in their public manifestoes; but, like many of the Chartists of a later date, their ultimate aim was the redistribution of wealth; and this it was which brought on them the unflinching opposition of Pitt.

Nevertheless even these considerations do not justify him in opposing the reformers root and branch. The greatest statesman is he who distinguishes between the real grievances of a suffering people and the visionary or dangerous schemes which they beget in ill-balanced brains. To oppose moderate reformers as well as extremists is both unjust and unwise. It confounds together the would-be healers and the enemies of the existing order. Furthermore, an indiscriminate attack tends to close the ranks in a solid phalanx, and it should be the aim of a tactician first to seek to loosen those ranks.

Finally, we cannot forget that Pitt had had it in his power to redress the most obvious of the grievances which kept large masses of his countrymen outside the pale of political rights and civic privilege. Those grievances were made known to him temperately in the years 1787, 1789, and 1790; but he refused to amend them, and gradually drifted to the side of the alarmists and reactionaries. Who is the wiser guide at such a time? He who sets to work betimes to cure certain ills which are producing irritation in the body politic? Or he who looks on the irritation as a sign that nothing should be done? The lessons of history and the experience of everyday life plead for timely cure and warn against a nervous postponement. Doubtless Pitt would have found it difficult to persuade some of his followers to apply the knife in the session of 1791 or 1792. But in the Parliament elected in 1790 his position was better assured, his temper more imperious, than in that of 1785, which needed much tactful management. The fact, then, must be faced that he declined to run the risk of the curative operation, even at a time when there were no serious symptoms in the patient and little or no risk for the surgeon.

The reason which he assigned for his refusal claims careful notice. It was that his earlier proposals (those of 1782–5) had aimed at national security; while those of the present would tend to insecurity. Possibly in the month of April 1792 this argument had some validity; though up to that time all the violence had been on the Tory side. But the plea does not excuse Pitt for not taking action in the year 1790. That was the period when the earlier apathy of the nation to Reform was giving way to interest, and interest had not yet grown into excitement. Still less had loyalty waned under the repressive measures whereby he now proposed to give it vigour.

Thus, Pitt missed a great opportunity, perhaps the greatest of his career. What it means is clear to us, who know that the cause of Reform passed under a cloud for the space of thirty-eight years. It is of course unfair to censure him and his friends for lacking a prophetic vision of the long woes that were to come. Most of the blame lavished upon him arises from forgetfulness of the fact that he was not a seer mounted on some political Pisgah, but a pioneer struggling through an unexplored jungle. Nevertheless, as the duty of a pioneer is not merely to hew a path, but also to note the lie of the land and the signs of the weather, we must admit that Pitt did not possess the highest instincts of his craft. He cannot be ranked with Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Alfred the Great, Edward I, or Burleigh, still less with those giants of his own age, Napoleon and Stein; for these men boldly grappled with the elements of unrest or disloyalty, and by wise legislation wrought them into the fabric of the State. Probably the lack of response to his reforming efforts in the year 1785 ingrained in him the conviction that Britons would always be loyal if their burdens were lessened and their comforts increased; and now in 1792 he looked on the remissions of taxation (described in the [following chapter]) as a panacea against discontent. Under normal conditions that would have been the case. It was not so now, because new ideas were in the air, and these forbade a bovine acceptance of abundant fodder. In truth, Pitt had not that gift without which the highest abilities and the most strenuous endeavours will at novel crises be at fault—a sympathetic insight into the needs and aspirations of the people. His analytical powers enabled him to detect the follies of the royalist crusaders; but he lacked those higher powers of synthesis which alone could discern the nascent strength of Democracy.

CHAPTER II

BEFORE THE STORM

I find it to be a very general notion, at least in the Assembly, that if France can preserve a neutrality with England, she will be able to cope with all the rest of Europe united.—Gower to Grenville, 22nd April 1792.

Indirect evidence as to the intentions of a statesman is often more convincing than his official assertions. The world always suspects the latter; and many politicians have found it expedient to adopt the ironical device practised frequently with success by Bismarck on his Austrian colleagues at Frankfurt, that of telling the truth. Fortunately the English party game has nearly always been kept up with sportsmanlike fair play; and Pitt himself was so scrupulously truthful that we are rarely in doubt as to his opinions, save when he veiled them by ministerial reserve. Nevertheless, on the all-important subject of his attitude towards Revolutionary France, it is satisfactory to have indirect proofs of his desire to maintain a strict, if not friendly, neutrality. This proof lies in his handling of the nation's armaments and finances.

The debate on the Army Estimates on 15th February 1792 is of interest in more respects than one. The news of the definitive signature of peace between Russia and Turkey by the Treaty of Jassy, put an end to the last fears of a resumption of war in the East; and, as the prospects were equally pacific in the West, the Ministry carried out slight reductions in the land forces. These were fixed in the year 1785 at seventy-three regiments of 410 men each, divided into eight companies, with two companies en second. In 1789 the number of companies per regiment was fixed at ten, without any companies en second. Now the Secretary at War, Sir Charles Yonge, proposed further reductions, which, with those of 1789, would lessen each regiment by seventy privates, and save the country the sum of £51,000. No diminution was proposed in the number of officers; and this gave Fox a handle for an attack. He said that the natural plan would be to reduce the number of regiments to sixty-four. Instead of that, the number of seventy regiments was retained, and new corps were now proposed for the East Indies, one for the West Indies, and one for Canada, chiefly to be used for pioneer work and clearance of woods. General Burgoyne and Fox protested against the keeping up of skeleton regiments, the latter adding the caustic comment that the plan was "the least in point of saving and the greatest in point of patronage."[43]

The practices prevalent in that age give colour to the charge. On the other hand, professional men have defended a system which kept up the cadres of regiments in time of peace, as providing a body of trained officers and privates, which in time of war could be filled out by recruits. Of course it is far inferior to the plan of a reserve of trained men; but that plan had not yet been hammered out by Scharnhorst, under the stress of the Napoleonic domination in Prussia. As to the reduction of seven men per company, now proposed, it may have been due partly to political reasons. Several reports in the Home Office and War Office archives prove that discontent was rife among the troops, especially in the northern districts, on account of insufficient pay and the progress of Radical propaganda among them. The reduction may have afforded the means of sifting out the ringleaders.

Retrenchment, if not Reform, was the order of the day. Pitt discerned the important fact that a recovery in the finance and trade of the country must be encouraged through a series of years to produce a marked effect. For then the application of capital to industry, and the increase in production and revenue can proceed at the rate of compound interest. Already his hopes, for which he was indebted to the "Wealth of Nations,"[44] had been largely realized. The Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons presented in May 1791 showed the following growth in the ordinary revenue (exclusive of the Land and Malt Taxes):

During those five years the sum of £4,750,000 had been allotted to the Sinking Fund for the payment of the National Debt; and a further sum of £674,592, accruing from the interest of stock and expired annuities, had gone towards the same object—a crushing retort to the taunts of Fox and Sheridan, that the Sinking Fund was a mere pretence. On the whole the sum of £5,424,592 had been paid off from the National Debt in five years. It is therefore not surprising that three per cent. Consols, which were down at fifty-four when Pitt took office at the end of 1783, touched ninety in the year 1791. The hopes and fears of the year 1792 find expression in the fact that in March they stood at ninety-seven, and in December dropped to seventy-four.

For the present Pitt entertained the highest hopes. In his Budget Speech of 17th February he declared the revenue to be in so flourishing a state that he could grant relief to the taxpayers. In the year 1791 the permanent taxes had yielded £14,132,000; and those on land and malt brought the total up to £16,690,000; but he proposed to take £16,212,000 as the probable revenue for the following year. The expenditure would be lessened by £104,000 on the navy (2,000 seamen being discharged), and about £50,000 on the army; £36,000 would also be saved by the non-renewal of the subsidy for Hessian troops. There were, however, additions, due to the establishment of the Government of Upper Canada, and the portions allotted to the Duke of York (on the occasion of his marriage with a Prussian princess) and the Duke of Clarence. The expenditure would, therefore, stand at £15,811,000; but, taking the average of four years, he reckoned the probable surplus at no more than £401,000. On the other hand, he anticipated no new expenses except for the fortification of posts in the West Indies and the completion of forts for the further protection of the home dockyards. On the whole, then, he reckoned that he had £600,000 to spare; and of this amount he proposed to allocate £400,000 to the reduction of the National Debt and the repeal of the extra duty on malt, an impost much disliked by farmers. He also announced a remission of permanent taxes to the extent of £200,000, namely, on female servants, carts, and waggons, and that of three shillings on each house having less than seven windows. These were burdens that had undoubtedly affected the poor. Further, he hoped to add the sum of £200,000 every year to the Sinking Fund, and he pointed out that, at this rate of payment, that fund would amount to £4,000,000 per annum in the space of fifteen years, after which time the interest might be applied to the relief of the nation's burdens.

Then, rising high above the level of facts and figures, he ventured on this remarkable prophecy:

I am not, indeed, presumptuous enough to suppose that, when I name fifteen years, I am not naming a period in which events may arise which human foresight cannot reach, and which may baffle all our conjectures. We must not count with certainty on a continuance of our present prosperity during such an interval; but unquestionably there never was a time in the history of this country, when, from the situation of Europe, we might more reasonably expect fifteen years of peace than at the present moment.

Imagination pictures what might possibly have been the outcome of events if Great Britain and France had continued to exert on one another the peaceful and mutually beneficent influence which Pitt had sought to bring about. In that case, we can imagine the reformed French monarchy, or a Republic of the type longed for by Mme. Roland, permeating the thought and action of neighbouring States, until the cause of Parliamentary Reform in England, and the cognate efforts for civic and religious liberty on the Continent achieved a lasting triumph. That Pitt cherished these hopes is seen not only in his eloquent words, but in the efforts which he put forth to open up the world to commerce. The year 1792 ought to be remembered, not only for the outbreak of war and the horrors of the September massacres at Paris, but also for the attempt to inaugurate friendly relations with China. Pitt set great store by the embassy which he at this time sent out to Pekin under the lead of Lord Macartney. In happier times this enterprise might have served to link East and West in friendly intercourse; and Europe, weary of barren strifes, would have known no other rivalries than those of peace.

Alas: this is but a mirage. As it fades away, we discern an arid waste. War broke out between France and Austria within two months of this sanguine utterance. It soon embroiled France and England in mortal strife. All hope of retrenchment and Reform was crushed. The National Debt rose by leaps and bounds, and the Sinking Fund proved to be a snare. Taxation became an ever-grinding evil, until the poor, whose lot Pitt hoped to lighten, looked on him as the harshest of taskmasters, the puppet of kings, and the paymaster of the Continental Coalition. The spring of the year 1807 found England burdened beyond endurance, the Third Coalition stricken to death by the blows of Napoleon, while Pitt had fourteen months previously succumbed to heart-breaking toils and woes.

Before adverting to the complications with France which were thenceforth to absorb his energies, I must refer to some incidents of the session and summer of the year 1792.

One of the most noteworthy enactments was Fox's Libel Bill. In May 1791 that statesman had proposed to the House of Commons to subject cases of libel to the award of juries, not of judges. Pitt warmly approved the measure, maintaining that, far from protecting libellers, it would have the contrary effect. The Bill passed the Commons on 31st May; but owing to dilatory and factious procedure in the Lords, it was held over until the year 1792. Thanks to the noble plea for liberty urged by the venerable Earl Camden, it passed on 21st May.[45] It is matter of congratulation that Great Britain gained this new safeguard for freedom of speech before she encountered the storms of the revolutionary era.

There is little else to chronicle except two occurrences which displayed the power and the foresight of Pitt. They were the fall of Thurlow and the endeavour of the Prime Minister to form a working alliance with the Old Whigs. The former of these events greatly impressed the contemporaries of Pitt, who likened the ejected Chancellor to Lucifer or to a Titan blasted by Jove's thunderbolt. In this age we find it difficult to account for the prestige of Thurlow. His legal learning was far from profound, his speeches were more ponderous than powerful, and his attacks were bludgeon blows rather than home thrusts. Of the lighter graces and social gifts he had scant store. Indeed, his private life displayed no redeeming feature. Everyone disliked him, but very many feared him, mainly, perhaps, because of his facility for intrigue, his power of bullying, and his great influence at Court. As we have seen, the conciliatory efforts of the monarch had hitherto averted a rupture between Pitt and Thurlow. But not even the favour of George III could render the crabbed old Chancellor endurable. His spitefulness had increased since Pitt's nomination of Pepper Arden to the Mastership of the Rolls; and he showed his spleen by obstructing Government measures in the House of Lords. In April 1792 he flouted Pitt's efforts on behalf of the abolition of the Slave Trade; and on 15th May he ridiculed his proposal that to every new State loan a Sinking Fund should necessarily be appended. The Commons had passed this measure; but in the Lords Thurlow spoke contemptuously of the proposal; and his influence, if not his arguments, brought the Government majority down to six.

Pitt was furious. Despite a letter from Windsor urging the need of forbearance in the interests of the public service, he resolved to end this intolerable situation. Respectfully but firmly he begged the King to decide between him and Thurlow. The result was a foregone conclusion. Having to choose between an overbearing Chancellor, and a Prime Minister whose tact, firmness, and transcendent abilities formed the keystone of the political fabric, the King instructed Dundas to request Thurlow to deliver up the Great Seal.[46] For the convenience of public business, his resignation was deferred to the end of the session, which came at the middle of June. The Great Seal was then placed in commission until January 1793 when Lord Loughborough, formerly a follower of the Prince of Wales and Fox, became Lord Chancellor.

The dismissal of Thurlow is interesting on general as well as constitutional grounds. It marks an important step in the evolution of the Cabinet. Thenceforth the will of the Prime Minister was held to be paramount whenever any one of his colleagues openly and sharply differed from him. Thus the authority of the Prime Minister became more clearly defined. Not even the favour of the Sovereign could thenceforth uphold a Minister who openly opposed and scorned the head of the Cabinet. The recognition of this fact has undoubtedly conduced to the amenity of parliamentary life; for etiquette has imposed on Ministers the observance of outward signs of deference to their chief, and (save a few times in the breezy careers of Canning and Palmerston) dissensions have been confined to the council chamber.

As to Thurlow's feelings, they appear in his frank admission to Sir John Scott, the future Chancellor, Lord Eldon: "I did not think that the King would have parted with me so easily. As to that other man [Pitt], he has done to me just what I should have done to him if I could."[47] It is not often that a plotter shows his hand so clearly; and we must admire Pitt's discernment no less than his firmness at this crisis. Would that he had found a more faithful successor. Possibly some suspicion as to Loughborough's powers of intrigue led Pitt to make cautious advances to that promising lawyer, Sir John Scott. To his honour, be it said, Scott at once declared that he must cease to be Solicitor-General, as he had received much assistance from Thurlow. In vain did Pitt expostulate with him. At last he persuaded him to consult Thurlow, who advised him to do nothing so foolish, seeing that Pitt would be compelled at some future time to confer the Great Seal upon him. With this parting gleam of insight and kindliness, the morose figure of Thurlow vanishes.

More than once in the session of 1792 rumours were afloat as to a reconstruction of the Cabinet. Early in that year, when the debates on the Russian armament somewhat shook Pitt's position, it was stated that the King desired to get rid of him. Gillray heard of the story, and visualized it with his usual skill. He represented the Marquis of Lansdowne ("Malagrida") as driving at full speed to St. James's Palace, heralded by the dove of peace, while Fox, Sheridan, etc., hang on behind and cry out, "Stop; stop; take us in." Pitt and Dundas are seen leaving the palace. The rumour gains in credibility from a Memorandum of the Marquis; but it is doubtful whether George ever thought seriously of giving up Pitt, still less of seeking support from the discredited and unpopular Lansdowne, whose views on the French Revolution were utterly opposed to those of the King. Probably the King put questions to him merely with the view of gratifying his own curiosity and exciting unreal hopes. Certainly Pitt scoffed at the idea of resignation. On 3rd March he referred to the rumour, in a letter to the Earl of Westmorland, merely to dismiss it as ridiculous.[48]

Far more important were the negotiations that began in May–June 1792. Pitt paved the way for a union with the Old Whigs by consulting the opinions of the Duke of Portland and other leading Whigs, assembled at Burlington House, respecting the proclamation against seditious writings. They suggested a few alterations in his draft and he adopted them. Fox alone declared against the whole scheme, and afterwards hotly opposed it in the House of Commons. This step having shown the cleavage in the Whig party, Dundas and Loughborough sought to effect a union of the Portland Whigs with the Government. The Duke of Portland strongly approved of it. Even Fox welcomed the proposal, but only on the understanding that the Whigs joined the Ministry on fair and even terms, sharing equally in the patronage. The Duke further suggested that Pitt should give up the Treasury and allow a neutral man like the Duke of Leeds to take that office. We can picture the upward tilt of the nose with which Pitt received this proposal.

Lord Malmesbury, who was present at this discussion of the Whig leaders on 13th June, himself saw great difficulties in such a plan, as also from the opposition of the King and the Prince of Wales. On the next day Loughborough met Pitt at Dundas's house, and reported him to be favourable to the idea of a coalition. Pitt further said that the King and the Queen would welcome it, except in so far as it concerned Fox, whose conduct in Parliament during the last few months had given great offence. Pitt further declared that he did not remember a single word in all the disputes with Fox which could prevent him honourably and consistently acting with him. He added that it might be difficult to give him the Foreign Office at once, but he could certainly have it in a few months' time. On 16th June Malmesbury saw Fox at Burlington House, and found him in an unusually acrid and suspicious mood, from the notion that the whole affair was a plot of Pitt to break up the Whig party. Beside which, Fox said that it was idle to expect Pitt to admit the Whig leaders on an equal footing. Malmesbury, however, maintained that, if Fox and the Duke were agreed, they would lead the whole of their party with them, at which remark Fox became silent and embarrassed.

Pitt, on the other hand, was very open to Loughborough, and expressed a wish to form a strong and united Ministry which could face the difficulties of the time. The chief obstacle to a coalition, he said, was Fox's support of French principles, which must preclude his taking the Foreign Office immediately. The remark is noteworthy as implying Pitt's expectation that either Fox might tone down his opinions, or the Revolution might abate its violence. Further, when Loughborough reminded him of the ardour of his advocacy of the Abolitionist cause, he replied that some concession must be made on that head, as the King strongly objected to the way in which it was pushed on by addresses and petitions, a method which he himself disliked. Further, he freely admitted that the "national Aristocracy" of the country must have its due weight and power.[49] These confessions (assuming that Loughborough reported them correctly) prepare us for the half right turn which now becomes the trend of Pitt's political career. In order to further the formation of a truly national party, he was willing, if necessary, to postpone the cause of the slaves and of Parliamentary Reform until the advent of calmer times.

At this stage of the discussions, then, Pitt was willing to meet the Whigs half way. But the chief difficulty lay, not with Fox and his friends, but with the King. When Pitt mentioned the proposal to him, there came the characteristic reply: "Anything complimentary to them, but no power."[50] How was it possible to harmonize this resolve with that of Fox, that the Whigs must have an equality of power? Grenville was a further obstacle. How could that stiff and ambitious man give up the Foreign Office to Fox, whose principles he detested? We hear little of Grenville in these days, probably because of his marriage to Lady Ann Pitt, daughter of Lord Camelford. But certainly he would not have tolerated a half Whig Cabinet.

It is therefore strange that the proposals were ever renewed. Renewed, however, they were, in the second week of July. Loughborough having spread the impression that Pitt desired their renewal, Leeds was again pushed to the front, it being suggested that he might be First Lord of the Treasury. Finally, on 14th August, the King granted him a private interview at Windsor, but stated that nothing had been said on the subject for a long time, and that it had never been seriously considered, it being impossible for Pitt to give up the Treasury and act as Commis to the Whig leaders. This statement should have lessened the Duke's astonishment at hearing from Pitt on 22nd August that there had been no thought of any change in the Government.[51] This assertion seems to belie Pitt's reputation for truthfulness. But it is noteworthy that Grenville scarcely refers to the discussions on this subject, deeply though it concerned him. Further, Rose, who was in close touch with Ministers, wrote to Auckland on 13th July that he had heard only through the newspapers of the "negotiations for a sort of Coalition," and that he knew there had been none; that Dundas had conferred with Loughborough, but there had been no negotiation.[52]

Now the proneness of these two men to scheming and intrigue is well known; and it seems probable that they so skilfully pulled the wires at Burlington House as to quicken the appetites of the Whig leaders. Dundas may have acted with a view to breaking up the Whig party, and Loughborough in order to bring about a general shuffle of the cards favourable to himself. Malmesbury and others, whose desires or interests lay in a union of the Portland Whigs with Pitt, furthered the scheme, and gave full credence to Loughborough's reports. But we may doubt whether Pitt took the affair seriously after the crushing declaration of the King: "Anything complimentary to them, but no power." The last blow to the scheme was dealt by Pitt in an interview with Loughborough, so we may infer from the following letter from George III to the former:

Weymouth, August 20, 1792.[53]

I cannot but think Mr. Pitt has judged right in seeing Lord Loughborough, as that will convince him, however [whoever?] were parties to the proposal brought by the Duke of Leeds, that the scheme can never succeed: that the Duke of Portland was equally concerned with the former appeared clearly from his letters....

The King, then, looked on the whole affair as a Whig plot; and Pitt, whatever his feelings were at first, finally frowned upon the proposal. Doubtless, in an official sense, there was justification for his remark to the Duke of Leeds, that the coalition had never been in contemplation; for the matter seems never to have come before the Cabinet. But as a statement between man and man it leaves something to be desired on the score of accuracy. Annoyance at the very exalted position marked out for the Duke, whose capacity Pitt rated decidedly low, may have led him to belittle the whole affair; for signs of constraint and annoyance are obvious in his other answers to his late colleague. There, then, we must leave this question, involved in something of mystery.[54] We shall not be far wrong in concluding that Pitt wished for the formation of a national Ministry, and that the plan failed, partly from the resolve of Fox never to play second to Pitt; and still more from the personal way in which the King regarded the suggestion.

The King meanwhile had marked his sense of the value of Pitt's services by pressing on him the honourable position of Warden of the Cinque Ports, with a stipend of £3,000 a year, intimating at the same time that he would not hear of his declining it (6th August).[55] It is a proof of the spotless purity of Pitt's reputation that not a single libel or gibe appeared in the Press on his acceptance of this almost honorary post.[56]

One brilliant recruit to the Whig ranks was now won over to the national cause, of which Pitt was seen to be the incarnation. Already at Eton and Oxford George Canning had shown the versatility of his genius and the precocious maturity of his eloquence. When his Oxford friend, Jenkinson (the future Earl of Liverpool) made a sensational début in the House on the Tory side, Sheridan remarked that the Whigs would soon provide an antidote in the person of young Canning. Great, then, was their annoyance when the prodigy showed signs of breaking away from the society of the Crewes and Sheridan, in order to ally himself with Pitt. So little is known respecting the youth of Canning that the motives which prompted his breach with Sheridan are involved in uncertainty. It is clear, however, from his own confession that, after some discussion with Orde, he himself made the first offer of allegiance to Pitt in a letter of 26th July 1792. He then informed the Prime Minister that, though on terms of friendship with eminent members of the Opposition, he was "in no way bound to them by any personal or political obligation," and was therefore entirely free to choose his own party; that he was ambitious of being connected with Pitt, but lacked the means to win an election, and yet refused to be brought in by any individual—a reference, seemingly, to an offer made to him by the Duke of Portland. In reply, Pitt proposed an interview at Downing Street on Wednesday, 15th August.[57]

At noon on that day the two men first met. We can picture them as they faced one another in the formal surroundings of the Prime Minister's study. Pitt, at this time thirty-three years of age, had lost some of the slimness of youth, but his figure was bony, angular, and somewhat awkward. His face was as yet scarcely marked by the slight Bacchic blotches which told of carouses with Dundas at Wimbledon. Months and years of triumph (apart from the Russian defeat) had stiffened his confidence and pride; but the fateful shadow of the French Revolution must have struck a chill to his being, especially then, on the arrival of news of the pitiable surrender of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and the shooting down of the Swiss Guards at the Tuileries. No royalist could look on the future without inward shuddering; and both these men were ardent royalists. We know from Canning's confession that it was the starting of the club, the Friends of the People, in April 1792, which disgusted him with the forward section of the Whigs; and their subsequent action completed the breach. Pitt's endeavour to form a national Administration must have gained a new significance from the terrible news from Paris. We may be sure, then, that the youth of twenty-two years gazed with eager interest on the stately form before him as at the embodiment of political wisdom, purity, and patriotism.

They shook hands. Then for a time they ambled coyly around the subject at issue, and talked of "France and Jenkinson, and other equally important concerns." Indeed Pitt seems to have been as nervous and awkward as the novice. At length he plunged into business. "It is your wish, I believe, Mr. Canning (and I am sure it is mine), to come in, etc." On Canning bowing assent, Pitt remarked that it was not easy to find an inexpensive seat, and commented on his expressed desire not to tie himself to any borough-owner. Whereupon the young aspirant, with more pride than tact, threw in the remark that he would not like to be personally beholden to such an one, for instance, as Lord Lonsdale (who first brought Pitt into Parliament). The Prime Minister seemed not to notice the gaucherie, and stated that the Treasury had only six seats at its disposal, but could arrange matters with "proprietors of burgage-tenures." Thereupon Canning broke in more deftly. In that case, he said, it must be made clear that he bound himself to follow, not the borough-owner, but the Prime Minister. Here he more than recovered lost ground, if indeed he had lost any. Pitt expressed his sense of the compliment, and said that this could be managed, unless the young member came to differ absolutely from his patron. Canning then frankly confessed his inability to follow Pitt in maintaining the Test Act. Equally frank and cordial was the reply, that he (Pitt) did not claim exact agreement, especially on "speculative subjects," but only "a general good disposition towards Government," which might be strengthened by frequent contact.

Such was the course of this memorable interview. It sealed for ever the allegiance of the youth to his self-chosen leader. He had prepared Sheridan, and through him Fox and Bouverie, for this change of front. The openness, the charm, the self-effacing patriotism of the Minister thenceforth drew him as by an irresistible magnet. The brilliance and joviality of Fox and Sheridan counted as nothing against the national impulse which the master now set in motion and the pupil was destined to carry to further lengths. There was a natural sympathy between these men both in aim and temperament. It is a sign of the greatness of Pitt that from the outset he laid the spell of his genius irrevocably upon Canning.

Deferring to the [next chapter] a study of the democratic movement in Great Britain, we now turn our attention to the relations of Pitt to France, a topic which thenceforth dominates his life story and the destinies of mankind.

In the month of January 1792, there arrived in London an envoy charged with important proposals from the French Government. It was Talleyrand, ex-bishop of Autun. Pitt had become acquainted with him during his residence at Rheims in the summer of 1783; but the circumstances of the case now forbade anything more than passing intercourse with that most charming of talkers and subtlest of diplomatists. Talleyrand, having been a member of the first, or Constituent, Assembly, was prevented by the constitution of September 1791 from holding any office for two years after that date. Therefore his visit to London was ostensibly on private affairs. The Duc de Biron was the envoy, and Talleyrand merely his adviser. He was instructed to seek "to maintain and strengthen the good understanding which exists between the two Kingdoms."[58]

This was only the official pretext for the mission, the secret aim of which was to win the friendship, if not the alliance, of England in case of a Franco-Austrian war. In the early days of January 1792 the constitutional Ministry, holding office, though not power, at Paris, seemed to be working for a rupture with the Hapsburgs, partly in order to please the Jacobins, and partly to escape the ever increasing difficulties of its position. The earlier causes of dispute do not concern us here. As we have seen, the Emperor Leopold was far from desirous of war; but the provocative attitude of the Legislative Assembly at Paris and the humiliations of his sister, Marie Antoinette, aroused his resentment; and, early in January, he was heard to say "that if the French madmen were determined to force him into a war, they should find that the pacific Leopold knew how to wage it with the greatest vigour, and would oblige them to pay its expenses in something more solid than assignats." Our ambassador, Sir Robert Keith, was, however, convinced that this outburst and the westward march of troops were but "empty parade."[59]

On the other hand Earl Gower, British ambassador at Paris, reported that the Ministry, the Assembly, and the Jacobins Club (with the exception of Robespierre and his clique) desired war.[60] In truth, there seemed little risk in a struggle with the exhausted Hapsburg States, provided that they had support neither from Prussia nor from England. De Ségur therefore set out for Berlin, and Talleyrand for London, to secure the friendly neutrality or support of those Governments. The latter envoy was specially suited for his mission, as he carried on the traditions of Mirabeau, who in the closing months of his life urged the need of an Anglo-French entente.[61]

Talleyrand and Biron reached London on 24th January 1792. Before reaching the capital they read in the English papers that they had arrived there, and had been very coldly received by Pitt—a specimen of the arts by which the French émigrés in London sought to embitter the relations between the two lands. Talleyrand had the good fortune to occupy a seat in the Strangers' Gallery at the opening of Parliament close to two ardent royalists, Cazalès and Lally-Tollendal. What must have been their feelings on hearing in the King's speech the statement of his friendly relations to the other Powers and his resolve to reduce the army and navy?

Already Pitt had seen Talleyrand. He reminded him in a friendly way of their meeting at Rheims, remarked on the unofficial character of the ex-bishop's "mission," but expressed his willingness to discuss French affairs, about which he even showed "curiosity." Grenville afterwards spoke to the envoy in the same courteous but non-committal manner. Talleyrand was, however, charmed. He wrote to Delessart, the Foreign Minister at Paris: "Your best ground is England; ... Believe me the rumours current in France about the disposition of England towards us are false."[62] He urged the need of showing a bold front; for "it is with a fleet that you must speak to England."

Talleyrand throughout showed the sagacity which earned him fame in diplomacy. He was not depressed by the King's frigid reception of him at St. James's on 1st February, or by the Queen refusing even to notice him. Even the escapades of Biron did not dash his hopes. That envoy ran up debts and bargained about horses avec un nommé Tattersall, qui tient dans sa main tous les chevaux d'Angleterre, until he was arrested for debt and immured in a "sponging house," whence the appeals of the ex-bishop failed to rescue him. As Biron had come with an official order to buy horses with a view to the impending war with Austria, we may infer that his arrest was the work of some keen-witted émigré.

Even this, however, was better than the fortunes of Ségur, who found himself openly flouted both by King and courtiers at Berlin. For Frederick William was still bent on a vigorous policy. On 7th February his Ministers signed with Prince Reuss, the Austrian envoy, a secret treaty of defensive alliance, mainly for the settlement of French affairs, but also with a side glance at Poland. The Prussian Ministers probably hoped for a peaceful but profitable settlement, which would leave them free for a decisive intervention in the Polish troubles now coming to a crisis; but Frederick William was in a more warlike mood, and longed to overthrow the "rebels" in France. Ségur's mission to Berlin was therefore an utter failure. That of Talleyrand, on the other hand, achieved its purpose, mainly because Pitt and Grenville never had any other desire than to remain strictly neutral. It was therefore superfluous for Talleyrand to hint delicately at the desirability of the friendship of France for England, in view of the war with Tippoo Sahib in India, and the increasing ferment in Ireland.[63]

On 1st March Grenville again assured him of the earnest desire of the British Government to see the end of the troubles in France, and declared that Pitt and he had been deeply wounded by the oft-repeated insinuations that they had sought to foment them. All such charges were absurd; for "a commercial people stands only to gain by the freedom of all those who surround it." We may reasonably conclude that these were the words of Pitt; for they recall that noble passage of the "Wealth of Nations": "A nation that would enrich itself by trade is certainly most likely to do so when its neighbours are all rich, industrious, and commercial nations."[64] For the rest, Grenville defied the calumniators of England to adduce a single proof in support of their slanders, and requested Talleyrand to remain some time in England for the purpose of observing public opinion. He warned him, however, that the Cabinet could not give an answer to his main proposal.

More than this Talleyrand could scarcely expect. He had already divined the important secret that the Cabinet was divided on this subject, the King, Thurlow, and Camden being hostile to France, while Pitt, Grenville, and Dundas were friendly. When Talleyrand ventured to ascribe those sentiments to Pitt and Grenville, the latter did not deny it, and he at once echoed the desire expressed by the envoy for the conclusion of an Anglo-French alliance. That the greater part of the British people would have welcomed such a compact admits of no doubt. On the walls were often chalked the words: "No war with the French." Talleyrand advised the Foreign Minister, Delessart, to send immediately to London a fully accredited ambassador; for the talk often was: "We have an ambassador at Paris. Why have not you one here?" Nevertheless, a despatch of Grenville to Gower, on 9th March, shows that Pitt and he keenly felt the need of caution. They therefore enjoined complete silence on Gower. In truth, Grenville's expressions, quoted above, were merely the outcome of the good will which he and Pitt felt towards France. But these words from the two powerful Ministers meant safety for France on her coasts, whatever might betide her on the Meuse and the Rhine.

On the day when Grenville spoke these words of peace, two events occurred which portended war. Leopold II died; and an irritating despatch, which he and Kaunitz had recently sent to Paris, was read out to the Legislative Assembly. Thereafter a rupture was inevitable. Francis II, who now ascended the throne of his father, was a shy, proud, delicate youth of twenty-four years, having only a superficial knowledge of public affairs, scarcely known to the Ministers, and endowed with a narrow pedantic nature which was to be the bane of his people. He lacked alike the sagacity, the foresight, and the suppleness of Leopold. Further, though his inexperience should have inspired him with a dread of war for his storm-tossed States, yet that same misfortune subjected him to the advice of the veteran Chancellor, Kaunitz. That crabbed old man advised the maintenance of a stiff attitude towards France; and this, in her present temper, entailed war.

The last despatch from Vienna to Paris contained strongly worded advice to the French Government and Assembly to adopt a less provocative attitude, to withdraw its troops from the northern frontier, and, above all, to rid itself of the factious minority which controlled its counsels. If Leopold had hoped to intimidate France or to strengthen the peace-party at Paris, he made the greatest mistake of his reign. The war party at once gained the ascendancy, decreed the arrest of Delessart for his tame reply to Vienna, and broke up the constitutional Ministry. Their successors were mainly Girondins. The most noteworthy are Roland, who took the Home Office; Clavière, Finance; and Dumouriez, Foreign Affairs. The last was a man of great energy and resource. A soldier by training, and with a dash of the adventurer in his nature, he now leapt to the front, and astonished France by his zeal and activity. He was not devoid of prudence; for, as appears from Gower's despatch of 30th March, he persuaded the Assembly to postpone action until an answer arrived to his last despatch to Vienna. Gower found from conversation with Dumouriez that a rupture must ensue if a satisfactory reply did not arrive by 15th April.[65] Four days later, as no answer came, the Council of Ministers decided on war; and on the next day Louis formally proposed it to the Assembly, which assented with acclamation.

Secondary causes helped on the rupture. Frederick William encouraged the young Emperor to draw the sword, and led him to expect Alsace and Lorraine as his share of the spoil, the duchies of Jülich and Berg falling to Prussia. Catharine also fanned the crusading zeal at Berlin and Vienna in the hope of having "more elbow-room," obviously in Poland.[66] Further, the news from Madrid and Stockholm indisposed the French Assembly to endure any dictation from Vienna. At the end of February Floridablanca fell from power at Madrid, and his successor, Aranda, showed a peaceful front. And, on 16th March Gustavus of Sweden was assassinated by Anckarström, a tool of the revengeful nobles. This loss was severely felt. The royalist crusade now had no Tancred, only an uninspiring Duke of Brunswick.

Though France took the final step of declaring war, it is now known that Austria had done much to provoke it and nothing to prevent it. The young Emperor refused to withdraw a word of the provocative despatch; and in his letter to Thugut at Brussels, he declared he was weary of the state of things in France and had decided to act and put an end to it; "that he should march his troops at once, and the French must be amused for two months until the troops arrived; then, whether the French attacked him or not, he should attack them."[67] Keith also wrote from Vienna to Grenville on 2nd May, that the French declaration of war had come in the nick of time to furnish the Hapsburgs with the opportunity of throwing the odium of the war upon France.[68] Other proofs might be cited; and it seems certain that, if France had not thrown down the gauntlet, both the German Powers would have attacked her in the early summer of 1792. Pitt and Grenville, looking on at these conflicting schemes, formed the perfectly correct surmise that both sides were bent on war, and that little or nothing could be done to avert it.

We must now trace the policy of Pitt somewhat closely. The question at issue is, whether he favoured the royalist or the democratic cause, and was responsible for the ensuing friction between England and France, which culminated in the long and disastrous strifes of 1793–1801.

Dumouriez, as we have seen, threw down the gauntlet to Austria in the hope of securing the neutrality of Prussia and the friendship of England. Accordingly he decided to send Talleyrand on a second mission to London. That skilful diplomat had recently returned to Paris; and the Foreign Minister drew up, perhaps in concert with him, a Memoir entitled "Reflections on a Negotiation with England in case of War," which provided the text for Talleyrand's discourse to Pitt and Grenville. The gist of it is that Talleyrand must convince the British Government of the need of a French attack on the Belgic provinces of Austria as the sole means of safety. For, while offensive in appearance, it is in reality defensive. France does not intend to keep those provinces; and, even if her conquest of them brings about the collapse of the Stadholder's power in Holland, England will do well not to intervene in favour of the Orange régime. For what good can the Island Power gain by war with France? She may take the French colonies; but that will mean a tiresome struggle with the revolted negroes in the West Indies. France, meanwhile, with her new-born strength, will conquer Central Europe and then throw her energy into her fleet. The better course, then, for England will be to remain neutral, even if Holland be revolutionized, and the estuary of the Scheldt be thrown open to all nations. Or, still better, England may help France to keep in check the King of Prussia and the Prince of Orange. In that case the two free Powers will march hand in hand and "become the arbiters of peace or war for the whole world."

This remarkable pronouncement claims attention for several reasons. Firstly, it proves that Dumouriez and Talleyrand believed their sole chance of safety to lie in the conquest of Austria's Belgic provinces, where a cognate people would receive them with open arms. That is to say, they desired war with Austria, and they did not dread the prospect of war with Prussia, provided that England remained neutral and friendly. Pitt and Grenville were well aware of this from Gower's despatches. Our ambassador had warned them that France recked little of a war with the whole of Europe, provided that England held aloof. Secondly, this fact disposes of the subsequent charge of Fox against Pitt, that he ought to have sided with France in 1792 and thereby to have prevented the attack of the German Powers. For, as we have seen, it was she who took the irrevocable step of declaring war on Austria; and further, the details given above prove that all that Frenchmen expected from Pitt was neutrality. By remaining neutral, while the French overran Belgium, Pitt was favouring the French plans more than any British statesman had done since the time of James II. Thirdly, we notice in the closing sentences of these Reflections signs of that extraordinary self-confidence which led Girondins and Jacobins to face without flinching even the prospect of war with England.

What was Pitt's conduct at this crisis? He knew enough of the politics of Berlin and Vienna to see that those Courts would almost certainly make war on France. He adopted therefore the line of conduct which prudence and love of peace dictated, a strict neutrality. But he refused to proclaim it to the world, as it would encourage France to attack Austria. At the same time Grenville let it be known that Austria must not be deprived of her Belgic lands, which England had assured to her, firstly by the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), and quite recently by the Reichenbach Convention. As Grenville phrased it—"The Pays Bas form the chain which unites England to the Continent, and the central knot of our relations to Austria and Russia. It would be broken if they belonged to France." Talleyrand and Dumouriez knew this perfectly well, and prudently declared that France had no intention of keeping those lands. Would that the Jacobins and Napoleon had shown the same wise self-restraint! It was their resolve to dominate the Netherlands which brought them into irreconcilable opposition to Pitt and his successors down to the year 1814.

Statesmanlike though the aims of Dumouriez were, they suffered not a little in their exposition. Talleyrand, the brain of the policy, was not its mouthpiece. In the French embassy at Portman Square he figured merely as adviser to the French ambassador, the ci-devant Marquis de Chauvelin, a vain and showy young man, devoid of the qualities of insight, tact, and patience in which the ex-bishop of Autun excelled his contemporaries. Had this sage counsellor remained in London to the end of the year, things might have gone very differently. The instructions issued to Chauvelin contain ideas similar to those outlined above; but they lay stress on the utility of a French alliance for England, in order to thwart the aims of a greedy Coalition and to ensure her own internal tranquillity, which, it is hinted, France can easily ruffle. Talleyrand is also charged to offer to cede the small but valuable island, Tobago, which we lost in 1783, provided that the British Government guaranteed a French loan of £3,000,000 or £4,000,000, to be raised in London; and he is to suggest that, if the two Powers acted together, they could revolutionize Spanish America and control the world.[69]

Our curiosity is aroused as to the reception which Pitt and Grenville gave to these schemes. It is not certain, however, that Chauvelin and Talleyrand showed their hand completely; for events told against them from the outset. Chauvelin bore with him an autograph letter from Louis XVI to George III, couched in the friendliest terms, and expressing the hope of closer relations between the two peoples.[70] But before he could present it to the King at St. James's, it appeared in the Paris papers. This breach of etiquette created a bad impression; for it seemed that the letter was merely a bid for an alliance between the two peoples. It is quite possible that Dumouriez, with his natural impulsiveness, allowed it to gain currency in order to identify Louis XVI with French democracy, and that in its turn with public opinion in England. Further, we now know that Marie Antoinette, in her resolve to paralyse the policy and the defensive power of France, wrote at once to Fersen at Brussels that her consort's letter was very far from speaking his real sentiments.[71] This news, when passed on to London, must have made it clear that the two envoys represented the Girondin Ministry, but not the King of France. Then again tidings soon arrived of the disgraceful flight of the French troops on the Belgian frontier, the new levies, at sight of the Austrian horse, rushing back to Lille in wild disorder and there murdering their General, Theobald Dillon. George III and Grenville wrote of this event in terms of disgust and contempt.[72] It is therefore not surprising that the reception of Chauvelin was far from promising; and Talleyrand doubtless felt that the time was not ripe for discussing an Anglo-French entente for the control of the world.

In fact, the envoys were received coolly from the outset. The outbreak of war on the Continent had caused almost a panic in the City. The Funds dropped sharply, and Pitt ordered an official denial to sinister reports of a forthcoming raid by the press-gang. A little later he assured a deputation of merchants that England would hold strictly aloof from the war. Chauvelin reported these facts to his Government along with the assurance that the Cabinet had definitely resolved on neutrality. How he came to know of that decision is a mystery; and it is scarcely less odd that a copy of his despatch reporting it should be in the Pitt Papers.[73] On the whole, then, France had good reason to be satisfied with Pitt. Austria, on the other hand, disliked his conduct. Kaunitz, with his usual acerbity, gave out that England was secretly hostile to the House of Hapsburg; and Keith, finding his position increasingly awkward, begged for his recall.

The first sign of friction between England and France arose out of the King's proclamation against seditious writings, which we noticed in the [last chapter]. Chauvelin complained of some of its phrases, and stated that France waged war for national safety, not for aggrandizement. Grenville thereupon loftily remarked that Chauvelin had no right to express an opinion on a question which concerned solely the King's Government and Parliament. The British reply irritated by its curt correctness.

Equally unfortunate were some incidents in the ensuing debates on this topic. Some members emphasized their loyalty by adverting tartly to the connections of Thomas Paine and English reformers with the French Jacobins. On 31st May the Duke of Richmond charged that writer with being an emissary from abroad, because he had advised the destruction of the British navy.[74] There is no such passage in the "Rights of Man"; and the Duke must have read with the distorting lens of fear or hatred the suggestion that, if England, France, and the United States were allied, a very small navy would be needed, costing not more than half a million a year.[75] But this incident is typical of the prejudice that was growing against France. Grenville in the same debate declared that the Corresponding Societies avowed their connection with foreign clubs and were engaged in circulating pamphlets. The conclusion was obvious, that close relations with France must be avoided. As to the feeling of the Royal Family, it was manifested in an effusively loyal speech by the Prince of Wales, his first speech at Westminster. In it he marked his entire severance from Fox on this question.

Grenville's complaisance to the French envoys was perhaps little more than a blind to mask his contempt for them and their principles. On 19th June he wrote to Auckland respecting the "ignorance and absurdity of the French mission," but suggested that the picking a quarrel with France would only help the English Jacobins to introduce French notions. Even if this mission were got rid of, some one else might come who might make even more mischief. These expressions refer to the connections which Chauvelin and Talleyrand had formed with the Opposition. As Bland Burges remarked: "Talleyrand is intimate with Paine, Home Tooke, Lord Lansdowne, and a few more of that stamp, and is generally scouted by every one else." George III's words were equally contemptuous and marked his resolve to have as little as possible to do with France.[76] Pitt did not state his opinions on this topic; but he probably held those of Grenville.

The prejudices of the King and the resolves of the two chief Ministers proved fatal to an ardent appeal which came from Paris in the middle of June. As the attitude of the Court of Berlin became more and more warlike, Dumouriez put forth one more effort to gain the friendly mediation of England and thus assure peace with Prussia. Chauvelin, swallowing his annoyance at Grenville's recent note, pointed out that Austria was making great efforts to induce Prussia, Holland, and the lesser German States to join her in the war against liberty. The designs of the monarchs against Poland were notorious; and it was clear that a vast conspiracy was being hatched against the free States of the Continent. Would not England, then, endeavour to stop the formation of this reactionary league?

The occasion was, indeed, highly important. It is conceivable that, if British influence had been powerful at Berlin, a spirited declaration would have had some effect at that Court. Unfortunately our influence had sunk to zero since the Oczakoff fiasco of 1791. Moreover, the Prussian Government had by that time decided to break with France. Her envoys were dismissed from Berlin in the first week of June, and it is probable that Pitt and Grenville by 18th June knew of the warlike resolve of the Prussian Government. In any case, after a delay of twenty days, they sent once more a reply to Chauvelin's request, affirming the earnest desire of His Majesty to contribute to the restoration of peace, but re-asserting his decision in favour of unswerving neutrality. On 24th July Prussia declared war against France, and three days later the Duke of Brunswick issued the famous manifesto to the French people which thrilled the French people with indignation against the hapless sovereigns at the Tuileries whom it was designed to protect.[77]

The outbreak of war on the Rhine and Meuse was an event of incalculable importance. As we have seen, Pitt discouraged the bellicose tendencies of the émigrés and of the Austrian and Prussian Courts. But the passions of the time ran too high to admit of the continuance of peace; and State after State was soon to be drawn into the devouring vortex of strife. Strange to say the first to suffer from the outbreak of hostilities was Poland. That Republic entered on a new lease of life in the spring of the year 1791. The constitution adopted with enthusiasm on 3rd May substituted an hereditary for an elective monarchy, and otherwise strengthened the fabric of that almost anarchic State. Social and civic reforms promised also to call its burghers and serfs to a life of activity or comfort. But the change at once aroused keen dislike at St. Petersburg and Berlin. Prussian statesmen resented any improvement in the condition of their nominal ally, and declared that, if Russia gained a strong position on the Euxine, Prussia and Austria must secure indemnities at the expense of Poland.

The Czarina soon succeeded in heading them in that direction. After the signature of the Peace of Jassy with the Turks early in January 1792, she began openly to encourage the factious efforts of Polish malcontents. The troubles at Paris also enabled her to engage the Courts of Vienna and Berlin in a western crusade on which she bestowed her richest blessing, her own inmost desires meanwhile finding expression in the following confidential utterance: "I am breaking my head to make the Cabinets of Vienna and Berlin intervene in the affairs of France. I wish to see them plunged into some very complicated question in order to have my own hands free."[78] Though her old opponent, Kaunitz, fathomed her intentions, she partly succeeded in persuading the Austrian and Prussian Ministers that their mission clearly was to stamp out Jacobinism at Paris, while Providence reserved for her the duty of extirpating its offshoots at Warsaw. In the Viennese Court, where the value of a regenerated Poland as a buffer State was duly appreciated, there were some qualms as to the spoliation of that unoffending State; but Prussian politicians, in their eagerness for the Polish districts, Danzig and Thorn, harboured few scruples as to betraying the cause of their allies at Warsaw.

Little by little the outlines of a scheme were sketched between Austria and Prussia for securing indemnities for the expenses of the war against France; and it was arranged that Prussia should acquire the coveted lands on the lower Vistula; also Anspach and Baireuth; Austria was to effect the long-desired Belgic-Bavarian exchange, besides gaining parts of Alsace; and it was understood that Russia would annex the Polish Ukraine and work her will in the rest of Poland. The Polish part of the scheme was, however, stiffly opposed by Kaunitz; and in the sequel the old Chancellor ended his long and distinguished career by way of protest against a change of front which he deemed unwise and disgraceful.[79]

Early in May everything was ready for the restoration of anarchy in Poland. Catharine ordered her troops to enter its borders; and the factious Polish nobles whom she had sheltered during the winter returned to their land and formed a "Confederation" at Targowicz on 14th May for the purpose of undoing the reforms of 1791. Daniel Hailes, our envoy at Warsaw, kept Grenville fully informed of this affair. On 16th June he reported Austria's desertion of Poland, the brutal refusal of the Court of Berlin to accord help to its ally, the heroic efforts of Kosciusko and the Polish levies to resist the Russian armies, and the despair of the patriots of Warsaw, adding the cynical comment that at Warsaw patriotism was only a cloak for private interest, and that the new constitution was generally regarded as the death-blow to Polish independence.[80] Whether he added these words to please Grenville, who had always discouraged the Polish cause,[81] is not easy to say; but the statement cannot be reconciled with Hailes's earlier enthusiasm for that well-meant effort.

On all sides the Polish patriots now found indifference or hostility. The Elector of Saxony (their King-elect) gave them cold words; and Catharine demanded the restoration of the old constitution of which she was a guarantor. King Stanislaus, a prey to deep despondency, saw the defence collapse on all sides, and at the close of June the Russians drew near to Warsaw. Many of the Polish reformers fled to Leipzig and there prepared to appeal to Europe against this forcible suppression of a truly national constitution.

Amidst these scenes Hailes was replaced by Colonel Gardiner, who received from Grenville the following instructions, dated 4th August 1792. He informed him that Hailes had last year been charged "to confine himself to such assurances of His Majesty's good wishes as could be given without committing H.M. to any particular line of conduct with respect to any troubles that might arise on the subject [of the Polish Revolution]. The event has unhappily but too well justified their reserve; and the present situation is such as to leave little hope that the tranquillity of that unfortunate land can be restored without its falling again into the most entire dependence on the power of Russia, even if no further dismemberment of territory should take place." Grenville then stated that Prussia's conduct was due to fear of a strong Government in Poland; but the present alternative (a Russian occupation) would probably be worse for her. He added these sentences: "No intervention of the Maritime Powers [England and Holland] could be serviceable to Poland, at least not without a much greater exertion and expense than the importance to their separate interests could possibly justify.... You are to be very careful not to do anything which could hold out ill-grounded expectations of support from this country."

In these words Grenville passed sentence of death upon Poland. On this important subject he must have acted with the consent of Pitt; but the opinion of the latter is unknown. It would seem that after the weak treatment of the Oczakoff crisis by Parliament, he gave up all hope of saving either Turkey or Poland. If that was impracticable in the spring of 1791, how much more so in August 1792, when French affairs claimed far closer attention? It is worth noticing that several of the Foxites (not Fox himself, for he was still intent on a Russian alliance),[82] now revised their opinion about Catharine II and inveighed against her for trampling on the liberties of Poland. Did they now discover the folly of their conduct in previously encouraging her?

In despair of help from England, some of the patriots of Warsaw turned towards France. But this added to their misfortunes. It gave the schemers of Berlin the longed-for excuse of intervening by force under the pretext that they must stamp out "the French evil" from States bordering on their own. On hearing of the advance of three Prussian columns, Catharine threw her whole weight into Polish affairs.

So closely did the fortunes of Poland intertwine themselves with those of France. The outbreak of the Franco-Austrian war meant ruin for the reformers at Warsaw. Had Austria held to her former resolve, to prevent the triumph of Russia or Prussia in Poland, it is possible that Pitt and Grenville would have decided to support her. As it was, they maintained their cautious and timid neutrality. The reports of Hailes were explicit enough to show that another partition was at hand; but, so far as I can discover, they lifted not a finger to prevent it. The excess of Pitt's caution at this crisis enables us to gauge the magnitude of the disaster to the Polish cause involved by his surrender to the Czarina in the spring and summer of 1791. By a wonderful display of skill and audacity she emerged triumphant from all her difficulties, and now, while egging on the German Powers to war with France, planted her heel on the liberties of Poland. Her conquest was easy and profitable. The restoration of order at Paris proved to be fraught with unexpected dangers, and the German sovereigns scarcely set their hands to the task before they discovered that they were her dupes. If the French war worked disaster at Warsaw, the prospect of a partition of Poland undoubtedly helped to lessen the pressure on France during the campaign of Valmy. Hope of further spoils in 1794–5 distracted the aims of the Allies; and Pitt was destined to see the efforts of the monarchical league in the West weaken and die away under the magnetic influence of the eastern problem. Well would it have been for him if he could have upheld Poland in 1791. By so doing he would have removed the cause of bitter dissensions between the Houses of Romanoff, Hapsburg, and Hohenzollern. As will appear in due course, Revolutionary France achieved her marvellous triumphs partly by the prowess of her sons, but still more owing to the intrigues and feuds which clogged the efforts of the Allies and baffled the constructive powers of Pitt.

CHAPTER III

PEACE OR WAR?

It seems absolutely impossible to hesitate as to supporting our Ally [Holland] in case of necessity, and the explicit declaration of our sentiments is the most likely way to prevent the case occurring.—Pitt to Lord Stafford, 13th November 1792.

One of the first requisites for the study of a period whose outlines are well known, is to bar out the insidious notion that the course of events was inevitable. Nine persons out of ten have recourse to that easy but fallacious way of explaining events. The whole war, they say, or think, was inevitable. It was fated that the Duke of Brunswick should issue his threatening manifesto to the Parisians if violence were offered to Louis XVI; that they should resent the threat, rise in revolt, and dethrone the King, and thereafter massacre royalists in the prisons. The innate vigour of the democratic cause further required that the French should stand their ground at Valmy and win a pitched battle at Jemappes, that victory leading to an exaltation of soul in which the French Republicans pushed on their claims in such a way as to bring England into the field. History, when written in this way, is a symmetrical mosaic; and the human mind loves patterns.

But events are not neatly chiselled; they do not fall into geometrical groups, however much the memory, for its own ease, seeks to arrange them thus. Their edges are jagged; and the slightest jar might have sent them in different ways. To recur to the events in question: the Duke of Brunswick objected to issuing the manifesto, and only owing to the weariness or weakness of old age, yielded to the insistence of the émigrés at his headquarters: the insurrection at Paris came about doubtfully and fitfully; the issue on 10th August hung mainly on the personal bearing of the King; the massacres were the work of an insignificant minority, which the vast mass regarded with sheer stupefaction; and even the proclamation of the French Republic by the National Convention on 21st September was not without many searchings of heart.[83]

Meanwhile Pitt and Grenville had not the slightest inkling as to the trend of events. The latter on 13th July 1792 wrote thus to Earl Gower at Paris: "My speculations are that the first entrance of the foreign troops [into France] will be followed by negotiations; but how they are to end, or what possibility there is to establish any form of government, or any order in France, is far beyond any conjectures I can form."[84] This uncertainty is illuminating. It shows that Pitt and Grenville were not farseeing schemers bent on undermining the liberties of France and Britain by a war on which they had long resolved, but fallible mortals, unable to see a handbreadth through the turmoil, but cherishing the hope that somehow all would soon become clear. As to British policy during the summer of 1792, it may be classed as masterly inactivity or nervous passivity, according to the standpoint of the critic. In one case alone did Pitt and Grenville take a step displeasing to the French Government, namely, by recalling Gower from the embassy at Paris; and this was due to the fall of the French monarchy on 10th August, and to the danger attending the residence of a noble in Paris. Only by a display of firmness did Gower and his secretary, Lindsay, succeed in obtaining passports from the new Foreign Minister, Lebrun.[85]

That follower of Dumouriez had as colleagues the former Girondin Ministers, Clavière, Roland, and Servan. Besides them were Monge (the physicist) for the Navy, and Danton for Justice, the latter a far from reassuring choice, as he was known to be largely responsible for the massacres in the prisons of Paris early in September. Little is known about the publicist, Lebrun, on whom now rested the duty of negotiating with England, Spain, Holland, etc. It is one of the astonishing facts of this time that unknown men leaped to the front at Paris, directed affairs to momentous issues, and then sank into obscurity or perished. The Genevese Clavière started assignats and managed revolutionary finance; Servan controlled the War Office for some months with much ability, and then fell; Pétion, Santerre, the popular Paris brewer, and an ex-hawker, Hanriot, were successively rulers of Paris for a brief space.

But of all the puzzles of this time Lebrun is perhaps the chief. In his thirtieth year he was Foreign Minister of France, when she broke with England, Holland, Spain, and the Empire. He is believed by many (e.g., by W. A. Miles, who knew him well) to be largely responsible for those wars. Yet who was this Lebrun? Before the Revolution he had to leave France for his advanced opinions, and took refuge at Liége, where Miles found him toiling for a scanty pittance at journalistic hack-work. Suffering much at the hands of the Austrians in 1790, he fled back to Paris, joined the Girondins, wrote for them, made himself useful to Dumouriez during his tenure of the Foreign Office, and, not long after his resignation, stepped into his shoes and appropriated his policy. In order to finish with him here, we may note that he voted for the death of Louis XVI, and, as President of the Executive Council at that time, signed the order for the execution. He and other Girondins were driven from power on 2nd June 1793 (when Hanriot's brazen voice decided the fate of the Girondins) and he was guillotined on 23rd December of that year, for the alleged crime of conspiring to place Philippe Egalité on the throne. Mme. Roland, who helped Lebrun to rise to power, limns his portrait in these sharp outlines: "He passed for a wise man, because he showed no kind of élan; and for a clever man, because he was a fairly good clerk; but he possessed neither activity, intellect, nor force of character." The want of élan seems to be a term relative merely to the characteristics of the Girondins, who, whatever they lacked, had that Gallic quality in rich measure.

Chauvelin, the French ambassador in London, is another of these revolutionary rockets. Only in fiction and the drama does he stand forth at all clearly to the eye. History knows him not, except that he had been a marquis, then took up with the Girondins, finally shot up among the Jacobins and made much noise by his intrigues and despatches. With all his showiness and vanity he had enough shrewdness to suit his language at the French embassy in Portman Square to the Jacobin jargon of the times. After the September massacres the only hope for an aristocratic envoy was to figure as an irreproachable patriot. Chauvelin's dealings with the English malcontents therefore became more and more pronounced; for indeed they served both as a life insurance and as a means of annoying Pitt and Grenville in return for their refusal to recognize him as the ambassador of the new Republic. Londoners in general sided with the Ministry and snubbed the French envoys. Dumont describes their annoyance, during a visit to Ranelagh, at being received everywhere with the audible whisper, "Here comes the French embassy"; whereupon faces were turned away and a wide space was left around them.[86]

Such, then, were the men on whom largely rested the future of Europe. Lebrun mistook fussiness for activity. At a time when tact and dignity prescribed a diminution of the staff at Portman Square, he sent two almost untried men, Noël and, a little later, Benoît, to help Chauvelin to mark time. Talleyrand also gained permission to return to London as adjoint to Chauvelin, which, it appears, was the only safe means of escaping from Paris. Chauvelin speedily quarrelled with him. But the doings of the French embassy concern us little for the present, as Pitt and Grenville paid no attention to the offers, similar to those made in April, which Lebrun charged his envoys to make for an Anglo-French alliance. It is not surprising, after the September massacres, that Ministers should hold sternly aloof from the French envoys; but we may note that Miles considered their attitude most unwise. He further remarked that the proud reserve of Grenville was almost offensive.[87] We made the acquaintance of Miles as British agent at Paris in 1790 and noted his consequential airs. In 1792 they were full blown.

The opinions of George III and Pitt on the events of that bloody harvest-time in Paris are very little known. The King's letters from Weymouth to Pitt in August–September are few and brief. On 16th September, after the arrival of news of the massacres, he writes to say that his decision respecting the Prince of Wales's debts is irrevocable. After that there is a long silence. Pitt's reserve is equally impenetrable. We know, however, from the letters of Burke that the conduct of Ministers deeply disappointed him. Writing to Grenville on 19th September he says that the crisis exceeds in gravity any that is recorded in history; and he adds these curious words: "I know it is the opinion of His Majesty's Ministers that the new [French] principles may be encouraged, and even triumph over every interior and exterior resistance, and may even overturn other States as they have that of France, without any sort of danger of their extending in their consequences to this Kingdom."[88] Can we have a clearer testimony to the calm but rigid resolve with which Pitt and his colleague clung to neutrality? On the following day (the day of the Battle of Valmy) Pitt frigidly declined the request of the Austrian and Neapolitan ambassadors, that the British Government would exclude from its territories all those who should be guilty of an attack on the French royal family. On 21st September Grenville issued a guarded statement on this subject to the corps diplomatique; but it was far from meeting the desires of the royalists.[89]

Reticence is a virtue over-developed in an aristocracy—"that austere domination," as Burke terms it. The virtue is slow in taking root among democracies. The early Radical clubs of Great Britain regarded it as their cherished privilege to state their opinions on foreign affairs with Athenian loquacity; and the months of October and November 1792, when we vainly seek to know the inner feelings of Pitt, are enlivened by resolutions expressing joy at the downfall of tyrants, and fervent beliefs in the advent of a fraternal millennium, the first fruits of which were the election of Paine as deputy for Calais to the National Convention.

In the dealings of nations, as of individuals, feelings often count for more than interests. This was the case in the last four months of the year 1792, when the subjects in dispute bulked small in comparison with the passions and prejudices which magnified and distorted them. The psychology of the time therefore demands no less attention than its diplomacy. Its first weeks were darkened by news of the September massacres. Even now the details of that cowardly crime arouse horror: and surely no part of Carlyle's epic sinks so low as that in which he seeks to compare that loathsome butchery with the bloodshed of a battlefield.[90] No such special pleading was attempted by leaders of thought of that period. On 10th September Romilly, a friend of human progress, wrote to Dumont: "How could we ever be so deceived in the character of the French nation as to think them capable of liberty?... One might as well think of establishing a republic of tigers in some forest of Africa." To which the collaborator of Mirabeau replied: "Let us burn all our books; let us cease to think and dream of the best system of legislation, since men make so diabolical a use of every truth and every principle."[91] These feelings were general among Frenchmen. Buzot stated that the loss of morality, with all its attendant evils, dated from the September massacres.

It seems strange that the democratic cause made headway in England after this fell event. Probably its details were but dimly known to the poor, who were at this time the victims of a bad harvest and severe dearth. The months of September and October were marked by heavy and persistent rains. The Marquis of Buckingham on 23rd September wrote at Stowe to his brother, Lord Grenville, that he was living amidst a vortex of mud, clay, and water such as was never known before—the result of six weeks of unsettled weather, which must impair the harvest and increase the difficulty of maintaining order.[92] Certainly the stars in their courses fought against the ancien régime. The rains which made a receptive seed-bed for the writings of Paine also hampered the progress of Brunswick towards the Argonne, crowded his hospitals with invalids, and in part induced that inglorious retreat. As the storms lasted far into the autumn, disaffection increased apace.

The results serve to enliven the dull tones of our Home Office archives. There one reads of bread riots and meal riots so far back as May 1792, in which stalls are overturned and despoiled; also of more persistent agitation in the factory towns of the North. Liverpool leads off with a dock-strike that is with difficulty ended. Then the colliers of Wigan stop work and seek to persuade all their comrades to follow their example. Most threatening of all is the situation at Manchester and Sheffield. There, in addition to disorder among the townsfolk, disaffection gains ground among the troops sent to keep order. This again is traceable to the dearness of food, for which the scanty pay of the trooper by no means suffices. Here, then, is the opportunity for the apostle of discontent judiciously to offer a cheap edition of the "Rights of Man," on which fare the troop becomes half-mutinous and sends in a petition for higher pay. This the perplexed authorities do not grant, but build barracks, a proceeding eyed askance by publicans and patriots as the beginning of military rule.[93]

The South of England, too, is beset by fears of a novel kind. After the overthrow of the French monarchy on 10th August fugitives from France come fast to the coasts of Kent and Sussex. The flights become thicker day by day up to the end of that fell month of September. Orthodox priests, always in disguise, form the bulk of the new arrivals. As many as 700 of them land at Eastbourne, and strain the hospitality of that little town. About as many reach Portsmouth and Gosport, to the perplexity of the authorities. When assured that they are staunch royalists and not apostles of Revolution, the commander allots shelter in the barracks at Forton, where for the present they exist on two pence a day each. Plymouth, which receives fewer of them, frowns on the newcomers as politically suspect and economically ruinous. The mayor assures Dundas that, if more priests arrive, or are sent there, they will be driven away by the townsfolk for fear of dearth of corn. In Jersey the food question eclipses all others; for 2,000 priests (so it is said) land there, until all ideas of hospitality are cast to the winds and the refugees are threatened with expulsion. Only in the vast obscurantism of London is there safety for these exiles. A subscription list is started on their behalf; the King offers the royal house at Winchester for the overplus at Portsmouth: and by degrees the scared throngs huddle down into the dire poverty and uneasy rest that are to be their lot for many a year.[94]

Strange adventures befell many of the French nobles in their escape. The Duc de Liancourt, commanding the troops at Rouen, was fain to flee to the coast, hire a deckless craft, and conceal himself under faggots. In that manner he put to sea and finally made the opposite coast at Hastings. There, still nervous, he made his way to the nearest inn, and, to proclaim his insularity, called for porter. The beverage was too much for him, and he retired to his room in a state of unconscious passivity. On his awaking, the strange surroundings seemed those of a French lock-up; but as he crept down to make his escape, the mugs caught his eye; and their brightness convinced him that he was in England. Such was his story, told to the family at Bury, where Fanny Burney was staying. Several of the wealthier French refugees settled at Richmond, and there found Horace Walpole as charmer and friend. But the most distinguished group was that at Juniper Hall, near Dorking where finally Mme. de Staël and Talleyrand enlivened the dull days and long drives with unfailing stores of wit. We shall later on make the acquaintance of the French émigrés in a more active and bellicose mood.

Such, then, was the mental condition of our folk. Depressed by rain and dear food, beset by stories of plotters from Paris, or harrowed by the tales of misery of the French émigrés, Britons came to look on France as a land peopled by demons, who sought to involve other lands in the ruin to which they had reduced their own. In this state of nervousness and excitement little was needed to bring about a furious reaction on behalf of Church and King.

The follies of English democrats helped on this reaction. Whispers went about of strange and threatening orders of arms at Birmingham. A correspondent at the midland capital informed Dundas at the end of September that a Dr. Maxwell, of York, had ordered 20,000 daggers, which were to be 12 inches in the blade and 5 1/4 inches in the handle. The informant convinced the manufacturer that he must apprise the Home Secretary of this order and send him a specimen of the weapon. Probably it was the same which Burke melodramatically cast down on the floor of the House of Commons during his speech of 28th December. The dimensions exactly tally with those named by the biographer of Lord Eldon, who retained that dagger, though Bland Burges also put in a claim to have possessed it. The scepticism which one feels about this prodigious order of daggers, which others give as 3,000, is somewhat lessened by finding another letter, of 2nd October 1792, addressed to Dundas by James Maxwell of York, who stated that he highly disapproved of the "French" opinions of his younger brother (specimens of whose letters he enclosed), and had just given him £500 so as to dissuade him from going to Manchester to stir up discontent there.[95] This unbrotherly conduct condemns the elder Maxwell, but his information to some extent corroborated that which came from Birmingham. The whole affair may have been merely a device to frighten Ministers; but report says that Pitt took it seriously and ascribed to him the singular statement that Ministers soon might not have a hand to act with or a tongue to speak with.[96]

Certainly there was a good deal of discontent in the manufacturing towns, but it is not easy to say whether it resulted more from dear food or from political reasons. At Stockport a new club styled "The Friends of universal Peace and the Rights of Man," issued and circulated a manifesto asserting their right to inquire into political affairs:

It is our labour that supports monarchy, aristocracy, and the priesthood.... We are not the "swinish multitude" that Mr. Burke speaks of. A majority of the House of Commons is returned by less than 6,000 voters; whereas, if the representation were equal (and we sincerely hope that it shortly will be), nearly that number will elect every single member. Not one-twentieth part of the commoners of Great Britain are electors.... We have a National Debt of more than £270,000,000, and pay £17,000,000 a year in taxes. More than one fourth of our incomes goes in taxes.[97]

The Radical clubs also showed a desire to pry into foreign affairs; witness the following letter from Thomas Hardy to Dr. Adams, Secretary of the London Society for Constitutional Information:

No. 9 Piccadilly (London), Sept. 21 1792.[98]

The London Corresponding Society having taken the resolution of transmitting to the French National Convention an address ... to assure that suffering nation that we sympathize with them in their misfortunes; that we view their exertions with admiration; that we wish to give them all such contenance [sic] and support as individuals unsupported and oppressed themselves can afford; and that, should those in power here dare (in violation of the nation's pledged faith of neutrality and in opposition to the well-known sentiments of the people at large) to join the German band of despots united against Liberty, we disclaim all concurrence therein, and will to a man exert every justifiable means for counteracting their machinations against the freedom and happiness of mankind.

I am ordered by the Committee to acquaint the Society for Constitutional Information therewith, in order to be favoured with their opinions thereon, and in hopes that, if they approve the idea and recommend its adoption to the different societies, the publication of such a respectable number of real names will greatly check the hostile measures which might otherwise be put in execution.

On 5th October the Society for Constitutional Information agreed to the plan, and ordered the drafting of a joint address to the French Convention. By this time the news of the successful stand of the French troops against the Allies at Valmy and the subsequent retreat of the latter greatly encouraged the English democrats; and a more militant tone appears in their addresses. Thus in that meeting of 5th October a letter was read from Joel Barlow containing these sentences: "A great Revolution in the management of the affairs of nations is doubtless soon to be expected through all Europe; and in the progress of mankind towards this attainment it is greatly to be desired that the convictions to be acquired from rational discussion should precede and preclude those which must result from physical exertion."

Why "precede and preclude"? The two expressions are incompatible. It seems that some more moderate member must have added the latter word as a sop to the authorities. In any case the last words of the sentence were clearly intended as a threat. On 26th October, John Frost being in the chair, the same Society framed the following resolution:

That the Secretary do procure correct copies of the Manifesto published by the late General Burgoyne while in America, of the first Manifesto lately published by the Duke of Brunswick in France, of the last Royal Proclamation against writings and meetings in England, and of the Emperor's recent proclamation at Brussels on the same subject; in order that these four pieces may be printed fairly together on one sheet of paper, and be transmitted by this Society to all the associated Societies in Great Britain.[99]

It was then resolved to publish this resolution in the "Argus," "Morning Chronicle,"[100] "Star," "Morning Post," "English Chronicle," "World," and "Courier." These papers supported the democratic cause. In order to counteract their influence Pitt and his colleagues about this time helped to start two newspapers, "The Sun" and "The True Briton," the advent of which was much resented by Mr. Walter of "The Times," after his support of the Government.[101] Apparently these papers were of a more popular type, and heralded the advent of a cheap and sensational royalism. Sheridan wittily advised that the motto of "The Sun" should be, not merely the beginning, but the whole of the passage:

Solem quis dicere falsum
Audeat? Ille etiam caecos instare tumultus
Saepe monet, fraudemque, et operta tumescere bella.[102]

The combined address from several patriotic (i.e. reform) societies, arranged for by Thomas Hardy, was not read at the bar of the French Convention until 7th November. It set forth that the five thousand signatories indignantly stepped forth to rescue their country from the opprobrium thrown upon it by the base conduct of the Government. In vain did Ministers seek to overawe the timid and mislead the credulous: for Knowledge and Reason were making great strides in England, so that Britons now looked on Frenchmen only as "citizens of the world, children of the common Father," not as enemies to be assassinated "at the command of weak or ambitious Kings, or of corrupt Ministers." Their real enemies were the destructive aristocracy, "the bane of all the countries of the earth. You have acted wisely in banishing it from France." They (the signatories) could not take up arms to help France, because the Government had pledged the national faith that it would remain neutral. The Elector of Hanover had joined his troops to those of traitors and robbers; "but the King of England will do well to remember that England is not Hanover; should he forget this, we will not forget it.... We ardently wish a Triple Alliance, not of crowned heads, but of the people of America, France, and Great Britain will give liberty to Europe and peace to the world." The address was signed by Margarot and Hardy. It and other addresses were reported verbatim by our chargé d'affaires, Munro, to the Foreign Office.[103]

The democratic ferment in England speedily aroused a decided opposition. Macaulay probably does not much exaggerate when he says that out of twenty well-to-do persons nineteen were ardently loyal and firmly anti-Jacobin. The month of November saw the formation of an "Ante [sic]-Levelling Society, for supporting the Civil Power in suppressing Tumults and maintaining the constitutional Government of this Country in King, Lords, and Commons." Its programme leaves much to be desired in the matter of style, but nothing in respect to loyalty.[104] The club was founded by Reeves and others. Hardy notes in his memoirs that it soon began to do much harm to the Corresponding Society.

Far aloof from this turmoil stands the solitary and inscrutable figure of Pitt. At this time he was leading, almost with ostentation, the life of a country gentleman, dividing his time between Holwood and Walmer Castle. Very few of his letters of this period survive. Writing from Walmer on 16th October to Grenville, he makes merely a verbal alteration in an important despatch on which the latter consulted him. Indeed he left the conduct of foreign affairs to Grenville far more fully than he had done to the Duke of Leeds. I have found no draft of a despatch written wholly by Pitt at the time, or indeed at the crisis that followed. There is, however, a significant phrase in his letter to Grenville, that, if the French retained Savoy, this would bring about a new order of things.[105] For the most part Pitt at this time gave himself up to rest and recreation at Walmer Castle. The charm of the sea and of the Downs seems to have laid hold on him; for General Smith, writing to Lord Auckland from Walmer, says that Pitt is soon in love with the King's present and gladly spends there all the time he can spare. Lord and Lady Chatham were with him and encouraged his passion for that retired spot. A little later he had a flying visit from one who was to become a devoted friend, the brilliant and versatile Earl of Mornington. Coming over from Ramsgate and lunching at Walmer, he found that Pitt had so far taken up with country sports as to follow the hounds in chase of "a basketted hare."

Apart from the bad harvest and the spectre of want which crept over the country, Pitt found little to alarm him at this time. In preparation for the opening of Parliament, he distributed to each of his friends six printed copies of his speech on the abatement of the Spanish armament taxes, for the purpose of circulation in the country.[106] Clearly he thought that the proposed economies in the public services would salve the prevailing discontent. At the close of October the French agent, Noël, reported to Lebrun that Pitt was not arming, and was still inclined to hold aloof from French affairs.[107] In fact, so late as 6th November, Grenville wrote to Auckland that on all grounds non-intervention in continental affairs is the best policy for Great Britain.[108]

But now a time drew near when anger was to expel calculation; when the impulses of the populace flung aside the counsels of statesmen, and the friends of universal peace helped to loose the dogs of war. This new phase in the life of Europe opened up when the dense columns of Dumouriez drove the thin lines of Austria from a strong position at Jemappes (6th November). Mons opened its gates on the following day; and the other towns of Belgium speedily followed suit, the French receiving a hearty welcome everywhere. The conquest of the Belgic Provinces puffed up the French with boundless pride mingled with contempt for the old Governments; and these feelings awakened a formidable response in these islands. The news of the conquest of the Pays Bas by the sansculottes, received with bewilderment and disgust in Piccadilly, aroused wild hopes among the weavers of Spitalfields. "The activity and insolence of the French emissaries and their allies in this country have certainly increased much with Dumouriez's success," so wrote Grenville to Auckland on 26th November.

In these days we smile at the notion of foreign agents influencing public opinion; but it seems certain that Chauvelin and his staff made persistent efforts to fan the embers of discontent into a flame.[109] Lord Sheffield declared that even the neighbourhood of Sheffield Park, near Lewes, was thoroughly worked by French emissaries; but it is not unlikely that landlord nervousness transfigured some wretched refugees, on their way from the coast, into Jacobinical envoys. Certainly the town which gave him his title was in a dangerous state. An officer stationed there describes the joy of the men of Sheffield in celebrating Dumouriez' victory. They roasted an ox whole, devoured it, and then formed a procession, 10,000 strong, behind the French tricolour and a picture which represented Dundas stabbing Liberty and Burke treading down "the swinish multitude." He states that they were enrolled in Corresponding Societies, had bought firearms, and were seeking to corrupt the soldiery.[110]

Derby seems to have been equally fervid, if we may judge by the address which on 20th November went from its branch of the Society for Constitutional Information to the French National Convention, couched in these terms. "It was reserved for the Gallic Republic to break the accursed knot which has leagued Kings for ages past against the rest of the world. Reason and Philosophy are making great strides; and precedent and hereditary notions go fast to decline. By teaching mankind that they are all equal in rights, you have dedicated a glorious edifice to Liberty, which must hereafter prove the dungeon of tyrants and the asylum of the oppressed."[111]

Still more seditious was the action of the London Corresponding Society. On 28th November Joel Barlow and John Frost, deputed by that body, presented an address to the French Convention, congratulating it on the triumphs of liberty, and assured Frenchmen that innumerable societies and clubs were springing up in England. "After the example given by France," they said, "Revolutions will become easy. Reason is about to make rapid progress; and it would not be extraordinary if in a much less space of time than can be imagined, the French should send addresses of congratulation to a National Convention of England." They then informed the French deputies that 1,000 pairs of shoes had come from the Society as a gift to the soldiers of liberty, and the gift would be repeated weekly for the next six weeks. They also presented an address which ended thus: "Other nations will soon follow your steps in this career of improvement, and, rising from their lethargy, will arm themselves for the purpose of claiming the Rights of Man with that all-powerful voice which man cannot resist." Next came a deputation from the English and Irish residents in Paris, which assured the French deputies that a majority of the British people desired to copy their example, and that the old Governments would soon survive merely as a memory. The three addresses aroused immense enthusiasm, and a decree was passed for their printing and circulation.[112]

These ecstatic praises of the Convention sounded oddly, as that body had just been discussing a petition from several Parisians who had lately been imprisoned without knowing why or by whom. And the Belfast address of congratulation on the progress of religious liberty was followed by the complaints of two members of the Convention that they had been half drowned at Chartres for a profession of atheism.[113] But undoubtedly these addresses by British Radicals caused exultation on both sides of the Channel. Frenchmen believed that our people were about to overthrow the Cabinet;[114] while the visitors returned home to trumpet forth the triumphs of Reason and the doom of Tyranny.

Certainly the action of the French Convention seemed to assume the speedy advent of a Jacobinical millennium. To the eye of faith the headlong flight of the Austrians from Belgium opened up boundless vistas of conquest, or rather, of fraternization with liberated serfs. Consequently the month from 16th November to 15th December witnessed the issue of four defiantly propagandist decrees. That of 16th November enjoined on French generals the pursuit of the Austrians on to any territory where they might find refuge—obviously a threat to the German and Dutch States near at hand. On the same day the French deputies decreed freedom of navigation on the estuary of the River Scheldt within the Dutch territory, which that people had strictly controlled since the Treaty of Münster (1648). In this connection it is well to remember that the right of the Dutch to exclude foreigners from that estuary had been recognized by France in five treaties signed with Great Britain since the Peace of Utrecht. Further, by the Anglo-Dutch alliance of the year 1788, we had covenanted to uphold the rights of the Dutch in this and other respects. Thus, the French Republic was taking upon itself to rescind a well-established right of the Dutch Republic.

There is, however, another side to this question. The law of Nature, as distinct from the law of nations, forbade the barring of a navigable river to the commerce of aliens; and in this particular case the exclusive privileges retained by the Dutch had almost strangled the trade of Antwerp. Visitors describe the desolate aspect of the quays and streets in a city which was clearly designed to be one of the great marts of the world. Of this gospel of Nature, as set forth by Rousseau, the French were the interpreters; but they would have done well to appeal to Holland and Great Britain to abrogate this odious privilege, adding also the assurance, formerly given by Dumouriez, that Belgium would never become French.

Unfortunately the disinterested character of the crusade for liberty was now belied by two additional decrees which created the worst possible impression. On 19th November the French Convention declared its resolve to "grant fraternity and assistance to all people who wish to recover their liberty," and further ordered its generals to give effect to this decree. Eight days later it rescinded the former resolution, that France would make no conquests, by ordering the incorporation of Savoy in the French Republic. The priest Grégoire was equal to the task of proving that this involved no contradiction of the former principle, because the Savoyards wished to join France and Nature herself had proclaimed the desirability of union. By the same patriotic logic France could rightfully absorb all parts of the Continent where Jacobins abounded and natural frontiers were lacking.

These decrees brought about an entirely new situation. The annexation of Savoy furnished a practical commentary on the airy proposals announced on 16th and 19th November; but these alone were sufficient to cause Pitt and Grenville the deepest concern. On the 27th the latter wrote to Auckland at The Hague in terms which show his conviction that France meant to revolutionize the Dutch Republic, and also, if possible, Great Britain. Respecting the decrees of the 16th and 19th he wrote: "The whole is a concerted plan to drive us to extremities, with a view of producing an impression in the interior of the country."[115] That is, he believed the Convention to be set on forcing England either to declare war, or to give way disgracefully; and in either case the result would be an increase of seditious feeling in these islands. This continued to be his view. For on 4th December, after reading the seditious addresses of the English societies to the Convention, he wrote again to Auckland that the French evidently relied on the malcontents both in England and Holland to paralyse the Governments; and, he added, "This is above all others a reason for firmness in the present moment, and for resisting, while the power of resistance is yet in our hands. For the success of their unfounded claims would not only give rise to new pretensions, but would give them additional influence."[116] Pitt's views were the same, though he stated them more firmly and not as an alarmist. On 9th December he wrote to the Earl of Westmorland, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, that the gross disregard of treaties shown of late by France, her encouragement of the spirit of revolt in all lands, and her public reception of addresses from English societies, "full of treasonable sentiments," compelled the Government, though very reluctantly, to add to the armed forces. He added these words: "I am clear that the circumstances require vigour and decision both at home and abroad. And the spirit of the country seems within these last ten days to have taken so favourable a turn that I think we may look with great confidence to the event."[117] Thus Pitt and Grenville equally felt the need of firmness in resisting the French decrees, partly because of their aggressive and illegal nature, but also because surrender would inflate the spirits of British malcontents.

Current events served to strengthen this opinion. France had hitherto won all the points of the game by sheer audacity. Everywhere she had attacked, and everywhere she had found unexpected weakness. Custine's army had extorted a forced loan from Frankfurt. Dumouriez was threatening Aix-la-Chapelle on the east, and the Dutch on the north. The spirit which animated the French Foreign Office appears in the letter which Lebrun, its chief, wrote to Dumouriez on 22nd November: "To the glory of having freed the Belgian Catholics, I hope you will join that of delivering their Batavian brothers from the yoke of the Stadholder."[118] There can be no doubt that the general laid his plans for that purpose, though he also sent pacific overtures to Auckland at The Hague.[119]

To crown the indignation of royalists, there came the tidings that on 3rd December the French Convention decreed the trial of Louis XVI for high treason against the nation. The news aroused furious resentment; but it is noteworthy that Pitt and Grenville rarely, if ever, referred to this event; and that, before it was known, they had declared the impossibility of avoiding a rupture with the French Government if it persisted in adhering to the November decrees. On this question the final court of appeal is the despatches and letters of our Ministers. An examination of them discloses the reasons for their firmness. On 13th November, when the evacuation of Brussels by the Austrians was known, Ministers assured the Dutch Government that they would oppose a French invasion of Holland. They charged Auckland to declare that His Majesty had "no hesitation as to the propriety of his assisting the Dutch Republic as circumstances might require, against any attempt on the part of any other Power to invade its dominions or to disturb its Government." This declaration was to be published in order to discourage the plots of the Dutch "Patriots," and to warn the French Government and its general of the danger of a hostile advance. Auckland replied on 16th November: "It is impossible to convey to Your Lordships an adequate sense of the impression made by this voluntary declaration of His Majesty's sentiments and intentions respecting the Republic on the occasion of the present crisis. The generosity of this measure, which in a few hours was generally known, and which to-morrow will be circulated on the Continent in the newspapers of the Republic, is acknowledged by everyone." The Prince of Orange at once wrote to thank the King for this proof of his friendship, and added the suggestion that the anchoring of a British squadron in the Downs would, more than anything else, tend to "hold in check our enemies."[120]

Pitt and Grenville did not comply with this last request; and the British declaration itself came just two days too late to give pause to the National Convention, before it published the decree on the opening of the Scheldt. Possibly in the days of telegraphs the warning would have been flashed from The Hague to Paris in time. As it was, both Powers publicly committed themselves on the same day to opposite courses of action from which pride or conviction forbade them to recede. So narrow sometimes is the space that at first divides the paths leading towards peace and war.

The concern of Pitt and Grenville at the French conquest of Belgium appears in their instructions to Stratton, our chargé d'affaires at Vienna, to confer with the Austrian Chancellor, Cobenzl, on the threatening situation, setting forth the desire of George III to contribute to the tranquillity of all the States of Europe. In his reply of 22nd December Cobenzl declared that Austria and Prussia must have indemnities for their expenses in the war, the restoration of monarchy at Paris being another essential to a settlement.[121] These statements were most discouraging: the former pointed to a speedy partition of Poland; and the forcible restoration of the Bourbons was at this time wholly repugnant to the feelings of Pitt.

Meanwhile the prospect of war with France had become far more threatening. The decree of 16th November on the Scheldt, and that of 19th November on helping foreign malcontents, were a direct defiance to all neighbouring States, and especially to Great Britain and Holland. In the latter country the Patriots were, as in 1787, actively helped from Paris, and threatened the existence of the Orange régime, of which we were the guarantors. Moreover, the opening of the Scheldt was a serious blow to Dutch commerce. Sir James Harris, writing from The Hague in December 1784, when this very question brought Joseph II to the brink of war with Holland, quoted the declaration of the Grand Pensionary, that the Dutch ought to spend their last florin "rather than submit to so destructive and humiliating a measure as the opening of the Scheldt."[122] The effusive thanks of the Dutch when the Court of Versailles opposed the demand of Joseph II, shows that they looked on the control of that estuary as vital to their interests. This question was brought to an issue on 23rd November, when French gunboats entered the Scheldt, and, despite the fire of the Dutch guardship, made their way up the river in order to assist in the reduction of the citadel of Antwerp. The senior captain of the gunboats announced that he did this by order of Dumouriez. On 8th December seven French ships sailed up to that city, the first since the Treaty of Münster.

The affair of the Scheldt was not the only cause of alarm. The Dutch authorities managed to get a copy of a secret letter (dated 20th November) from Dumouriez to Maulde, French envoy at The Hague, in which he assured him that he would do his best to keep him in that post (despite the ill will of the Paris Government); for he had much need of him for certain negotiations. He added these words: "I count on carrying liberty to the Batavians (Dutch) as I have done to the Belgians; also that the Revolution will take place in Holland so that things will return to the state they were in 1788." The Dutch Government gave a copy of this letter to Auckland, who forwarded it to Grenville on 23rd November. It reached Whitehall three days later. Curiously enough, Grenville did not hear of the French decree for the opening of the Scheldt until 26th November. But on that day he wrote to Auckland a despatch which shows his conviction that France meant to force us into war, and that the chief question for Great Britain and Holland now was—when should hostilities begin? Clearly, then, Grenville, and probably Pitt, regarded a rupture with France as unavoidable, unless she revoked the aggressive decrees. Nevertheless they decided to send a special envoy to Paris, and drew up rough drafts undated and addressed to some person unnamed, bidding him make careful inquiries into the state of affairs at that capital.

We cannot wonder that Pitt took a gloomy view of things; for on 24th November a "moderate" member of the French Convention proposed an addition to the decree of 19th November (offering help to malcontents in other States), so as to limit it to nations with which France was at war. This proposal—obviously designed to soothe the apprehensions of Pitt—displeased the "patriotic" majority, which disposed of it by carrying the "previous question." After this the decree of 19th November could no longer be treated as a meaningless effervescence of Gallic enthusiasm; and, when taken with the disloyal addresses presented by certain English clubs on 28th November, its reaffirmation produced the worst possible impression.

On the 29th, Nagel, the Dutch envoy in London, proffered a formal appeal for help, in addition to requests which he had made to Grenville a few days before. He further begged him to order the assembling of a squadron at the Downs, or at Gravesend, so as to assist the Dutch speedily, if need arose.[123] Meanwhile our allies (as usually happens with small States in presence of danger) sought to temporize; and herein, as also in the caution of Pitt and Grenville, lay the reason why war did not break out at once. No one can peruse the despatches of our Ministers without seeing that they considered war inevitable, unless the French retracted the obnoxious decrees. It is well to notice that at this time the question of the trial of Louis XVI had not come up for consideration. The dispute turned solely on the frontier rights of the Dutch, which Pitt and his colleagues believed to be violated by France, and which we were in honour bound to vindicate.

On 1st December, then, came the first of those precautionary measures which not seldom precipitate the conflict they are designed to avert. The Cabinet issued a royal proclamation, calling out part of the militia. Ministers took this step partly as a retort to the seditious addresses of English Radical clubs to the French Convention,[124] partly in order to repress tumults. There had been rioting in a few towns, and the reports from Scotland were alarming. On 22nd November Dundas, writing to Pitt from Melville Castle, N.B., stated that sedition had spread rapidly of late in Scotland, and he estimated that five regiments would be needed to hold down Dundee, Perth, and Montrose. He added that the clergy of the Established Church and their following were loyal, the others far otherwise.[125]

Still worse was the news from Ireland. Early in 1792 the Dublin Parliament repealed one or two of the most odious statutes against Roman Catholics; but later in the year contumeliously rejected their petition for the franchise. Consequently the mass of Irishmen was ready to join the Society of United Irishmen, a formidable association founded in Ulster in 1791 by Wolfe Tone. This able young lawyer, fired with zeal for the French Revolution, conceived the statesmanlike notion of banding together both Presbyterians and Catholics in a national movement against the exclusive and dominant English caste. The conduct of the Dublin Parliament made his dream a reality. At once the ultra-Protestant traders of the North clasped hands with the Catholic gentry and peasants of the Centre and South. This unheard-of union was destined to lead Pitt on to a legislative experiment which will concern us later. Here we may notice that the clubs of Irish malcontents proceeded to act on a plan already mooted in the English societies, that of sending delegates to form a National Convention in Dublin. The aim was to constitute a body far more national than the corrupt Protestant clique that sat in Parliament, and, after overawing that body, to sunder the connection with England. The precedent set by the Ulster Volunteers in their meeting at Dungannon in 1782 warranted the hope of an even completer triumph than was then secured. The correspondence that passed between Pitt and the Lord-Lieutenant, Westmorland, reveals the concern which they felt at the news. Pitt advised the early meeting of the Dublin Parliament, the proposal of concessions sufficient to allay discontent, and a determined resistance to all attempts at intimidation. He also suggested the keeping a close watch on the importation of arms, and levying a Militia if it were practicable.[126] In reply Westmorland stated (1st December) that the manifesto of a meeting of United Irishmen in Dublin was most threatening, and that the "French mania" was spreading everywhere. He added: "Belfast is, as always, noisy and republican; but not above 200 or 300 Volunteers are there."[127] It seems probable that the embodying of the Militia in Great Britain was partly with the view of enabling a few regular regiments to proceed to Ireland.

While taking these precautionary measures, Pitt and Grenville adopted a tone far from unfriendly to the French envoy. Earlier in the autumn Grenville refused to see Chauvelin on the ground that the French Government which sent him no longer existed. But after some pourparlers he consented to receive him on 29th November. With his usual hauteur he prepared to teach the ex-Marquis his place from the outset. He placed for him a stiff small chair; but the envoy quickly repelled the slight and vindicated the honour of the Republic by occupying the largest arm-chair available. After this preliminary skirmish things went more smoothly; but only the briefest summary of their conversation can be given here. Chauvelin assured Grenville of the desire of France to respect the neutrality of the Dutch, though they had fired on two French vessels entering the Scheldt. The opening of that river, he said, was a right decreed by Nature, and confirmed to France by the conquest of Brabant—a point which he pressed Grenville to concede. He then charged England with unfriendly conduct in other respects. In reply Grenville said that he welcomed this informal explanation, but he declined to give any assurance on the Scheldt affair. If (said he) France and England were not on good terms, it was not the fault of the latter Power, which had consistently remained neutral but declined to allow the rights of its Allies to be violated.[128]

Equally firm, though more affable, was the behaviour of Pitt in an interview of 2nd December with a Frenchman who was destined to become Foreign Minister under Napoleon. Maret, the future Duc de Bassano, at this time made a very informal début on the stage of diplomacy. Despite many statements to the contrary it is certain that he had no official position in England. He came here merely in order to look after the affairs of the Duke of Orleans, especially to bring back his daughter, who had for some time resided in Suffolk with Mme. de Genlis and "Pamela." Maret's own words to Miles are decisive on this point: "I was not a secret agent; I had no authority to treat, nor had I any mission; and in declaring this to Mr. Pitt and to you I said nothing but the truth."[129] With characteristic mendacity Lebrun afterwards informed the Convention that Maret was a secret agent and that Pitt had requested an interview with him. The interview came about owing to the exertions of William Smith, M.P., a well-intentioned Whig, who hoped much from an informal conversation between Pitt and one of the head clerks of the French Foreign Office. Chauvelin viewed it with jealousy, it being his aim to represent Maret as an emissary to the British and Irish malcontents.[130] Pitt, when he granted the interview, cannot have known of this, or of the design of Lebrun ultimately to foist Maret into the place of Morgues at the French Embassy. Accordingly he welcomed Maret cordially. No tactical skirmish about chairs took place, and Maret afterwards declared that the great Minister behaved affably throughout, brightening his converse at times by a smile. As the personality of the two statesmen and the gravity of the crisis invest this interview with unique interest, Pitt's account of it, which is in the Pretyman MSS., must be given almost in full.

He [Maret] expressed his regret at the distant and suspicious terms on which England and France appeared to stand, his readiness to give me any éclaircissement he could, and his belief that the present French Government would be very glad if means could be found by private agents, with no official character, to set on foot a friendly explanation.

I told him that, if they were desirous of such an explanation, it seemed to me much to be wished under the critical circumstances; as we might by conversing freely learn whether it was possible to avoid those extremities which we should very much regret but which seemed from what we saw of the conduct and designs of France to be fast approaching; and I then mentioned to him distinctly that the resolution announced respecting the Scheldt was considered as proof of an intention to proceed to a rupture with Holland; that a rupture with Holland on this ground or any other injurious to their rights, must also lead to an immediate rupture with this country; and that altho' we should deeply regret the event and were really desirous of preserving, if possible, the neutrality to which we had hitherto adhered, we were fully determined, if the case arose, to give our utmost support to our ally.

His answer was that he hoped nothing of the sort would happen; that he believed there was no design of proceeding to hostilities against Holland; and that it was much the wish of the French Government to be on good terms with this country; that they wished to ménager l'Angleterre, and therefore to ménager l'Hollande; that these were the sentiments of M. le Brun when he left Paris about 3 weeks ago; that he believed them to be those of M. Dumouriez; and that, from the despatches of M. Chauvelin, which he had seen while here, he believed they continued to be those of the Conseil Exécutif; that he thought a confidential explanation on this subject very desirable; and would either go to Paris or write to M. le Brun, to state what had passed in our conversation, and that he was persuaded they would be disposed to [send?] some other person here to enter privately into negotiations upon it. He afterwards dropped an idea that some difficulty might perhaps arise from the Conseil Exécutif feeling itself pressed by the weight of public opinion to propose to us to receive some person here in a formal character. To this I observed that the circumstances would by no means admit of any formal communication, and that they would certainly see the necessity of avoiding the difficulties which must arise from such a proposal, if they were sincere in wishing an explanation with a view to remove obstacles.

Towards the end of the conversation, on his repeating his belief that it would be the wish of the French Government to have such an explanation and to remove, if possible, the grounds of misunderstanding, I remarked to him that, if this was really desired, there was another point which must be attended to—that he must have seen the impression made here by the decree in France avowing a design of endeavouring to extend their principles of government by raising disturbances in other countries; that, while this was professed or attempted, and till we had full security on this point, no explanation could answer its purpose, and that such a conduct must be considered as an act of hostility to neutral nations. He answered that he knew the impression which this circumstance produced, and had seen the decree I mentioned with consternation; that he believed it passed only in a moment of fermentation and went beyond what was intended; that it could be meant only against nations at war, and was considered as one way of carrying on war against them; that he believed it was not conformable to the sentiments of the Conseil Exécutif, and that they might possibly find means to revise it. To this I said that, whatever were the sentiments of the Conseil Exécutif, the decree, as it stood, might justly be considered by any neutral nation as an act of hostility. He concluded by saying that he would immediately send to M. le Brun an account of what had passed, which he hoped might lead to happy consequences.

Maret prefaced his report of this interview by assuring Lebrun that Pitt was decidedly in favour of peace, and in fact dreaded war more than the Whig aristocrats; but, he added, Lord Hawkesbury and the majority of Ministers were for war—a somewhat doubtful statement. Maret's description of the interview is graphic but far from complete. He reported Pitt's gracious effort to minimize the difficulties of form arising from the lapse of official relations between France and England. But (he wrote) the Minister's brow darkened at the mention of the names of Noël and Chauvelin; and he finally suggested that Maret should be the accredited French agent at London.[131]

Pitt's account does not name these personal details, and it lays more stress on the difficulties caused by the French decrees opening the Scheldt and offering help to malcontents. We must further remember that Maret's words of warning to his compatriots on the latter subject were suppressed in the version published at Paris, which therefore gave the impression that Pitt was not deeply moved by recent events. This suppressio veri partly accounts for the persistence of the French deputies in their resolves, which prevented the friendly explanations undoubtedly desired by Pitt and Maret.

Bad news also came in from The Hague, to the effect that the French were demanding a passage through the Dutch fortress of Maestricht. These tidings caused the worst impression. Grenville wrote in reply to Auckland on 4th December. "The conduct of the French in all their late proceedings appears to His Majesty's servants to indicate a fixed and settled design of hostility against this country and the [Dutch] Republic." Equally threatening were "their almost undisguised attempts now making to excite insurrection here and in Holland." Consequently His Majesty had decided to arm in self defence, and he hoped that the Dutch would firmly repel all attempts derogatory to their neutrality. The King (he added), while taking these precautionary measures, would not omit such steps as might lead to friendly explanations with France through the private agents of that Government; but no ambassador would be received.[132] Pitt and Grenville set little store by the soothing explanations of Dumouriez and his friend, Maulde, who had made overtures to Auckland which met with a guarded but not unfavourable response. On their renewal, Auckland received them coldly, remarking that the whole situation was changed by the late violent decrees of the French Convention. At that time, too, the friendly Maulde was recalled and replaced by Tainville, "a professed Jacobin with brutal manners and evident indiscretion,"[133] Thus faded away the last faint hopes in that quarter.

Equally sombre was the outlook at Paris. The pacific reports sent by Maret and Maulde from London and The Hague were before the French Ministers at their meeting on 5th December. They had also the benefit of a lucid and suggestive Mémoire sent by Talleyrand from London a week earlier, setting forth the desirability of a friendly understanding between the two free peoples, who, advancing hand in hand, might give liberty to backward peoples (especially Spanish America), and draw thence boundless benefits. It was the plan which Dumouriez and he had drawn up in the spring of that year. Probably the Executive Council took no notice of it; for certain papers found in the iron chest at the Tuileries cast doubts on the purity of Talleyrand's patriotism. Further, as Pache, Minister at War, hated Dumouriez, personal bias told strongly against the moderate proposals coming from London and The Hague. Nevertheless the Executive Council now decided to defer for the present the invasion of Holland, meanwhile chasing the Austrians beyond the Rhine, and fortifying Antwerp. The last step was declared not to infringe the principles of the Republic, "which oppose the spirit of conquest."

Obviously there was nothing to prevent the same liberal adaptation of these principles to Belgium as Grégoire had proposed for the welfare of the Savoyards. A few deputations of the liberated people, asking for union with France, would enable some equally skilful dialectician to discover that Belgium was naturally a part of the Republic. For the present, however, the Belgians sent a deputation to demand unconditional independence; and it taxed the ingenuity even of Barère, then President of the Convention, to waive aside that request, with airy phrases as to the alliance of the two peoples emanating from the hands of Nature herself (4th December).[134]

Pitt cannot have heard of the French Cabinet's decision of 5th December, but he must have read of the ambiguous treatment of the Belgians at the bar of the Convention the day previously. It had long been a maxim at Whitehall that the Pays Bas must never go to France. To prevent such a disaster England had poured forth blood and treasure for more than a century. Pitt's resolve two years before, to maintain Austrian authority in those provinces, had deeply offended Prussia. Now he and Grenville turned to the Court of Vienna, and on 7th December made friendly overtures to Stadion, Austrian ambassador at London.[135] Thus, the French menace ended the long period of estrangement between Great Britain and Austria, though, as will duly appear, mutual confidence took root very slowly.

On 9th December Lebrun sent off an important despatch to Chauvelin. With respect to the decree of 19th November, it stated that France would never demean herself by assisting rioters, but would respond to the "general will" of a people that desired to break its chains. Further, France could not reverse her decision concerning the Scheldt. She would not revolutionize Holland, but she expected Great Britain not to intervene in support of a constitution which the Dutch considered "vicious and destructive of their interests." Finally, the French Government could not recognize the guarantees of the Dutch constitution undertaken by England and Prussia in 1788.[136] On the same day Lebrun sent a message to Maret, who was still in London, adverting in ironical terms to the military preparations in England, at which the French would feel no alarm, and insinuating that the doctrines of liberty were making rapid progress there. As to negotiations, the only bases on which they could proceed were the recognition of the Republic, and the refusal of the French Cabinet to treat except by a fully accredited envoy.

On receipt of this letter on the 14th, Maret at once showed it to Miles, who urged him to request an immediate interview with the Prime Minister. This was accorded, and at 8 p.m. of that day, Maret met Pitt again. I have found no account of this interview. All we know is that it was short and depressing. Maret had to impart the unwelcome news that all the communications to the French Government must pass through the hands of Chauvelin—a personal triumph for that envoy. Pitt on his side declined to give any answer on the subject of Maret's communication, or on that of receiving Chauvelin.[137] We can imagine that under that stiff and cold exterior the Prime Minister concealed deep agitation; for the determination of the French rigidly to adhere to their decrees, to force Chauvelin upon the British Government, and to require the recognition of the French Republic, meant war.

CHAPTER IV

THE RUPTURE WITH FRANCE

La guerre aux rois était la conséquence naturelle du procès fait au roi de France; la propagande conquérante devait être liée au régicide.—Sorel.

The opening of Parliament on 13th December 1792 took place amidst circumstances that were depressing to friends of peace. Affairs were gyrating in a vicious circle. Diplomacy, as we have seen, had come to a deadlock; but more threatening even than the dispute between Pitt and Lebrun were the rising passions of the two peoples. The republican ferment at Paris had worked all the more strongly since 20th November, the date of the discovery of the iron chest containing proofs of the anti-national intrigues of the King and Queen. Hence the decree (3rd December) for the trial of Louis XVI at the bar of the Convention with its inevitable sequel, the heating of royalist passion in all neighbouring lands. It is one of the many mishaps of the revolutionary movement that its enthusiasm finally aroused an opposite enthusiasm, its fury begot fury, and thus set in a series of cyclones which scarcely spent their force even at Waterloo.

An essentially philosophic movement at the outset, the French Revolution was now guided by demagogues and adventurers, whose only hope of keeping erect lay in constant and convulsive efforts forwards. Worst symptom of all, its armies already bade fair to play the part of the Praetorians of the later Roman Empire. Nothing is more singular at this time than the fear of the troops. Amidst the distress prevalent at Paris, much apprehension was felt at the return of the armies of Custine and Dumouriez. In part, of course, this uneasiness arose from a suspicion that these men, especially the latter, might take up the rôle of Monk and save Louis. But a member of the French Convention assured Miles that the disbanding of those tumultuary forces would bring on a social crisis.

War, [he wrote on 9th December] is to a certain extent inevitable, not so much for the purpose of opening the Scheldt, for that is rather a pretext in order to animate the people and preserve their enthusiasm, but to get rid of 300,000 armed vagabonds, who can never be allowed to return without evident risk to the Convention and Executive Council.... It is her opinion [Madame Roland's] and mine that we cannot make peace with the Emperor without danger to the Republic, and that it would be hazardous to recall an army, flushed with victory and impatient to gather fresh laurels, into the heart of a country whose commerce and manufactures have lost their activity, and which would leave the disbanded multitude without resources or employment.[138]

These words are noteworthy; for they show that prudential or party motives led some at least of the Girondins, formerly friends of England, to desire an extension of the war.

In England, too, the war spirit was rising. The traditional loyalty of the land had been strengthened by the tactful behaviour of George III since Pitt's accession to power. These feelings warmed to a steady glow at the time of the King's illness in 1788–9; and now the trial of Louis XVI, albeit on grounds which Britons could not understand, seemed an act of contemptible cruelty. To bring Louis from Versailles to Paris, to load him with indignities at the Tuileries, to stop his despairing bolt for freedom, to compass his downfall, to attack him in his palace and massacre his defenders, to depose him, and now to try him for his life for the crime of helping on his would-be deliverers, appeared to a nation of sportsmen a series of odious outrages on the laws of fair play. The action of certain Radical Clubs in sending addresses of congratulation to the National Convention also aroused deep disgust; and (as Bland Burges wrote to Auckland on 18th December) Loyal Associations sprang up on all sides.[139] A typical address was sent by the Dover Association to Pitt, as Lord Warden, on 19th December, asking for permission to take arms in defence of King and Constitution against invaders from without or levellers within.[140] The example was widely followed; and thus, as usually happens in this land, the puny preparations of Government were helped on by the eager exertions of the people.

The revulsion in public opinion early in December was so marked as to impress even Chauvelin. He warned Lebrun that within a month the English had so changed as scarcely to be recognizable; but he added: "Pitt seems to have killed public opinion in England." A conversation which Sheridan had with him on 7th December ought to have disproved this fable. The Whig orator sternly reprobated the French decree of 19th November, offering aid to malcontents, and stated that the Opposition desired peace with France, but not if she attacked Holland. Nine-tenths of the people would resent any attempt to interfere with England or her Allies.

This patriotic utterance of Sheridan expressed the feelings of a large part of the Whig Opposition. Parliament on 13th December showed marked approval of the King's Speech, which, while affirming his peaceful intentions, asserted his resolve to strengthen the forces. Lansdowne and Stanhope struck a few jarring notes; but in the Commons the Opposition was almost paralysed by a split between the New and Old Whigs. At a meeting of the party, held on 11th December at Burlington House, the majority decided to support the Government. Indeed Parliament would probably have presented a united front but for the action of Lansdowne, Stanhope, and Fox. Much depended on the conduct of the great orator at this crisis. A warning uttered by him to French Republicans might have had the most salutary effect. Unfortunately his conduct was such as to impair the unity of English sentiment and thereby to encourage the delusions of the men in power at Paris. In the meeting on 11th December he asserted that there was no fear of a revolt (in which he was doubtless correct) and that the calling out of the Militia was a mere trick, which he would strenuously oppose. He admitted that we must support the Dutch if they were attacked, and disapproved of the French decree respecting the Scheldt, but strongly deprecated war on that account. On the 12th he threw caution to the winds, and stated with an oath that there was no address that Pitt could frame on which he would not propose an amendment and divide the House.[141] This is party spirit run mad; but it was in that spirit that Fox went to the House on the 13th.

There he made one of his finest flights of oratory. None of his speeches excels it in beauty of diction and matchless energy of thought. Most forcible was the passage in which he derided the ministerial maxim that the canon of English laws and liberties was complete; that we might thenceforth stand still, and call upon a wondering world to admire it as a model of human perfection. Even more biting were his taunts at Ministers for seeking to stamp out the discontent which their injustice and violence had created.

You have gone upon the principles of slavery in all your proceedings; you neglect in your conduct the foundation of all legitimate government, the rights of the people; and, setting up this bugbear, you spread a panic for the very purpose of sanctifying this infringement, while again the very infringement engenders the evil which you dread. One extreme naturally leads to another. Those who dread republicanism fly for shelter to the Crown. Those who desire Reform and are calumniated are driven by despair to republicanism. And this is the evil that I dread. These are the extremes into which these violent agitations hurry the people, to the decrease of that middle order of men who shudder as much at republicanism on the one hand as they do at despotism on the other.[142]

He then taunted Ministers with abandoning Poland and not opposing the coalition of Austria and Prussia, and asserted that the Cabinet refused to negotiate with France because she was a Republic, and her Ministers had not been anointed with the holy oil of Rheims. The weakest part of the speech was that which dealt with the existing crisis. For of what use was it to point out where Ministers had gone astray months and years before, if he did not now mark out for them a practicable course? In truth, though the prince of debaters, Fox lacked self-restraint, balance of judgement, and practical sagacity. The sole important issue was the encouraging of the peace party at Paris, with a view to the revocation of the aggressive decrees of the Convention. In private, Fox had admitted that they were wholly indefensible; and yet, in order to snatch an oratorical triumph, he fired off a diatribe which could not but stiffen the necks of the French Jacobins. At such a crisis the true statesman merges the partisan in the patriot and says not a word to weaken his own Government and hearten its opponents. To this height of self-denial Fox rarely rose; and the judgement alike of his fellows and of posterity has pronounced this speech a masterpiece of partisan invective and of political fatuity.

For how was it possible to recognize the French Republic until it had withdrawn its threats to existing Governments? Pitt had reason to believe that a firm protest against the aggressive decrees of November was the only means of averting an overturn of international law. He took the proper means of protesting against them, and his protest was disregarded. In such a case, to recognize a revolutionary Government which had just proclaimed its sympathy with malcontents and its resolve to dictate terms to our Dutch allies, would have been a sign of weakness. There was but one chance of peace, namely, that Parliament should give so overwhelming a support to Pitt and Grenville as to convince the tyros at Paris that they had to do, not with a clique, but a nation. This unanimity the efforts of Fox impaired. Some of his friends voted with him from a sense of personal regard; but the greater number passed over to the Government or did not vote. Consequently the Foxites mustered 50 votes against 290.

Equally inopportune was his motion of 15th December, for sending a Minister to Paris to treat with that Government. His knowledge of all that went on at the French Embassy in Portman Square was so exact (witness his repetition publicly on the 13th of the very words of one of Lebrun's despatches to Chauvelin),[143] that he must have known of the informal communications between Pitt and Maret, and of the arrival on the 14th of despatches from Paris, which negatived the requests of the Prime Minister. Doubtless it was this last circumstance which curtailed and weakened Fox's second speech. Grey, Erskine, and Whitbread vigorously supported the motion; but there was a general feeling that the despatch of an ambassador to Paris would be a weak acquiescence in the French claims. The motion was therefore negatived. Pitt was not present at these first debates, not having yet been re-elected by the University of Cambridge after his recent acceptance of the Lord Wardenship of the Cinque Ports. The defence of the Government therefore devolved chiefly upon Dundas, Windham, and Burke—a significant conjunction of names. On 16th December Burke for the first time took his seat on the Treasury Bench.

A national party might now have been formed but for the inaction of the Duke of Portland. During the meetings at his mansion, Burlington House, he evinced strong disapproval of the views of Fox; and, as official leader of the Whigs, he had it in his power to bring nearly the whole of the party over to the Government side. From this course, which would have placed country above party, the Duke shrank; and his followers were left to sort themselves at will. There was a general expectation that Portland would publicly declare against Fox; but friendship or timidity held him tongue-tied. Malmesbury sought to waken him from his "trance," but in vain.[144] He lay under "the wand of the magician" (Pitt's phrase for the witchery that Fox exerted), even when so staunch a Whig as Sir Gilbert Elliot saw that the wizard's enchantments were working infinite mischief.[145]

Owing to the wrong-headedness of Fox and the timidity of Portland, Pitt's triumph in the Commons was not decisive enough to tear the veil away from the eyes of the French Jacobins. Nothing short of unanimity at Westminster could have worked that miracle. Surely not even that novice in diplomacy, Lebrun, would have threatened to appeal from the British Government to the British nation, had he not believed the Government to be without support.

This delusion appears in the memorable decree of 15th December. The French Convention thereby asserts its resolve to revolutionize all countries where its armies are or shall come. It will recognize no institutions alien to the principles of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. All feudal dues, customs, and privileges are to be annulled, and the liberated people will meet in primary assemblies to organize an Administration. Arrangements will be made for defraying the expenses of the liberating army, and for maintaining it while it remains.[146] Finally France declares that she will treat as an enemy the people which refuses to accept Liberty and Equality, and tolerates its prince and privileged castes. The decree is at once followed by a proclamation drawn up for the benefit of the subject peoples whom it may concern. Finally, the Convention decides that the course of rivers must everywhere be free, and directs its generals to enforce that principle with respect to the Scheldt.

In view of this stern reiteration of the right to overturn all Governments that conflict with revolutionary principles, it is impossible to consider the decree of 19th November, offering assistance to malcontent peoples, as a meaningless display of emotion. Subsequent events threw a sinister light on it. The annexation of Savoy on 27th November was not a convincing proof of altruism; and the refusal of the Executive Council, on 8th and 9th December, to reconsider its decision on the Scheldt, marked a firm resolve to carry out French policy in the Pays Bas, even if it led to war with England. Now there came, as a damning corollary, the decree of 15th December, which flung defiance at all Governments of the old type. Like Mohammed, Lebrun stood forth with the "Contrat Social" in one hand, the sword in the other, and bade the world take its choice.

For England there could be no doubt. Pitt and Grenville had decided that the only chance of peace lay in offering a firm front to every act of aggression. In this they had general support. Fox might choose to distort facts by declaring that Ministers were about to plunge the country into war on a matter of form[147] (the refusal to treat officially with the French Republic); but everyone knew that the first aggressive action was that of France, directed against the Anglo-Dutch alliance. The firmness of Ministers gained them support in unexpected quarters. On 20th December, when they asked for a vote for 25,000 seamen, including 5,000 marines, Sheridan heartily declared that he would have supported a vote for 40,000 seamen if that number had been deemed necessary. He also made a suggestion that the British Parliament or people should appeal to the generous instincts of Frenchmen to spare the life of Louis XVI. The proposal came somewhat oddly in a debate for increasing our forces against France; and it brought up Burke in one of his most acrid moods. Such an appeal, he said, was futile, for Louis was in the custody of assassins who were both accusers and judges: his death was inevitable. Sheridan and Fox heartily reprobated this recklessly vindictive language.

Pitt then pointed out that on 17th August George III had expressed an earnest desire for the safety of Louis and the Royal Family of France in terms which were then read out. The same was the desire of every Briton; and the sentiments now expressed in that House would be heard and noted at Paris. If any more formal measure were to be adopted, he suggested the entering a protest in the Journals of the House; but any public representation, he said, must be couched in terms of indignation which must tend to defeat its own object. With this method of procedure Fox and Sheridan expressed their entire concurrence.[148] It is therefore a malicious falsehood to say that Pitt opposed their suggestion.[149] Burke certainly did so, and in the worst possible taste; but Pitt carried it out so far as was deemed desirable. If Sheridan and Fox wished for a public appeal, it was for them to set it on foot.

I must here notice the vague and misleading statements in Godoy's Memoirs (written a generation later) that Spain made strenuous efforts to save the life of Louis XVI and opened "an unlimited credit" at Paris with the view of bribing members of the Convention to secure his acquittal. Further, that he, Godoy, secretly approached Pitt in order to secure his financial aid, which that statesman obstinately refused.[150] The story does not hang well together; for if Spain had already opened an unlimited credit at Paris, why did she want pecuniary help from Pitt? Further, the opening of unlimited credit, presumably with a Parisian bank, did not consort well with the secret methods which were essential to the success of the plan.

In order to probe this matter to the bottom, I have examined the British Foreign Office archives relating to Spain for the months of December and January. They are detailed and apparently complete. F. J. Jackson, our chargé d'affaires at Madrid, wrote to Lord Grenville every three or four days, as the relations of the two States had been far from cordial owing to friction caused by the cession of Nootka Sound, Captain Vancouver having been employed to settle the boundaries and fix a neutral zone between the two Empires. Grenville also wrote three times to Jackson to express his apprehension that the timidity and poverty of Spain would cause her to yield to the French Republic in the matter of some demonstrations on the frontier. But there is no word implying that Spain requested help from England, either pecuniary or diplomatic, in order to save Louis. Early in January Charles IV made such an appeal to the French Convention, but it was treated with contemptuous indifference. At that time the Courts of London and Madrid were beginning to draw closer together in order to withstand the demands of France; but nothing passed between them officially respecting the saving of Louis. Now, where the life of a King was at stake, any communication must have been official, and if it were made through the Spanish ambassador in London, Grenville would certainly have referred to it in his despatches to Madrid.[151] We may therefore dismiss Godoy's story as a cruel and baseless slander, due to the spiteful desire of a discredited politician to drag down a great name nearer to his own level.

It is also worth noting that Malouet, who was then in close touch with Grenville on San Domingo affairs, does not mention in his Memoirs any attempt to involve the Cabinet in a scheme for bribing the Convention—an action which the French exiles in England and Holland were perfectly able to carry out themselves had they been so minded. The only document bearing on this question is a Memorial drawn up on 7th December by Malouet, Lally-Tollendal, and Gillier, stating their horror at the King's trial, and their belief that his life might be spared if George III and the British Government issued a Declaration stating their lively interest in Louis XVI and his family, their resolve for ever to refuse an asylum to all regicides, and to cut off all supplies of food from France if the crime were committed.[152] The Memorial was probably presented to Lord Grenville; but its inutility, or danger, in the proud and exacting mood then prevalent at Paris, is obvious. The confidential reports sent by "M. S." from Paris to Lord Grenville do not refer to any such overture to the Cabinet.[153]

Lastly, there is the curious fact that the ex-abbé Noël, one of Chauvelin's "advisers," came to Miles late on 18th December, and affected much concern at the prospect of the execution of Louis. He then suggested that Pitt should confer with a M. Talon, residing in Sloane Street, who had immense resources and stood well with all parties in France, in order to devise some means for saving the life of that monarch. When Miles asked Noël how Pitt was to assist in this laudable project, no answer was forthcoming. We must commend Noël's prudence; for he had already stated that Talon was under impeachment in France. How a man accused of treason could help his King, save by secretly using some of his immense resources to bribe the deputies, is no more apparent to us than it was to Miles. In fact he detected a snare in this effort to associate Pitt with a wealthy French exile in what must evidently be merely an affair of bribery. He therefore declined to bring the matter before Pitt, whereupon Noël betrayed signs of satisfaction at finding that the Minister really was neutral on French internal affairs.[154] This little episode should open the eyes of detractors of Pitt to the extraordinary difficulty of his position. Of one thing we may be certain. The readiest way of assuring the doom of the hapless monarch was to take up some one of the silly or guileful schemes then mooted for pressing the British Government to take sides in the trial. Pitt's rigorous neutrality was the best means of helping the advocates of Louis in their uphill fight with the hostile Convention.

Reverting to events at Westminster, we note that Ministers, on 21st December, introduced into the Upper House an Aliens Bill for subjecting to supervision the many thousands of foreigners who had flocked to these shores. The debates on this measure showed some approach to unanimity, though Lansdowne and Lauderdale in the Lords, and Fox in the Commons opposed it as a breach of the hospitable traditions of this land. On the 28th Burke spoke in its support with his usual passion, flinging down a Birmingham dagger as a sign of the French fraternity now introduced into these happy islands.[155] After a few alterations in committee, the Bill passed on the last day of the year.

Meanwhile, on 18th December, Lebrun had sent to the Convention a report on the negotiations, which was not adapted to soften the passions of the time, being merely a piece of parliamentary declamation; but, as declamation rather than reason held sway at Paris, some of its phrases must be quoted. After citing with approval passages from the recent speech of Fox, Lebrun referred to the eager interest taken by the British nation in the triumphs of the French arms. "But," he continued, "these glorious events have a quite contrary effect upon the English Minister. In a moment, the dread and jealousy of our victories, the entreaties of cowardly rebels [the French émigrés], the vile intrigues of hostile Courts, and the secret suspicions that the numerous addresses from all parts of England excited, determined him to more decisive military preparations and to an immediate assembling of Parliament." Lebrun then accused Pitt of seeking to stir up public opinion against France, and of exciting, "by the most corrupt means, distrusts, doubts, and disorders." A still more extraordinary charge followed, namely, that Pitt and Grenville, while refusing to acknowledge the French diplomatic agents, had "requested to see them confidentially, to hold communications with them, and to grant them secret conferences."[156] Lebrun then referred in contemptuous terms to the British naval preparations, and stated that he had firmly maintained the decree respecting the Scheldt. He then affirmed the reasonableness of the decree of 19th November; and scouted the notion that France harboured designs against Holland. In answer to this last he had said in effect: "That it was much to be wished that the British Ministry had never meddled more with the internal government of that Republic than we ourselves wish to meddle." Finally, if these disputes led to a rupture, "the war will be only the war of the British Minister against us; and we will not fail to make a solemn appeal to the English nation." ... "In short, we will leave it to the English nation to judge between us, and the issue of this contest may lead to consequences which he [Pitt] did not expect."

In the sordid annals of party strife this report of Lebrun holds a high place. In order to furbish up the dulled prestige of the Gironde he sought to excite national animosity, and to revive the former hatred of the name of Pitt. What could be more criminal than to sneer at the smallness of England's naval preparations? What more false than to charge Pitt and Grenville with secretly begging for interviews with agents whom outwardly they scorned? It is by acts like these that nations are set by the ears; and generally they are at one another's throats before the lie can be exposed. Lebrun's report was received with loud applause. No one questioned the accuracy of its details; and these blind followers of a blind guide unanimously voted that it should be printed and widely circulated. On 20th December Lebrun sent a copy of it to Chauvelin, along with instructions which lost none of their emphasis in the note drawn up at Portman Square. He forwarded another copy of the report to Noël, with this significant explanation: "This document will keep you in touch with the ideas of this country and will show you that I scarcely have this affair in my hands any longer."[157]

This admission is illuminating. The trial of Louis XVI had, as the men of the Mountain foresaw, placed the Girondin Ministry and its followers in a most embarrassing position. Many of them inclined to mercy or to compromises which found little favour with the populace. Accordingly, the procedure at the trial, as also the final verdict, turned largely on the desperate efforts of the Jacobins to discredit their rivals, who sought by all means to keep their foothold in the revolutionary torrent. One of the most obvious devices was to represent the Executive Council as the champion of ultra-democratic ideas as against envious and reactionary England. If this notion gained currency, Lebrun and his colleagues might hope still to ride on the crest of the wave.