GREY’S MOTION FOR PEACE, ETC.
After the Christmas recess, on the 15th of February, Mr. Grey moved an address to the king, praying him to communicate to the executive government of France his readiness to meet any disposition to negociate a general peace. Pitt in reply said that there was a sincere desire for peace, if it could be obtained on honourable terms; but that the country could not break her faith with her allies that remained true to her, or consent to any arrangement which should leave the French in possession of Belgium, Holland, Savoy, Nice, &c. The motion was negatived by one hundred and ninety against fifty. On the 10th of March the same honourable gentleman moved that the house should resolve itself into a committee, to inquire into the state of the nation; in his speech on which he dwelt upon the enormous expenses and hopeless prospects of the war, and represented our commerce as declining, and the country as reduced to a state in which it could not bear any more taxes. Pitt and his friends insisted, however, that the commerce of the country had increased, and was increasing, and justified the lavish expenditure, though much of it was unjustifiable. This motion was also negatived; but a few weeks later Mr. Grey moved a long series of resolutions, charging ministers with numerous acts of misappropriation of the public money, in flagrant violation of various acts of parliament, and of presenting false accounts, calculated to mislead the judgment of the house. The order of the day was likewise carried against this motion, by a majority of two hundred and nine to thirty-eight. On the 10th of May an address to the king was moved in the upper house by the Earl of Guildford, and in the lower house by Mr. Fox, declaring that the duty incumbent on parliament no longer permitted them to dissemble their deliberate opinion, that the distress, difficulty, and peril, to which this country was then subjected, had arisen from the misconduct of the king’s ministers and was likely to increase as long as the same principles which had hitherto guided these ministers should continue to prevail in the councils of Great Britain. Fox enlarged much on “that most fatal of all the innumerable errors of ministers,” their rushing into a ruinous and unnecessary war, instead of mediating between France and the allied powers. He contended that his majesty, by undertaking the office of mediator, would have added lustre to the national character, and have placed Britain in the exalted situation of arbitress of the world. On the other hand, Pitt insisted that the king could not have interposed his mediation without incurring the hazard of involving himself in a war with that power which should have refused his terms. Pitt enlarged on the danger arising to all Europe from the revolutionary decree of the 19th of November, and the insult offered to this country in particular, in the encouragement given to the seditious and treasonable addresses presented to the convention. He contended, that while negociations were pending, war was actually declared by France, and that France, and not England, was therefore the aggressor. This nation, he said, had no alternative; and he asked if the house, after a war of three years, which they had sanctioned by repeated votes and declarations, would now acknowledge themselves in a delusion? whether they would submit to the humiliation and degradation of falsely arraigning themselves, and of passing on their own acts a sentence of condemnation? Pitt said that it was a war of which the necessity and policy were manifest; and that if the country should at any time suffer a reverse of fortune, he should still exhort them to surmount all difficulties by perseverance, until they could obtain safe and honourable conditions of peace. On the other hand, he added, if success should attend our arms, the prospect of obtaining further advantages should not be relinquished by a premature readiness to make peace. These arguments were deemed conclusive: the motions both of Fox and Lord Guildford were lost by immense majorities.