MEETING OF PARLIAMENT.
When parliament met, the speech from the throne was full of alarm. All the expressions of the first proclamation were repeated in it; and, towards the conclusion, the king remarked:—“I have carefully observed a strict neutrality in the present war on the continent, and have uniformly abstained from interference in the internal affairs of France; but it is impossible to see, without serious uneasiness, the strong and increasing indications which have there appeared, of an intention to excite disturbances in other countries, to disregard, the rights of neutral nations, and pursue views of conquest and aggrandisement; as well as to adopt towards my allies, the States-general, measures which were neither conformable to the laws of nations, nor to the positive stipulations of existing treaties.” Under all these circumstances, his majesty added, he had thought it right to adopt precautionary measures, and to make some augmentation of his naval and military force.
The address was moved by Sir James Sanderson, lord-mayor of London, who affirmed that seditious practices were prevalent; that various political societies were established in London, which corresponded and confederated with other societies in different parts of the United Kingdom; and that these societies, whose aim was to subvert the constitution and to destroy monarchy, root and branch, were circulating a vast number of pernicious pamphlets and publications among the lower orders of people. A memorable debate arose on the address. Fox, who was yet enchanted with French liberty, condemned every part of the speech and of the address. It was his firm conviction, he said, that every fact asserted in the king’s speech was false; that no insurrection existed; and that the alarm was occasioned by the artful designs and practices of ministers. Fox reprehended the system of intellectual oppression, which induced ministers to represent the tumults and disorders that had taken place, as designed to overthrow the constitution; and that the various societies instituted for discussing questions relative to the constitution, were so many schemes for propagating seditious doctrines. He was aware that he was advancing opinions not likely to become popular; but he was as ready to meet the current of popular opinion, which was running high in favour of the high lay doctrines now existing, as he was, in times past, to meet the opposite torrent, when it was said that he wished to sacrifice the people to the crown. He remarked:—“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 I dread. These are the extremes into which these violent agitations hurry the people, to the gradual decrease of that middle order of men, who dread republicanism as much on the one hand, as they do despotism on the other. That middle order of men, who have hitherto preserved to this country all that is dear in life, I am sorry to say, is daily lessening; but while my feeble voice continues, it shall not be totally extinct; there shall be at least one who will, in this ferment of extremes, preserve the centre point.” In adverting to the affairs of France, Fox said that he rejoiced in the triumph of men, fighting for liberty, over the armies of despots. He bitterly condemned the calling out of the militia, and as bitterly condemned ministers for not sending a new ambassador to treat with the present executive government of France. As for England, he did not think that it was in a state to go to war; nor did he think that we should be justified in taking such a step for anything which had occurred in France, or in Belgium, or in Savoy, or anywhere else. In conclusion, Fox praised the English constitution as the best adapted to England, because the people loved it best; and moved an amendment, pledging the house that inquiry should be made into the facts stated in his majesty’s speech. Pitt was not in the house on this occasion; but Fox was effectively answered by one of his own party one who had figured for many years as one of the leaders and most eloquent chiefs of the Whig opposition, and who had been linked in close friendship with the man whom he now opposed. Mr. Windham said that he felt himself constrained to vote on this occasion with those whose measures he had uniformly and conscientiously reprobated. The alarm, he said, which existed in the country, was not, he believed, greater than the existing danger. It was well known that constant communication was maintained between persons in Paris and persons in London; and that the object of this communication was the destruction of our present form of government. These worthy gentlemen, he said, had their agents throughout the country, in order to disseminate their pamphlets; which, as these agents were poor men, was at once a proof that there must be a society somewhere who defrayed the expense. In adverting to France, Windham said, he believed that the motives of the combined armies, that had attempted to march to Paris were good; and he justified their interference by demonstrating that France herself had intermeddled with the affairs of neighbouring countries. The amendment was supported by Mr. Grey, who said that he was no friend to Paine’s doctrines; but he would not be deterred by a name from acknowledging that he considered the rights of man as the foundation of every government, and those who opposed these said rights as traitors against the people. Dundas replied to Grey, and justified the measures which government had adopted. A universal and serious alarm, he said, pervaded the country gentlemen, farmers, and others, and this had rendered some active steps absolutely necessary on the part of government, in order to restore confidence. Dundas remarked, that the national convention had been eager to countenance every complaint of grievance from the factious and discontented in this country; and in proof of it he read some of the addresses which the convention had received with applause from the political societies of England. He asked, “Was not this, on the part of the French, an unjustifiable interference in the internal affairs of another country? And had not the leading members of the convention declared that they would not look to the sovereign, but to the people of Great Britain; that they would appeal from the government to the republicans of England.” He maintained that, under all the circumstances, government were fully justified in all they had done, and would have merited impeachment if they had remained inactive at such a critical juncture. Sheridan, in a flippant manner, endeavoured to show that the alarm was ridiculous, and had been created by ministers for their own selfish and wicked purposes. The republicans said to exist in England, were, he said, men of buckram; and should any French army attempt to invade England, with the idea of effecting any change in our government, every hand and heart in the country would be united to resist them. He condemned a war with France, and asserted that he would vote for the impeachment of that minister who should enter into such a war, for the purpose of re-establishing the old despotism of the Bourbons. The deep earnestness of Burke, who next spoke, contrasted strangely with the flippancy of Sheridan. Burke said that this day was indeed a trial of the constitution. He agreed with an honourable gentleman, in regarding the present as a momentous crisis; but for reasons different from those which he had assigned. Liberty and monarchy, he continued, are connected in this country; they were never found asunder; they have flourished together for a thousand years; and from this union has sprung the prosperity and glory of the nation. With impassioned eloquence Burke affirmed, that there was a faction in this country who wished to submit it to France, that our government might be reformed upon the French system; and that the French rulers, cherishing views on this country encouraged that faction, and were disposed to aid it in overturning our constitution. As a proof of this, Burke read an address, which men, calling themselves Englishmen, presented at the bar of the convention on the very day in which there had been a discussion respecting the union of Savoy with France; and to which address the president, in his reply, remarked:—“That royalty in Europe was in the agonies of death; that the declaration of right, now placed by the side of thrones, was a fire which, in the end, would consume them; and he even hoped that the time was not far distant when France, England, Scotland, Ireland, all Europe! all mankind! would form but one peaceful family.” Burke asked, whether, if Englishmen had applied to Louis XVI. to reform our government, such language would not have been considered as an aggression? Burke declared that the question now was, not whether we should present an address to the throne, but whether there should be a throne at all; and he concluded with recommending unanimity, and representing the danger which might arise from the progress of French armies, if not speedily resisted. Mr. Erskine, who was a member of the Society for Parliamentary Reform, justified that society and himself, and blamed ministers for delaying to prosecute the author of the “Rights of Man” till nearly two years after its publication. Erskine charged Burke with inconsistency; and concluded with recommending the house to meet the complaints of the people, not with abuse, but by removing the grounds of their dissatisfaction; by reforming parliament, and granting them a fair representation. The people, he said, were already taxed to an enormous extent; and should a war be the consequence, when it appeared every precaution had not been taken to prevent it, ministers would incur a heavy responsibility, both to the public and to that house, for having precipitated the nation into so great a calamity. The debate lasted till midnight; and when the house divided there was a majority in favour of the address of two hundred and ninety against fifty.
This large majority snowed that a great portion of the Whigs had parted company with Fox. Nothing daunted, however, at this desertion, he gave notice that to-morrow he would move an amendment upon the report. The object of this amendment was to induce his majesty to open a negociation with France, for the purpose of preventing the calamities of war. In the speech which Fox made in support of it, he threw the whole blame of the horrid scenes which had occurred in France upon the coalition; and he eulogised the spirit and valour of the French republicans in the warmest strains of panegyric, he thanked God, he said, that nature had been true to herself; that tyranny had been defeated; and that those who fought for freedom were triumphant. All the inhabitants of Europe, he said, sympathised with the French and wished them success, regarding them as men struggling with tyranny and despotism. Sheridan seconded this amendment, and Burke opposed it, affirming “that to send an ambassador to France would be a prelude to the murder of our own sovereign.” Fox had said, in the course of his speech, that the republic of this country was readily acknowledged by European courts in the time of Cromwell, after the execution of Charles I.; but Burke shattered this argument, in favour of acknowledging the French republic, at a blow. He remarked: “The French republic is sui generis and bears no analogy to any other republic or system of government that has ever existed in the known world. The English commonwealth did not attempt to turn all the states of Christendom into republics. It did not wage war with kings, merely because they were not democrats; it professed no principles of proselytism. The same might be said, of the republic of the United States of America. But France wanted to make all the world proselytes to her opinions and dogmas: France was for turning every government in the world into a democratic republic. If every government was against her, it was, because she had declared herself hostile to every government. This strange republic may be compared to the system of Mahomet, who, with the Koran in one hand and a sword in the other, compelled men to adopt his creed. The Koran which France held out was the declaration of the Rights of Man and universal fraternity; and with the sword she was determined to propagate her doctrine, and conquer those whom she could not convince.” Burke said that he did not wish to hurry the nation into a war, but only to make the people of England see that France had in reality declared war against them. The national convention had passed a variety of decrees, every one of which might be considered as a declaration of war against every government in Europe; and the people of France had resolved to wage an eternal war against kings, and all kinds of kingly government. Moreover, in contempt of the king and parliament, the convention had received Englishmen at its bar, as the representatives of the people of England. In the absence of Pitt, his colleague, Dundas, entered into a long and elaborate vindication of the measures of administration; concluding with a confident prediction that, “if we were forced into a war, it would prove successful and glorious.” The amendment was rejected without a division.
Still undismayed, Fox, on the 15th of December—which was a Saturday—a day when parliament did not usually meet—moved, “that a minister be sent to Paris, to treat with those persons who exercise provisionally the executive government of France.” Fox contended that this measure would neither imply approbation nor disapprobation of the conduct of the existing government; and that it was the policy and practice of every nation to treat with the existing government of every other nation with which it had relative interests, without inquiring how that government was constituted, or by what means it acquired possession of power. He illustrated his argument by asserting that we had more then once sent embassies to the government of Morocco, when men sat upon that throne who had waded to it through blood. We had, likewise, he said, ministers at the German courts at the time of the infamous partition of Poland; and we had a minister at Versailles when Corsica was bought and enslaved. Yet, he argued, in none of these instances was any sanction given, directly or indirectly, by Great Britain to these nefarious transactions. But this line of argument was more specious than sound; for, although there was nominally a government in France, it was self-constituted, and founded in anarchy. This motion was seconded by Mr. Grey, who declared that an immediate embassy to Paris was the only means of averting war; a war which he deemed the most dangerous that had overtaken this country. Lord Sheffield, who had been an ardent admirer of Fox, reprobated the object of this motion, and, with many others, censured him for his conduct during the last three days. Fox, however, was resolute, and the debate continued. In combating his arguments, Mr. Jenkinson asked, what government we could acknowledge where there was virtually no government? and how England could recognize a constitution which the French themselves were every day violating? and how we could negociate with men who had declared a universal war against all governments? He added,—“On this very day, while we are here debating about sending an ambassador to the French republic; on this very day is the king to receive sentence, and, in all probability, it is the day of his murder. What is it, then, that gentlemen would propose to their sovereign? To bow his neck to a band of sanguinary ruffians, and address an ambassador to a set of regicides, whose hands are still reeking with the blood of a slaughtered monarch? No, sir, the British character is too noble to run a race of infamy; nor shall we be the first to compliment a set of monsters who, while we are agitating the subject, are probably bearing through the streets of Paris—horrid spectacle—the bloody victim of their fury.” The master of the rolls, Sheridan, Windham, Burke, Sir William Young, and others took part in this debate; but the motion was negatived without a division.
In the meantime the address had been carried in the lords almost unanimously; the Duke of Norfolk, and lords Lansdowne, Hawdon, and Stanhope only speaking against it. In both houses the opposition had, at this time, suffered a severe defection. At the head of the seceders in the lords were the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Portland, Lords Fitzwilliam, Spencer, Mansfield, and Loughborough, the last of whom, on the resignation of Lord Thurlow, had been created chancellor; the chief seceders in the commons, besides Burke, were Mr. Windham, Sir Gilbert Elliot, Mr. Anstruther, Lord Sheffield, &c., who by their secession acquired the appellation of alarmists.
Yet, though Fox was thus deserted, on the 17th of December he returned to the charge. On that day Mr. Grey complained that the loyalists and high churchmen had been committing riots in Manchester and other towns in the kingdom. The Manchester riots, he said, had risen out of a loyal meeting held in that town, at which meeting he represented that Mr. Peel—the father of Sir Robert—declared that it was time for the people to rouse from their lethargy, as there were incendiaries in the country. He called upon Mr. Peel to name these incendiaries; and then called the attention of the house to a paper issued by the association against republicans and levellers, which was entitled “One Penny-worth of Truth from Thomas Bull to his Brother John.” Mr. Grey said, that this pamphlet contained some unfounded and libellous invectives against the dissenters; and that it was calculated to produce alarming effects, by exciting the people against them. He moved, that the said libellous paper should be delivered in at the table and read. In reply to his demand of Mr. Peel, that gentleman said that there was no truth in any part of the report to which Mr. Grey had alluded, except that “God Save the King” had been sung at the meeting: and he proved that, so far from exciting the people against their fellow-subjects, the resolutions of the committee of the Manchester Society were calculated to dissuade the populace from outrage and wrong. Many members opposed the motion; but Fox strenuously supported it. In the course of his speech, Fox criticised the loyal associations and subscriptions which had been set on foot, for the purpose of aiding in the prosecution of affected persons. He treated the associations as tending to hinder the improvement of the mind, and as a mobbish tyranny; and he compared them with Lord George Gordon’s mob; declaring, at the same time, that he had advised his friends in Westminister to sign the said associations, whether they agreed with them or not, in order that they might avoid destruction to their persons or their houses, or a desertion of their shops. Burke was very severe in his remarks upon this last assertion. He observed:—“This insidiuous advice will tend to confound those, who wish well to the object of the association, with the seditious against whom the association is directed. By this stratagem the confederacy intended for preserving the British constitution and the public peace, will be wholly defeated. The magistrates, utterly incapable of distinguishing the friends from the enemies of order, will in vain look for support when they stand in the greatest need of it.” Mr. Grey’s motion was negatived without a division.
Pitt was not in the house when these debates occurred; but on the 18th, having been re-elected for the university of Cambridge, he resumed his seat; and in doing so he referred to the recent discussions, by declaring his conviction of the facts stated, and his approbation of the arguments used in support of the address. To send an ambassador to France, he said, under present circumstances, would be incompatible with the dignity of the crown, and contrary to the interests of the public; counteracting and disclaiming those very principles on which the whole of our conduct was founded. The decided opinion expressed by all parties, that if war was necessary, it should be prosecuted with vigour, gave him pleasure; but, at the same time, he assured the house, that nothing consistent with the dignity of the crown, the safety of the country, and the security of Europe should be omitted by government to preserve the blessings of peace.