NEGOCIATIONS FOR PEACE.
In the course of the debate on Fox’s motion, for an address to the crown, it was stated by ministers that Mr. Wickham, our envoy to the Swiss cantons, had already had some communication with Barthélémy, the French negociator in chief, and they urged that these communications were quite sufficient to induce the republic to treat, if it really had any pacific intention. Opposition, however, urged that Mr. Wickham had not done enough to conciliate the French; and thus urged on, Pitt considered himself obliged to continue the overtures which had been made. Mr. Wickham asked Barthélémy whether the directory were desirous to negociate with Great Britain and her allies on moderate and honourable conditions, and would agree to a meeting of a congress for this purpose. Barthélémy replied, that the directory sincerely desired peace, but that they would insist on keeping Belgium, or all the Austrian dominions in the Low Countries, as they had been annexed to the French republic by a constitutional decree that could not be revoked. It was, however, as clear as the sun at noonday that the directory did not desire peace at all; or that, if they did, it would be on terms that could not be accepted. At this very time they were not only meditating a blow at the commerce of England, by preventing the admission of English goods into any port of France and Belgium, and into any of the French dependencies, but they were fostering and entertaining a number of Irish revolutionists at Paris, and were contemplating a grand expedition to Ireland, in order to co-operate with the rebellious there, and to convert that country, as they had done Holland, Belgium, &c., into a French dependency. Yet, though it was manifest that the French directory had no desire for peace, in the autumn of this year, Pitt was induced to renew his overtures. Government applied for passports for an ambassador to go to Paris; and Lord Malmesbury arrived there on the 22nd of October. But all negociation for peace was vain. It-lasted for several weeks; and then, the directors having required Lord Malinesbury to define what compensation would be demanded for the restoration of the French colonies, and to state all his demands within four and twenty hours, his lordship replied that their requisition precluded all further negociation; and on the next day his lordship was told that he must quit Paris within forty-eight hours.
In the meantime Pitt had prepared for a vigorous prosecution of the war. In order to confirm the cabinet in the warlike disposition displayed, to rouse the national spirit for renewed exertions, and to point out the dishonour of forming treaties with men notorious for their bad faith, in the course of this summer Mr. Burke published his celebrated “Letters on a Regicide Peace.” These letters, and the two others that were published after his death, are among the most splendid efforts of his mind. In them he took a different view of the war from Pitt; he thought that it would be both violent and protracted. At the same time he did not despair of the final result, provided only a check could be given to that despondence which had seized upon many minds, and which the opposition were inculcating and promoting. It was his opinion that it was essential to success to disclaim all partition of the soil of France, to distinguish between the government and the nation, and to declare against the Jacobins, as distinct from the people; that France ought to be attacked in her own territory, and, in the first instance, by a British army sent into the Vendée; that it was impolitic to employ troops and fleets in reducing West Indian islands while the French armies were overrunning the Continent; and that England, with a force of nearly 300,000 men, with a navy of 500 ships of war, might make an irresistible impression on any part of the French territory. This was the last effort which Burke made to stem the onward torrent of the progress of the French revolutionists. He had recently endured a severe calamity in the death of his only son, of whose talents he had formed the highest expectations, and for whose advancement he had vacated his seat in parliament; and in the next year he himself was brought to the grave. He was one of the greatest men of his age; and his views of political philosophy will go down to posterity as the most enlightened that ever flowed from a human mind.