The interests and the peace of Great Britain were now seriously threatened. For over a century her statesmen had held, and held rightly, that the possession of Belgium by France was incompatible with her security. They had supported the legal, though iniquitous, claim of the Dutch to the exclusive navigation of the Scheldt; and, above all, the country was bound by a treaty of alliance to defend Holland, whose rights as defined by treaty had been rudely set aside by France. Moreover, on the 28th of November deputations from the British revolutionary societies were received at the bar of the Convention, and the President of the latter, in reply to their address, made a speech strongly hostile to the British Government, affecting to distinguish between it and the people over whom it ruled; a pretence which was equally maintained in the United States of America, where the French minister the following year dared to appeal openly to the people against the policy of their government.
On the 1st of December the British Government issued a proclamation, calling out the militia on account of seditions and insurrectionary movements dangerous to the state, and at the same time, as required by law, summoned Parliament to meet on the 15th. The hopes and the patience of Pitt were alike exhausted; and although he still continued to listen to any overtures that contained a promise of peace, he had determined to exact guarantees, amounting to more than words, which should assure the safety of Great Britain and her ally, Holland. Meantime the British forces should be organized and got ready to act. The French Government had proclaimed its intention of interfering in the affairs and overthrowing the institutions of all states, when, in its judgment, their citizens were molested in their efforts for freedom. To await supinely the moment when it should please France to act would be the decision of folly; nor was it possible, for one imbued with English traditions, to view without distrust a government which appeared to look for justice by disregarding law, and avowedly disowned existing compacts and treaties in favor of a speculative somewhat called the Rights of Man, concerning which, its own passions being the judge, revelations as numerous might be expected as were vouchsafed to Mahomet.
There are some who can only account for the different lines of action followed by Pitt, before and after 1792, in both cases with the indomitable tenacity of his race and lineage, by conceiving two entirely different personalities in the same man,—a sudden and portentous change, unprecedented save by miracle as in the case of St. Paul. More truly may be seen in him the same man acting under circumstances wholly different, and in the later instance unforeseen. It was not given to Pitt to read the future of the French Revolution with the prophetic eye of Burke. He had the genius, not of the seer, but of the man of affairs; but that he had the latter in an eminent degree is evident from the very rapidity of the change, when he was at last forced to the conviction that external conditions were wholly changed. He was at heart the minister of peace, the financier, the promoter of commerce and of gradual and healthy reforms; but in a great speech, delivered before he had begun to fear that peace would end in his time, he impressed upon his hearers his own profound conviction that all the blessings which England then enjoyed rested upon the union of liberty with law. Having enumerated the material circumstances to which the existing prosperity of the nation was to be ascribed, he continued:—
"But these are connected with others more important. They are obviously and necessarily connected with the duration of peace, the continuance of which, on a secure and durable footing, must ever be the first object of the foreign policy of this country. They are connected still more with its internal tranquillity, and with the natural effects of a free but well-regulated government.... This is the great and governing cause, the operation of which has given scope to all the other circumstances which I have enumerated. It is the union of liberty with law, which, by raising a barrier equally firm against the encroachments of power and the violence of popular commotion, affords to property its just security, produces the exertion of genius and labor, the extent and solidity of credit, the circulation and increase of capital; which forms and upholds the national character and sets in motion all the springs which actuate the great mass of the community through all its various descriptions.... On this point, therefore, let us principally fix our attention; let us preserve this first and most essential object, and every other is in our power." [473]
It was perfectly consistent with this position that, when Pitt saw a neighboring state in convulsions from the struggle of a turbulent minority for liberty without law; when that state had not only proclaimed its purpose, but taken steps to promote a similar condition in other nations; when societies representing a small, but active and radical, minority in England were openly fraternizing with France; when the great leader of the English Opposition had, from his seat in Parliament, praised the French soldiery for joining the mobs,—it was perfectly consistent with his past that Pitt should oppose with all his powers a course of action which not only endangered the internal peace upon which the prosperity of England rested, but also carried into the realm of international relations the same disorganizing principles, the same disregard for law, covenant, and vested right that had reduced France to her then pitiful condition. Not only Great Britain, but the European world was threatened with subversion. That Pitt did not bewail aloud the wreck of his hopes, the frustration of his career, the diversion of his energies from the path that was dearest to him, shows the strength, not the instability, of the man. That he laid aside the reforms he had projected, and discouraged all movements towards internal change, which, by dividing the wills of the people, might weaken their power for external action, proves but that concentration of purpose which, sacrificing present gratification to future good, achieves great ends. Never does the trained seaman appear greater, has well said the naval novelist Cooper, than when, confronted with unexpected peril, he turns all his energies from the path in which they were before directed, to meet the new danger. "Never," writes Lanfrey of the critical period between Essling and Wagram, "had the maxim of sacrificing the accessory to the principal, of which Napoleon's military conceptions afford so many admirable examples, and which is true in every art, been applied with more activity and fitness.... The complications which he most feared were to him, for the moment, as though they did not exist. No secondary event had power to draw him off from the great task he had primarily assigned to himself." [474] All instinctively recognize the courage as well as the wisdom of this conduct in the dangers which the seaman and the soldier are called to meet; why deny its application to the no less urgent, and at times more momentous, issues presented to the statesman? If, as may fairly be claimed, it is to the maritime power of Great Britain that Europe owes the arrest of a subversive revolution, if to that maritime power is due that a great, irresistible, and beneficent movement toward the liberty and welfare of the masses survived a convulsion that threatened its destruction, then to Pitt, as the master spirit who directed the movements of the British nation, the gratitude of Europe is also due.
When Parliament met on the 15th of December, the king's speech mentioned the disturbances that had taken place in the country and the threatening state of affairs in Europe, and recommended an increase in the land and sea forces of the kingdom. This measure was alleged, among other grievances by France, as indicating an unfriendly feeling toward her on the part of the British Government; but it has been reasonably urged that she had already manned a fleet superior to that which Great Britain had in commission, besides keeping ready for instant service a large number of other ships, which could have no possible enemy except the British navy. Viewed simply as measures of precaution, of the necessity for which every state is its own judge, it is difficult to criticise severely either government; but the fact remains that France had been the first to arm her fleet, and that Great Britain did not do the same until substantial grounds of offence had been given.
By a singular coincidence, on the same day that Parliament met, the National Convention issued a second celebrated decree, yet more decisive in its character than that of November 19, which it was evidently meant to emphasize and supplement. The generals of the Republic were now directed "in every country which the armies of the French Republic shall occupy, to announce the abolition of all existing authorities, of nobility, of serfage, of every feudal right and every monopoly; to proclaim the sovereignty of the people and convoke the inhabitants in assemblies to form a provisional government, to which no officer of a former government, no noble, nor any member of the former privileged corporations, shall be eligible." To this was added the singular and most significant declaration that "the French nation will treat as enemies any people which, refusing liberty and equality, desires to preserve its prince and privileged castes, or to make any accommodation with them." It was impossible to announce more clearly that this was no mere war of opinions, but, on the contrary, one of principles and methods fraught with serious and practical consequences; nor could any despot have worded a more contemptuous denial of the rights of a people concerning their form of government. The revolutionary spirit, which underlay the frequent changes of men in the French Government, showed how fixed was its purpose to alter forcibly the institutions of other states, regardless of the habits and affections of their citizens, by the systems imposed upon the smaller neighboring nations, hammered all upon the anvil of French centralization, in defiance of the wishes and the struggles of the people concerned. Europe thus found itself face to face with a movement as enthusiastic in its temper and as radical in its demands as the invasions of the Mahometans.
To this fanatical, yet lofty, and in the masses of the French people generous and devoted spirit, continental Europe had no equal force to oppose. It is a common remark that the eighteenth century saw the appearance of several ruling princes who were possessed with the liberal views of the rising school of philosophers, and who sincerely desired to effect the improvement and elevation of their people,—to remove grievances, to lighten burdens, to advance the general welfare. The wisdom or strength of these men had not been equal to the task they had assumed. There still remained unjustifiable inequalities of conditions, grievous abuses, a depression of the lower orders, and a stagnation among the upper, which seemed to place insurmountable obstacles in the way of advance, and made it impossible for the masses to feel a living, national interest in governments which contributed so little to their happiness. This good-will among the sovereigns of the day was indeed a most encouraging symptom. It made it possible to effect the needed changes and to advance without a violent break with the past,—to have reform and progress without revolution; but to achieve these ends was beyond the power of the ruler alone: there was needed the voice and co-operation of all classes in the state. This Louis XVI. had sought to obtain; but unfortunately, not only for France but for Europe, the most numerous and important of the orders of the States-General had met the difficulties of the situation, the outcome of centuries, not with firmness, but with impatience. From the beginning was shown the determination to break with the past,—to proceed at a bound to the desired goal. No regard was had to the fitness of the people for such sudden change, to the immense conservative force of established custom, nor to the value of continuity in the life of a nation. Nor was this all. Law, as well as custom, was lightly set at nought. The first Assembly threw off the fetters imposed by its instructions, and assumed powers which had not been confided to it. By means of these usurped faculties the Constituent Assembly radically changed the constitution of France.
The instantaneous effect upon the French people and upon the internal condition of the state is well known. As the far-reaching character of the movement, and its lack of efficient elements for self-control, became evident, the anxieties of conservative men in other nations, however desirous of steady progress in human liberty, could not fail to be aroused. It was notorious, long before 1792, that ill-balanced as was the new constitutional frame of government in France, and radical as was the temper of the leading members of the Legislative Assembly, the deliberations of the latter were overawed by the clubs and the populace of Paris, and that government had practically passed into the hands of the mob which was worked by the clubs and the radical municipality of the city. The grotesque yet terrible scenes of June 20 and August 10, the hideous massacres of September, not merely showed the frantic excesses of which a French mob is capable, but also and more solemnly evinced how completely governmental control was swallowed up in anarchy. Still, all these things were internal to France, and it might be hoped would so remain until the French people had worked their own solution of their troubles. The decrees of November 19 and December 15 blasted this hope, and formally announced that French beliefs and methods were to be forcibly spread throughout Europe. How was the assault to be met?
Few statesmen of that day expected that this mighty and furious spirit of misrule would so soon bend its neck to an uncontrolled and energetic despotism. The coming of the one man, Napoleon, was dimly seen in the distance by the thoughtful, who knew that anarchy clears the way for absolute power; but the speedy appearance and tyrannous efficiency of the Committee of Public Safety, with its handmaid the Revolutionary Tribunal, were not foreseen. The statesmen of 1793 saw the strength, but were more impressed by the superficial exhibition of disorder in the popular outburst. They expected to repress it, to drive it back within the limits of France, and impose the guarantees necessary for the security of Europe, by meeting it with numerous, well-organized armies of veteran troops, and by a solid, orderly financial system, wielding plentiful resources. In short, they thought to cope with a mighty spirit by means of elaborate and powerful machinery. The means were insufficient. The living spirit developed the rude but efficient organism which was needed to direct its energies and which was in sympathy with its aims; the elaborate machinery of armies and finances failed, because not quickened by the life of the nations by whose rulers it was wielded.