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.
PITT’S FINANCIAL MEASURES.
In the course of this session two budgets were produced, and two loans contracted, amounting in the whole to £25,000,000. The total supplies granted for the year were £13,821,430. In order to meet the expenditure many taxes were augmented, as those on wine, spirits, tea, coffee, silk, fruit, tobacco, salt, horses, dogs, hats, and legacies to collateral relatives; the assessed taxes were also increased by ten per cent.
PROROGATION OF PARLIAMENT.
This session, in which little appears to have been done, terminated on the 19th of May. In his speech from the throne his majesty expressed the happy effects experienced from the provisions adopted for suppressing sedition, and restraining the progress of principles subversive of all established government; and the highest approbation of the uniform wisdom, temper, and firmness which had appeared in all then-proceedings since their first meeting. A few days afterwards parliament was dissolved.
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.