When we consider the resources and the spirit of the country, can any man doubt that if adequate security is not now to be obtained by treaty, we have the means of prosecuting the contest without material difficulty or danger, and with a reasonable prospect of completely attaining our object? I will not dwell on the improved state of public credit; on the continually increasing amount, in spite of extraordinary temporary burdens, of our permanent revenue; on the yearly accession of wealth to an extent unprecedented even in the most flourishing times of peace, which we are deriving, in the midst of war, from our extended and flourishing commerce; on the progressive improvement and growth of our manufactures; on the proofs which we see on all sides of the uninterrupted accumulation of productive capital; and on the active exertion of every branch of national industry which can tend to support and augment the population, the riches, and the power of the country.
As little need I recall the attention of the House to the additional means of action which we have derived from the great augmentation of our disposable military force, the continued triumphs of our powerful and victorious navy, and the events which, in the course of the last two years, have raised the military ardor and military glory of the country to a height unexampled in any period of our history.
In addition to these grounds of reliance on our own strength and exertions, we have seen the consummate skill and valor of the arms of our allies proved by that series of unexampled successes in the course of the last campaign, and we have every reason to expect a co-operation on the continent, even to a greater extent, in the course of the present year. If we compare this view of our own situation with every thing we can observe of the state and condition of our enemy—if we can trace him laboring under equal difficulty in finding men to recruit his army, or money to pay it—if we know that in the course of the last year the most rigorous efforts of military conscription were scarcely sufficient to replace to the French armies, at the end of the campaign, the numbers which they had lost in the course of it—if we have seen that that force, then in possession of advantages which it has since lost, was unable to contend with the efforts of the combined armies—if we know that, even while supported by the plunder of all the countries which they had overrun, those armies were reduced, by the confession of their commanders, to the extremity of distress, and destitute not only of the principal articles of military supply, but almost of the necessaries of life—if we see them now driven back within their own frontiers, and confined within a country whose own resources have long since been proclaimed by their successive governments to be unequal either to paying or maintaining them—if we observe that since the last revolution no one substantial or effectual measure has been adopted to remedy the intolerable disorder of their finances, and to supply the deficiency of their credit and resources—if we see through large and populous districts of France, either open war levied against the present usurpation, or evident marks of disunion and distraction, which the first occasion may call forth into a flame—if, I say, sir, this comparison be just, I feel myself authorized to conclude from it, not that we are entitled to consider ourselves certain of ultimate success, not that we are to suppose ourselves exempted from the unforeseen vicissitudes of war, but that, considering the value of the object for which we are contending, the means for supporting the contest, and the probable course of human events, we should be inexcusable, if at this moment we were to relinquish the struggle on any grounds short of entire and complete security; that from perseverance in our efforts under such circumstances, we have the fairest reason to expect the full attainment of our object; but that at all events, even if we are disappointed in our more sanguine hopes, we are more likely to gain than to lose by the continuation of the contest; that every month to which it is continued, even if it should not in its effects lead to the final destruction of the Jacobin system, must tend so far to weaken and exhaust it, as to give us at least a greater comparative security in any termination of the war; that, on all these grounds, this is not the moment at which it is consistent with our interest or our duty to listen to any proposals of negotiation with the present ruler of France; but that we are not, therefore, pledged to any unalterable determination as to our future conduct; that in this we must be regulated by the course of events; and that it will be the duty of his Majesty’s ministers from time to time to adapt their measures to any variation of circumstances, to consider how far the effects of the military operations of the allies or of the internal disposition of France correspond with our present expectations; and, on a view of the whole, to compare the difficulties or risks which may arise in the prosecution of the contest with the prospect of ultimate success, or of the degree of advantage to be derived from its farther continuance, and to be governed by the result of all these considerations in the opinion and advice which they may offer to their sovereign.
CHARLES JAMES FOX.
Mr. Fox, one of the most celebrated of English orators, was the second son of the first Lord Holland, and was born in 1749. His father, though a man of dissolute habits, was an influential member of Parliament, indeed for many years was regarded as the most formidable opponent of the elder Pitt in the House of Commons. The elder Fox received, as a mark of royal favor, the most lucrative office in the gift of the Government, that of Paymaster of the Forces; and he administered the duties of this position so much to the satisfaction of the king, that he was soon advanced to the peerage. His great wealth and his marriage with Lady Georgiana Lennox, a very accomplished daughter of the Duke of Richmond, made Holland House what it continued to be for three generations, the favorite resort of whatever of culture and fashion allied itself to the cause of its own political party.
It was in the atmosphere of this society that the lot of young Fox was cast. The eldest son was afflicted with a nervous disease which impaired his faculties, and consequently all the hopes of the house were concentrated upon Charles. The father’s ambition for his son was twofold: He desired that his boy should become at once a great orator and a leader in the fashionable and dissolute society of the day. In the one interest he furnished him with the most helpful and inspiring instruction; in the other he personally introduced him to the most famous gambling-houses in England and on the continent. The boy profited by this instruction. He made extraordinary progress. His biographer tells us that before he was sixteen he was so thoroughly acquainted with Greek and Latin, that he read them as he read English, and took up Demosthenes and Cicero as he took up Chatham and Burke. The father paid his gambling bills with as much cheerfulness as he heard him recite an ode of Horace or the funeral oration of Pericles. At the university the young scholar furnished his mind with abundant stores of literature and history, but he paid no attention to those great economic questions which, under the influence of Adam Smith were then beginning to play so large a part in national affairs. Even late in life he confessed that he had never read the “Wealth of Nations.”
Leaving Oxford at seventeen, Fox went to the continent, where the prodigal liberality of his father encouraged him in a life of unbounded indulgence. He not only lost enormous sums of ready money, but his father was obliged to pay debts amounting to a hundred thousand pounds. To distract the boy’s attention from further excesses, Lord Holland resolved to put him into the House of Commons. The system of pocket boroughs made the opportunity easy; and, as no troublesome questions were asked, the young profligate took his seat in May of 1768, a year and eight months before he arrived at the eligible age.
By education and early political alliance Fox was a Tory, and it is not singular therefore that the Government of Lord North hastened to avail itself of his talents. In 1770 he was made a Junior Lord of the Admiralty, and a little later found a seat on the bench of the Treasury. But his wayward spirit would not brook control. He even went so far as to take the floor in opposition to the Prime-Minister. This violation of party discipline brought its natural result, and in 1774 Fox was contemptuously dismissed.
The blow was deserved, and was even needed for the saving of Fox himself. His excesses in London and on the continent had become so notorious that the public were fast coming to regard him simply as a reckless gambler, whose favor and whose opposition were alike of no importance. It was this contempt on the part of the ministry and the public which stung him into something like reform. Though he did not entirely abandon his old methods, he devoted himself to his work in the House with extraordinary energy. All his ambition was now directed to becoming a powerful debater. He afterward remarked that he had literally gained his skill “at the expense of the House,” for he had sometimes tasked himself to speak on every question that came up, whether he was interested in it or not, and even whether he knew any thing about it or not. The result was that in certain important qualities of a public speaker, he excelled all other men of his time. Burke even said of him, that “by slow degrees he rose to be the most brilliant and accomplished debater the world ever saw.”