[Note 25], [p. 151].—In a speech some months before, Pitt had defended his action in regard to Holland by saying that “from his knowledge of human nature” he knew that it must be successful. It proved a lamentable failure, hence the irony of Fox’s emphasis.
[Note 26], [p. 154].—Virgil (Æneid, xi., 313): “Valor has done its utmost; we have fought with the embodied force of all the realm.”
Pitt on a former occasion had said that the contest ought never to be abandoned till the people of England could adopt those words as their own.
[Note 27], [p. 167]. References to Washington were made from the fact that news of his death, which occurred December 14, 1799, had just been received in England. In the passage that follows, Fox alludes to the time Dundas was a member of North’s Government, and when it was the fashion of his party to denounce Washington.
[Note 28], [p. 170].—The facts as stated by Fox were only too true, and the British officer alluded to was none other than Lord Nelson. The insurgents had capitulated, on condition that persons and property should be guaranteed, and the articles had been signed by the Cardinal, the Russian commander, and even by Captain Foote, the commander of the British force. Nelson arrived with his fleet about thirty-six hours afterward, and at once ordered that the terms of the treaty be annulled. The garrison were taken out under the pretence of carrying the treaty into effect, and then were turned over as rebels to the vengeance of the Sicilian Court. Southey in his “Life of Nelson” (vi., 177) calls this deplorable event “A stain upon the memory of Nelson and the honor of England. To palliate it would be in vain; to justify it would be wicked; there is no alternative for one who will not make himself a participator in guilt, but to record the disgraceful story with sorrow and with shame.” Lady Hamilton, with whom Nelson was infatuated and who was the favorite of the Queen of Naples, was the one who led Nelson into committing the outrage.
[Note 29], [p. 253].—The following portion of Mackintosh’s argument has been universally admired. It was the common impression in England that if the prosecution of Peltier was not energetically carried on by the government, Napoleon would make the fact a pretext for declaring war. The advocate probably supposed that the jury shared that belief. He did not deem it wise to allude to it directly, but he proceeds with great ingenuity and force to dwell on the advantages of peace, and then having established a coincidence of feeling between himself and the jury, he leads them to see that peace can in no way be so effectually promoted as by sustaining the cause of justice throughout Europe, and that in no way can justice be so surely maintained as by substantial freedom of the press.
[Note 30], [p. 205].—Reference is made to the boastful question of Cicero, in the second oration against Anthony: “How has it happened, Conscript Fathers, that no one has come out as an enemy of the Republic, for these last twenty years, who did not at the same time declare war against me?”
[Note 31], [p. 207].—Mackintosh was wise enough to see that war was inevitable. It came sooner, perhaps, than he anticipated. Only a few days after the conclusion of the trial, the King sent a message to Parliament that war could not be avoided, and hostilities broke out May 18, 1803. Under the circumstances the impressive passage that follows on “the public spirit of a people” was peculiarly suggestive.
[Note 32], [p. 219].—The passage on the inherent characteristics of the French Revolution is peculiarly interesting, as showing how completely Mackintosh had changed his opinion since he wrote the Reply to Burke. Probably he is the more explicit, because his pamphlet was so universally known.
[Note 33], [p. 223].—This passage and what follows on the rule of the Jacobins is the one of which Madame de Staël wrote in her “Ten Years of Exile”: “It was during this stormy period of my existence that I received the speech of Mr. Mackintosh; and there read his description of a Jacobin, who had made himself an object of terror during the Revolution to children, women, and old men, and who was now bending himself double under the rod of the Corsican, who tears from him, even to the last atom, that liberty for which he pretended to have taken arms. This morceau of the finest eloquence touched me to my very soul; it is the privilege of superior writers sometimes unwittingly to solace the unfortunate in all countries and at all times. France was in a state of such complete silence around me, that this voice, which suddenly responded to my soul, seemed to me to come down from heaven—it came from a land of liberty.”