pensation; and a renunciation of any mortgage which this country might possess for the loan to the emperor. The French plenipotentiaries were immediately informed that this country had no such mortgage; that there could be no concession where there was no claim; and that the point was not worth talking about.

We next were called upon to subscr be, as a preliminary, that we were prepared to give up every thing we had acquired during the war. Such a preliminary could not be admitted by any man who was not disposed to adore the idol of the French power in prostrate baseness. His majesty did not hesitate in refusing to comply with such in solent demands.

The directory, however, did not then adhere to the extravagance of them; a long delay to amuse their people took place they pleaded it as a proof of the sincerity of their pacific intentions, and pretended that they were under the necessity of sending to their allies an account of what passed, that they were endeavouring to prevail upon them to put an end to the calamities of a war into which they had brought those allies, and who have ever since been in a state of abject subjection to them, whatever importance they affected to give them in this negotiation. They then directed their plenipotentiaries to inform Lord Malmesbury that they had obtained an answer, but it was not satisfactory; and they were obliged to send another messenger.

It was thus they concealed their insineerity till the dreadful catastrophe of the 4th of September; and even some days after that violence broke out in Paris, they promised to produce their projet, still pacific in their professions, and inimical in

their designs. The step which they took after this last assurance was, to renew in a more offensive form the demand which had been rejected by lord Malmesbury two months before; in which rejection they had acquiesced, and we in the interval had been waiting for the proposals which were to come from them, This demand was, that lord Malmesbury should show to them

his powers, his instructions, and the use he was to make of them: as an inducement to comply with this modest requisition, they as ured him, that though this demand was made, it would never be urged to carry it into effect. Mr. Pitt said, there appeared little reason for censuring ministers for not trusting such assurances from such an ene my.

He would leave others to imagine what was likely to have been the end of a negotiation in which it was a preliminary to resign every thing-in which it was demanded to reveal every thing required; that our ambassador should make known, not only his powers but his instructions, before even they had explained a word of theirs; and whilst they informed us, that we were not to expect to hear what their powers were until we professed ourselves ready to accede to any thing which the directory might please to dictate. Lord Malmesbury returned for answer, that his powers were ample: they then went no further than to say, if he could not show his instructions, he should send to England for the power; to which he replied, that he should not have it, if he sent、 In this they seemingly acquiesced, and amused us for two months; at the end of which time the plenipotentiaries say, not what they said before-send to England for powers to accede to proposals which you

politics. A more urgent care pressed home on our feelings, and should engage our whole attention. The danger was imminent, and every thing valuable was to be defended-our laws, our liberties, and our constitution, which it was the fixed object of the enemy to overturn; and above all, we had to deprecate and prevent what would Cover us with inextinguishable shame the permitting the French to invade our kingdom, violate our females, and enslave our children. The address had his most cordial support.

Mr. Martin much applauded the speech of Mr. Pitt; it was more convincing, he said, than any he had heard upon the subject: indeed, if the French would have acceded to any reasonable terms, it was his opinion that they should not be rejected; but when he saw they were determined to dictate the conditions, we ought not to permit ourselves to be trampled on, but evince the spirit which became a great nation. He thought the present amendment unnecessary, and that the original address was more consonant to the nature of our present circumstances.

Mr. N. Edwards rose to say, that in his county, Rutlandshire, the best possible disposition prevailed a mongst the inhabitants, and that the lord lieutenant of it was distinguished for the institution of the yeomanry corps. In many of the villages he knew, from personal observation, and from repeated assurance, that the people were ready to make every sacrifice for the defence of the country. There were a body of villagers, to the number of more than a thousand, prepared to come forward whenever danger threatened, and to defend our frontiers: this, perhaps, might be deem

ed a piece of information of too private a nature to be mentioned in the house; but he brought it as a symptom of the zeal and, alacrity which animated that part of Eng ́ ́ land.

Mr. Lloyd rose to express, he said, his detestation of the perfidious conduct of the directory: and although the county of Flint, as a mineral county, suffered in a particular manner from the continuance of the war (it having almost entirly put an end to the lead trade), yet there would not be found in the kingdom a set of men more ready to oppose the tyrannic rulers of France, or more willing to repel their attacks, than those men whom he had the honour to represent.

Lord Carysford cordially concurred in the sentiments of the address: the French system was set up for the annoyance of Europe, and Europe could bear witness to the moderation and justice of our cause. Our resistance was pointed against the exorbitant pretensions of the enemy; and it was in unison with the principles upon which we had acted from the beginning, as we had uniformly declared, that whatever form their government might assume we would not decline entering into any negotiation consistent with the honour and security of this kingdom. To this pledge we strictly had adhered: and the system of moderation upon which we had proceeded should unite all men of every description in a cordial and vigorous defence of our laws, rights, and constitution. Such an unanimous co-operation would have the double good effect of silencing the calumnies which were circulated abroad by the enemy, and of reviving our spirits at home, if indeed they were permitted to droop.There was nothing in our situation

to

to excite despair; and whence could it arise from the empty threats held out against us by the French? We had tried their strength in many conflicts, and the trials were crowned with complete success. France had aspired to universal dominion, but their attempts had always been repressed by the valour of this country. One circumstance, it was true, seemed to justify our alarms for the continuance of the war-it was an unproductive contest: we had much to lose, and nothing to gain; nor could we expect to make any successful impression on the enemy's territories; but we had already conquered all their foreign possessions, though any attempt on France herself was not likely to succeed: and any on their part respecting an invasion of England would prove equally impotent and ineffectual. He was sorry to see that Ireland was in a different situation; but notwithstanding its present disturbances, and the attacks of the French, he was satisfied they would meet with the same reception as on a former occasion, if they endeavoured to land there. He expressed his wishes that the house would carry to the throne full and forcible assurances of their united determination to exert the vigour, and call forth the resources of a country, not to be equalled by any other nation in Europe.

Dr. Lawrence, in a long and elaborate speech, blamed the minister for having offered so much to the French as the price of peace. If the directory had accepted the terms which were offered, in what a situation (he said) should we now have been! Had our project of a definitive treaty been then signed, how should we now have stood? Did they not still profess the same principles which we so often pronounced

fatal to all regular establishments? did they not uniformly act upon them? were they not as ready as ever to pour forth their hordes, to propagate them with the bayonet through every other nation. Had the negotiation succeeded should we not now have been left upon the good faith of a power which never had regarded any compact, any obligation, any public law of Europe?

No peace with men of such opinions could be secure till they knew that we had the ability to resist and avenge every infringement of it; nor was that ability to be displayed by a passive system of defence, but by pursuing the war with spirit and resolution.

It had been said that we had better give up for ever the right of searching neutral vessels, and make that concession the ground of a new defensive league, than wait to have it extracted from us. But the day in which any such treaty should be signed would be fatal to England. It was to our naval power that we owed the rank which we held as a nation-our maritime superiority which had hitherto enabled us to maintain the balance of European power, not to alarm and subjugate other kingdoms, but for the preservation and general benefit of all. If once we gave up the clear undoubted right, which even America in her present dispute with France had recognised, of stopping and searching the vessels of countries in peace with us, our naval force would have little against which it could operate in any future war. An enemy unable to meet us in arms on the ocean, by surrendering his navigation, might secure his whole commerce in neutral ships from our victorious force; and it was chiefly by distressing his commerce that a naval power could so

act

act as to compel a peace. It was thus by the treaty of Aix la Chapelle, Louis the XV. was contented to restore all his conquests that he might be released from the pressure of our maritime power on the trade of his kingdom. Dr. Lawrence said, he thought it his duty to call the attention of the house and the nation to the danger which lurked under the specious language of "the freedom of the seas," which we had been recommended to acknowledge, as if the right which we had invariably exercised was an act of usurpation and injustice. There was one point more which he thought it proper to notice; the chancellor of the exchequer had called his majesty's title of king of France a harmless feather. In his own opinion, no ancient dignity, which for so many centuries had shed lustre on the English crown, ought to be considered as a mere light unsubstantial ornament. If we suffered that feather to be plucked, he feared that three other feathers, which were nearly connected with the crown, would soon follow. A great nation could never safely submit to be disgraced. He wished the house to recollect the time when that title was first used; in the reign of Edward III. then it was that we had the first full regular record of the proceedings in parliament. Whether it was from the peculiar favour of Providence that we might have always before us an example to fix our wavering courage in moments of terror; but so the fact was, that the first conferences of the two houses, which appear upon the rolls, are of that epoch, and exhibit a situation of the country far less favourable than the present in every thing but the spirit of Englishmen. Allowing for the relative value of money, much larger sums had then

been spent in gaining the princes and states of the Netherland to our side than in the present war; yet no reliance could be placed on the allies whom we had so gained. No effectual aid was derived from their co-operation, and, in fact, they soon after deserted us. Commerce we had none; our revenue was not to be mentioned; then, as now, we were obliged to resort to an issue of foreign coin, to supply our circulation. We had scarcely any specie of our own. We had acquired nothing from the enemy; we had lost our natural dominion of the sea, our coasts were insulted and plundered. Harwich had been set on fire, the Isle of Thanet, Folkstone, and Dover, had suffered more lightly, Hastings more severely. Southampton had been burnt to the ground: a great part of Plymouth, with all the great ships in that harbour, shared the same fate; and the Isle of Jersey had been conquered (as the records of the house confessed), to the great slander of the land. Within our own island, the Scots, not as now united to us, but the fast allies of our enemies, were threatening our borders, whilst in many of our counties and cities existed a desperate knot of conspirators, bound together by oath,upon the first intelligence of those disasters which they wished to their country, to rise in a general insurrection to rob and massacre their peaceable neighbours. What then was the conduct of parliament ? the commons resolved that the government had sufficient power to protect the internal peace of the land; they proposed methods of external defence; they agreed in the necessity of a large supply, and they declared their own good will to grant what the exigencies of the state demanded. But to give greater

effect