William Pitt and the Great War. J. Holland Rose
the French Convention assured Miles that the disbanding of those tumultuary forces would bring on a social crisis.
War, [he wrote on 9th December] is to a certain extent inevitable, not so much for the purpose of opening the Scheldt, for that is rather a pretext in order to animate the people and preserve their enthusiasm, but to get rid of 300,000 armed vagabonds, who can never be allowed to return without evident risk to the Convention and Executive Council. … It is her opinion [Madame Roland's] and mine that we cannot make peace with the Emperor without danger to the Republic, and that it would be hazardous to recall an army, flushed with victory and impatient to gather fresh laurels, into the heart of a country whose commerce and manufactures have lost their activity, and which would leave the disbanded multitude without resources or employment.[138]
These words are noteworthy; for they show that prudential or party motives led some at least of the Girondins, formerly friends of England, to desire an extension of the war.
In England, too, the war spirit was rising. The traditional loyalty of the land had been strengthened by the tactful behaviour of George III since Pitt's accession to power. These feelings warmed to a steady glow at the time of the King's illness in 1788–9; and now the trial of Louis XVI, albeit on grounds which Britons could not understand, seemed an act of contemptible cruelty. To bring Louis from Versailles to Paris, to load him with indignities at the Tuileries, to stop his despairing bolt for freedom, to compass his downfall, to attack him in his palace and massacre his defenders, to depose him, and now to try him for his life for the crime of helping on his would-be deliverers, appeared to a nation of sportsmen a series of odious outrages on the laws of fair play. The action of certain Radical Clubs in sending addresses of congratulation to the National Convention also aroused deep disgust; and (as Bland Burges wrote to Auckland on 18th December) Loyal Associations sprang up on all sides.[139] A typical address was sent by the Dover Association to Pitt, as Lord Warden, on 19th December, asking for permission to take arms in defence of King and Constitution against invaders from without or levellers within.[140] The example was widely followed; and thus, as usually happens in this land, the puny preparations of Government were helped on by the eager exertions of the people.
The revulsion in public opinion early in December was so marked as to impress even Chauvelin. He warned Lebrun that within a month the English had so changed as scarcely to be recognizable; but he added: "Pitt seems to have killed public opinion in England." A conversation which Sheridan had with him on 7th December ought to have disproved this fable. The Whig orator sternly reprobated the French decree of 19th November, offering aid to malcontents, and stated that the Opposition desired peace with France, but not if she attacked Holland. Nine-tenths of the people would resent any attempt to interfere with England or her Allies.
This patriotic utterance of Sheridan expressed the feelings of a large part of the Whig Opposition. Parliament on 13th December showed marked approval of the King's Speech, which, while affirming his peaceful intentions, asserted his resolve to strengthen the forces. Lansdowne and Stanhope struck a few jarring notes; but in the Commons the Opposition was almost paralysed by a split between the New and Old Whigs. At a meeting of the party, held on 11th December at Burlington House, the majority decided to support the Government. Indeed Parliament would probably have presented a united front but for the action of Lansdowne, Stanhope, and Fox. Much depended on the conduct of the great orator at this crisis. A warning uttered by him to French Republicans might have had the most salutary effect. Unfortunately his conduct was such as to impair the unity of English sentiment and thereby to encourage the delusions of the men in power at Paris. In the meeting on 11th December he asserted that there was no fear of a revolt (in which he was doubtless correct) and that the calling out of the Militia was a mere trick, which he would strenuously oppose. He admitted that we must support the Dutch if they were attacked, and disapproved of the French decree respecting the Scheldt, but strongly deprecated war on that account. On the 12th he threw caution to the winds, and stated with an oath that there was no address that Pitt could frame on which he would not propose an amendment and divide the House.[141] This is party spirit run mad; but it was in that spirit that Fox went to the House on the 13th.
There he made one of his finest flights of oratory. None of his speeches excels it in beauty of diction and matchless energy of thought. Most forcible was the passage in which he derided the ministerial maxim that the canon of English laws and liberties was complete; that we might thenceforth stand still, and call upon a wondering world to admire it as a model of human perfection. Even more biting were his taunts at Ministers for seeking to stamp out the discontent which their injustice and violence had created.
You have gone upon the principles of slavery in all your proceedings; you neglect in your conduct the foundation of all legitimate government, the rights of the people; and, setting up this bugbear, you spread a panic for the very purpose of sanctifying this infringement, while again the very infringement engenders the evil which you dread. One extreme naturally leads to another. Those who dread republicanism fly for shelter to the Crown. Those who desire Reform and are calumniated are driven by despair to republicanism. And this is the evil that I dread. These are the extremes into which these violent agitations hurry the people, to the decrease of that middle order of men who shudder as much at republicanism on the one hand as they do at despotism on the other.[142]
He then taunted Ministers with abandoning Poland and not opposing the coalition of Austria and Prussia, and asserted that the Cabinet refused to negotiate with France because she was a Republic, and her Ministers had not been anointed with the holy oil of Rheims. The weakest part of the speech was that which dealt with the existing crisis. For of what use was it to point out where Ministers had gone astray months and years before, if he did not now mark out for them a practicable course? In truth, though the prince of debaters, Fox lacked self-restraint, balance of judgement, and practical sagacity. The sole important issue was the encouraging of the peace party at Paris, with a view to the revocation of the aggressive decrees of the Convention. In private, Fox had admitted that they were wholly indefensible; and yet, in order to snatch an oratorical triumph, he fired off a diatribe which could not but stiffen the necks of the French Jacobins. At such a crisis the true statesman merges the partisan in the patriot and says not a word to weaken his own Government and hearten its opponents. To this height of self-denial Fox rarely rose; and the judgement alike of his fellows and of posterity has pronounced this speech a masterpiece of partisan invective and of political fatuity.
For how was it possible to recognize the French Republic until it had withdrawn its threats to existing Governments? Pitt had reason to believe that a firm protest against the aggressive decrees of November was the only means of averting an overturn of international law. He took the proper means of protesting against them, and his protest was disregarded. In such a case, to recognize a revolutionary Government which had just proclaimed its sympathy with malcontents and its resolve to dictate terms to our Dutch allies, would have been a sign of weakness. There was but one chance of peace, namely, that Parliament should give so overwhelming a support to Pitt and Grenville as to convince the tyros at Paris that they had to do, not with a clique, but a nation. This unanimity the efforts of Fox impaired. Some of his friends voted with him from a sense of personal regard; but the greater number passed over to the Government or did not vote. Consequently the Foxites mustered 50 votes against 290.
Equally inopportune was his motion of 15th December, for sending a Minister to Paris to treat with that Government. His knowledge of all that went on at the French Embassy in Portman Square was so exact (witness his repetition publicly on the 13th of the very words of one of Lebrun's despatches to Chauvelin),[143] that he must have known of the informal communications between Pitt and Maret, and of the arrival on the 14th of despatches from Paris, which negatived the requests of the Prime Minister. Doubtless it was this last circumstance which curtailed and weakened Fox's second speech. Grey, Erskine, and Whitbread vigorously supported the motion; but there was a general feeling that the despatch of an ambassador to Paris would be a weak acquiescence in the French claims. The motion was therefore negatived. Pitt was not present at these first debates, not having yet been re-elected by the University of Cambridge after his recent acceptance of the Lord Wardenship of the Cinque Ports.