d, and with
Spain. With respect to Spain, we have seen nothing in any part of its
conduct which leads us to suspect that either attachment to religion,
or the ties of consanguinity, or regard to the ancient system of
Europe, was likely to induce that Court to connect itself in offensive
war against France. The war was evidently and incontestably begun by
France against Spain. The case of Holland is so fresh in every man's
recollection, and so connected with the immediate causes of the war
with this country, that it cannot require one word of observation.
What shall I say, then, on the case of Portugal? I cannot indeed say
that France ever declared war against that country; I can hardly say
even that she ever made war, but she required them to make a treaty of
peace, as if they had been at war; she obliged them to purchase
that treaty; she broke it as soon as it was purchased, and she had
originally no other ground of complaint than this: that Portugal
had performed, though inadequately, the engagements of its ancient
defensive alliance with this country, in the character of an
auxiliary--a conduct which cannot of itself make any Power a principal
in a war.

I have now enumerated all the nations at war at that period, with the
exception only of Naples. It can hardly be necessary to call to the
recollection of the House the characteristic feature of revolutionary
principles which was shown, even at this early period, in the personal
insult offered to the King of Naples by the commander of a French
squadron, riding uncontrolled in the Mediterranean, and (while our
fleets were yet unarmed) threatening destruction to all the coast of
Italy.

It was not till a considerably later period that almost all the
other nations of Europe found themselves equally involved in actual
hostility: but it is not a little material to the whole of my
argument, compared with the statement of the learned gentleman, and
with that contained in the French note, to examine at what period this
hostility extended itself. It extended itself, in the course of 1796,
to the states of Italy which had hitherto been exempted from it. In
1797 it had ended in the destruction of most of them; it had ended in
the virtual deposition of the King of Sardinia, it had ended in the
conversion of Genoa and Tuscany into democratic republics; it had
ended in the revolution of Venice, in the violation of treaties with
the new Venetian republic; and finally, in transfer