ility at this moment of concluding such a peace as would justify
that liberal intercourse which is the essence of real amity; no chance
of terminating the expenses or the anxieties of war, or of restoring
to us any of the advantages of established tranquillity; and as
a sincere lover of peace, I cannot be content with its nominal
attainment; I must be desirous of pursuing that system which promises
to attain, in the end, the permanent enjoyment of its solid and
substantial blessings for this country, and for Europe. As a sincere
lover of peace, I will not sacrifice it by grasping at the shadow,
when the reality is not substantially within my reach--_Cur igitur
pacem nolo? Quid infida est, quia periculosa, quia esse non potest_.

If, Sir, in all that I have now offered to the House, I have succeeded
in establishing the proposition that the system of the French
revolution has been such as to afford to foreign Powers no adequate
ground for security in negotiation, and that the change which has
recently taken place has not yet afforded that security; if I have
laid before you a just statement of the nature and extent of the
danger with which we have been threatened; it would remain only
shortly to consider, whether there is anything in the circumstances
of the present moment to induce us to accept a security confessedly
inadequate against a danger of such a description.

It will be necessary here to say a few words on the subject on
which gentlemen have been so fond of dwelling; I mean our former
negotiations, and particularly that at Lisle in 1797. I am desirous of
stating frankly and openly the true motives which induced me to concur
in then recommending negotiation; and I will leave it to the House,
and to the country, to judge whether our conduct at that time was
inconsistent with the principles by which we are guided at present.
That revolutionary policy which I have endeavoured to describe, that
gigantic system of prodigality and bloodshed by which the efforts of
France were supported, and which counts for nothing the lives and the
property of a nation, had at that period driven us to exertions which
had, in a great measure, exhausted the ordinary means of defraying
our immense expenditure, and had led many of those who were the most
convinced of the original justice and necessity of the war, and of the
danger of Jacobin principles, to doubt the possibility of persisting
in it till complete and adequate security coul