s, of which I felt the sound die within my lips, my eye was
caught by the quick turn of Pitt's head, who fixed his impatient
glance upon me. Fox, with that kindliness of heart which always forgot
party when a good-natured act was to be done, gave his sonorous cheer.
From that instant I was another man; I breathed freely, and,
recovering my voice and mind together, I plunged boldly into the
boundless subject before me.

After scattering a few of the showy sophisms which the orator of the
opposition had constructed into his specious argument, I placed the
war on the ground of necessity. "Nations cannot act like
individuals--they cannot submit to self-sacrifice--they cannot give up
their rights--they cannot affect an indolent disdain or an idle
generosity. The reason of the distinction is, that in every instance
the nation is a trustee--It has the rights of posterity in its
keeping; it has nothing of its own to throw away; it is responsible to
every generation to come. If war be essential to the integrity of the
empire, war is as much a duty--a terrible duty, I allow--as the
protection of our children's property from the grasp of rapine, or the
defence of their lives against the midnight robber. But we are advised
to peace. No man on earth would do more willing homage than myself to
that beneficent genius of nations. But where am I to offer my homage?
Am I to kneel on the high-road where the enemy's armies, fierce with
the hope of plunder, are rushing along? Am I to build my altar in the
midst of contending thousands, or on the ground covered with
corpses--in the battle, or on the grave? Or am I to carry my offering
to the capital, and there talk the language of national cordiality in
the ear of the multitude dragging their king to the scaffold? Am I to
appeal to the feelings of human brotherhood in streets smoking with
civil massacre; to adjure the nation by the national honour, where
revolt is an avowed principle; to press upon them the opinion of
Europe, where they have proclaimed war with the world; to invoke them
by the faith which they have renounced, the allegiance which they have
disdained, the God whom they have blasphemed? Those things are
impossible. If we are to have a treaty with this new order of thinking
and action, it must be a compact of crime, a solemn agreement of
treachery, a formal bond of plunder; it must be a treaty fitter for
the cavern of conspiracy than for the chamber of council; its pledge
must