and
further, the details given above prove that all that Frenchmen expected
from Pitt was neutrality. By remaining neutral, while the French overran
Belgium, Pitt was favouring the French plans more than any British
statesman had done since the time of James II. Thirdly, we notice in the
closing sentences of these Reflections signs of that extraordinary
self-confidence which led Girondins and Jacobins to face without
flinching even the prospect of war with England.

What was Pitt's conduct at this crisis? He knew enough of the politics
of Berlin and Vienna to see that those Courts would almost certainly
make war on France. He adopted therefore the line of conduct which
prudence and love of peace dictated, a strict neutrality. But he refused
to proclaim it to the world, as it would encourage France to attack
Austria. At the same time Grenville let it be known that Austria must
not be deprived of her Belgic lands, which England had assured to her,
firstly by the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), and quite recently by the
Reichenbach Convention. As Grenville phrased it--"The Pays Bas form the
chain which unites England to the Continent, and the central knot of our
relations to Austria and Russia. It would be broken if they belonged to
France." Talleyrand and Dumouriez knew this perfectly well, and
prudently declared that France had no intention of keeping those lands.
Would that the Jacobins and Napoleon had shown the same wise
self-restraint! It was their resolve to dominate the Netherlands which
brought them into irreconcilable opposition to Pitt and his successors
down to the year 1814.

Statesmanlike though the aims of Dumouriez were, they suffered not a
little in their exposition. Talleyrand, the brain of the policy, was not
its mouthpiece. In the French embassy at Portman Square he figured
merely as adviser to the French ambassador, the _ci-devant_ Marquis de
Chauvelin, a vain and showy young man, devoid of the qualities of
insight, tact, and patience in which the ex-bishop of Autun excelled his
contemporaries. Had this sage counsellor remained in London to the end
of the year, things might have gone very differently. The instructions
issued to Chauvelin contain ideas similar to those outlined above; but
they lay stress on the utility of a French alliance for England, in
order to thwart the aims of a greedy Coalition and to ensure her own
internal tranquillity, which, it is hinted, France can easily ruffle.
Talleyrand is