, or the invasion of
Holland, were urged by the minister, and by Mr. Windham, by myself, and
by others who spoke in those debates, as causes for bringing France to a
sense of her wrong in the war which she declared against us. Mr. Fox
well knew that not one man argued for the necessity of a vigorous
resistance to France, who did not state the war as being for the very
existence of the social order here, and in every part of Europe,--who
did not state his opinion that this war was not at all a foreign war of
empire, but as much for our liberties, properties, laws, and religion,
and even more so, than any we had ever been engaged in. This was the war
which, according to Mr. Fox and Mr. Gurney, we were to abandon before
the enemy had felt in the slightest degree the impression of our arms.

29. Had Mr. Fox's disgraceful proposal been complied with, this kingdom
would have been stained with a blot of perfidy hitherto without an
example in our history, and with far less excuse than any act of perfidy
which we find in the history of any other nation. The moment when, by
the incredible exertions of Austria, (very little through ours,) the
temporary deliverance of Holland (in effect our own deliverance) had
been achieved, he advised the House instantly to abandon her to that
very enemy from whose arms she had freed ourselves and the closest of
our allies.

30. But we are not to be imposed on by forms of language. We must act on
the substance of things. To abandon Austria in this manner was to
abandon Holland itself. For suppose France, encouraged and strengthened
as she must have been by our treacherous desertion,--suppose France, I
say, to succeed against Austria, (as she had succeeded the very year
before,) England would, after its disarmament, have nothing in the world
but the inviolable faith of Jacobinism and the steady politics of
anarchy to depend upon, against France's renewing the very same attempts
upon Holland, and renewing them (considering what Holland was and is)
with much better prospects of success. Mr. Fox must have been well
aware, that, if we were to break with the greater Continental powers,
and particularly to come to a rupture with them, in the violent and
intemperate mode in which he would have made the breach, the defence of
Holland against a foreign enemy and a strong domestic faction must
hereafter rest solely upon England, without the chance of a single ally,
either on that or on any other occasion.