So far as to the pretended sole
object of the war, which Mr. Fox supposed to be so completely obtained
(but which then was not at all, and at this day is not completely
obtained) as to leave us nothing else to do than to cultivate a
peaceful, quiet correspondence with those quiet, peaceable, and moderate
people, the Jacobins of France.

31. To induce us to this, Mr. Fox labored hard to make it appear that
the powers with whom we acted were full as ambitious and as perfidious
as the French. This might be true as to _other_ nations. They had not,
however, been so to _us_ or to Holland. He produced no proof of active
ambition and ill faith against Austria. But supposing the combined
powers had been all thus faithless, and been all alike so, there was one
circumstance which made an essential difference between them and
France. I need not, therefore, be at the trouble of contesting this
point,--which, however, in this latitude, and as at all affecting Great
Britain and Holland, I deny utterly. Be it so. But the great monarchies
have it in their power to keep their faith, _if they please_, because
they are governments of established and recognized authority at home and
abroad. France had, in reality, no government. The very factions who
exercised power had no stability. The French Convention had no powers of
peace or war. Supposing the Convention to be free, (most assuredly it
was not,) they had shown no disposition to abandon their projects.
Though long driven out of Liege, it was not many days before Mr. Fox's
motion that they still continued to claim it as a country which their
principles of fraternity bound them to protect,--that is, to subdue and
to regulate at their pleasure. That party which Mr. Fox inclined most to
favor and trust, and from which he must have received his assurances,
(if any he did receive,) that is, the _Brissotins_, were then either
prisoners or fugitives. The party which prevailed over them (that of
Danton and Marat) was itself in a tottering condition, and was disowned
by a very great part of France. To say nothing of the royal party, who
were powerful and growing, and who had full as good a right to claim to
be the legitimate government as any of the Parisian factions with whom
he proposed to treat,--or rather, (as it seemed to me,) to surrender at
discretion.

32. But when Mr. Fox began to come from his general hopes of the
moderation of the Jacobins to particulars, he put the case that they
m