f self-humiliation?
Is his charge equal to the finding of the grand jury of Europe, and
sufficient to put you upon your trial? But on that trial I will defend
the English ministry. I am sorry that on some points I have, on the
principles I have always opposed, so good a defence to make. They were
not the first to begin the war. They did not excite the general
confederacy in Europe, which was so properly formed on the alarm given
by the Jacobinism of France. They did not begin with an hostile
aggression on the Regicides, or any of their allies. These parricides of
their own country, disciplining themselves for foreign by domestic
violence, were the first to attack a power that was our ally by nature,
by habit, and by the sanction of multiplied treaties. Is it not true
that they were the first to declare war upon this kingdom? Is every word
in the declaration from Downing Street concerning their conduct, and
concerning ours and that of our allies, so obviously false that it is
necessary to give some new-invented proofs of our good faith in order to
expunge the memory of all this perfidy?

We know that over-laboring a point of this kind has the direct contrary
effect from what we wish. We know that there is a legal presumption
against men, _quando se nimis purgitant_; and if a charge of ambition is
not refuted by an affected humility, certainly the character of fraud
and perfidy is still less to be washed away by indications of meanness.
Fraud and prevarication are servile vices. They sometimes grow out of
the necessities, always out of the habits, of slavish and degenerate
spirits; and on the theatre of the world, it is not by assuming the mask
of a Davus or a Geta that an actor will obtain credit for manly
simplicity and a liberal openness of proceeding. It is an erect
countenance, it is a firm adherence to principle, it is a power of
resisting false shame and frivolous fear, that assert our good faith and
honor, and assure to us the confidence of mankind. Therefore all these
negotiations, and all the declarations with which they were preceded and
followed, can only serve to raise presumptions against that good faith
and public integrity the fame of which to preserve inviolate is so much
the interest and duty of every nation.

The pledge is an engagement "to all Europe." This is the more
extraordinary, because it is a pledge which no power in Europe, whom I
have yet heard of, has thought proper to require at our hands.