the enemy was far from giving
the least degree of countenance to any such hopes, and that they
proceeded in spite of every discouragement which the enemy had thrown in
their way. But there is another material point in which they do not seem
to differ: that is to say, the result of the desperate experiment of the
noble lord, and of the promising attempt of the great minister, in
satisfying the people of England, and in causing discontent to the
people of France,--or, as the minister expresses it, "in uniting England
and in dividing France."

For my own part, though I perfectly agreed with the noble lord that the
attempt was desperate, so desperate, indeed, as to deserve _his_ name of
an experiment, yet no fair man can possibly doubt that the minister was
perfectly sincere in his proceeding, and that, from his ardent wishes
for peace with the Regicides, he was led to conceive hopes which were
founded rather in his vehement desires than in any rational ground of
political speculation. Convinced as I am of this, it had been better, in
my humble opinion, that persons of great name and authority had
abstained from those topics which had been used to call the minister's
sincerity into doubt, and had not adopted the sentiments of the
Directory upon the subject of all our negotiations: for the noble lord
expressly says that the experiment was made for the satisfaction of the
country. The Directory says exactly the same thing. Upon granting, in
consequence of our supplications, the passport to Lord Malmesbury, in
order to remove all sort of hope from its success, they charged all our
previous steps, even to that moment of submissive demand to be admitted
to their presence, on duplicity and perfidy, and assumed that the object
of all the steps we had taken was that "of justifying the continuance of
the war in the eyes of the English nation, and of throwing all the odium
of it upon the French." "The English nation" (said they) "supports
impatiently the continuance of the war, and _a reply must be made to its
complaints and its reproaches_; the Parliament is about to be opened,
_and the mouths of the orators who will declaim against the war must be
shut; the demands for new taxes must be justified; and to obtain these
results, it is necessary to be able to advance that the French
government refuses every reasonable proposition for peace_." I am sorry
that the language of the friends to ministry and the enemies to mankind
should be s