Edmund Burke - The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 05 (of 12)

The object of the last of this extraordinary string of resolutions moved by Mr. Fox was to advise the crown not to enter into such an engagement with any foreign power so as to hinder us from making a separate peace with France, or which might tend to enable any of those powers to introduce a government in that country other than such as those persons whom he calls the people of France shall choose to establish. In short, the whole of these resolutions appeared to have but one drift, namely, the sacrifice of our own domestic dignity and safety, and the independency of Europe, to the support of this strange mixture of anarchy and tyranny which prevails in France, and which Mr. Fox and his party were pleased to call a government. The immediate consequence of these measures was (by an example the ill effects of which on the whole world are not to be calculated) to secure the robbers of the innocent nobility, gentry, and ecclesiastics of France in the enjoyment of the spoil they have made of the estates, houses, and goods of their fellow-citizens.

21. Not satisfied with moving these resolutions, tending to confirm this horrible tyranny and robbery, and with actually dividing the House on the first of the long string which they composed, in a few days afterwards he encouraged and supported Mr. Grey in producing the very same string in a new form, and in moving, under the shape of an address of Parliament to the crown, another virulent libel on all its own proceedings in this session, in which not only all the ground of the resolutions was again travelled over, but much new inflammatory matter was introduced. In particular, a charge was made, that Great Britain had not interposed to prevent the last partition of Poland. On this head the party dwelt very largely and very vehemently. Mr. Fox's intention, in the choice of this extraordinary topic, was evident enough. He well knows two things: first, that no wise or honest man can approve of that partition, or can contemplate it without prognosticating great mischief from it to all countries at some future time; secondly, he knows quite as well, that, let our opinions on that partition be what they will, England, by itself, is not in a situation to afford to Poland any assistance whatsoever. The purpose of the introduction of Polish politics into this discussion was not for the sake of Poland; it was to throw an odium upon those who are obliged to decline the cause of justice from their impossibility of supporting a cause which they approve: as if we, who think more strongly on this subject than he does, were of a party against Poland, because we are obliged to act with some of the authors of that injustice against our common enemy, France. But the great and leading purpose of this introduction of Poland into the debates on the French war was to divert the public attention from what was in our power, that is, from a steady coöperation against France, to a quarrel with the allies for the sake of a Polish war, which, for any useful purpose to Poland, he knew it was out of our power to make. If England can touch Poland ever so remotely, it must be through the medium of alliances. But by attacking all the combined powers together for their supposed unjust aggression upon France, he bound them by a now common interest not separately to join England for the rescue of Poland. The proposition could only mean to do what all the writers of his party in the Morning Chronicle have aimed at persuading the public to, through the whole of the last autumn and winter, and to this hour: that is, to an alliance with the Jacobins of France, for the pretended purpose of succoring Poland. This curious project would leave to Great Britain no other ally in all Europe except its old enemy, France.

22. Mr. Fox, after the first day's discussion on the question for the address, was at length driven to admit (to admit rather than to urge, and that very faintly) that France had discovered ambitious views, which none of his partisans, that I recollect, (Mr. Sheridan excepted,) did, however, either urge or admit. What is remarkable enough, all the points admitted against the Jacobins were brought to bear in their favor as much as those in which they were defended. For when Mr. Fox admitted that the conduct of the Jacobins did discover ambition, he always ended his admission of their ambitious views by an apology for them, insisting that the universally hostile disposition shown to them rendered their ambition a sort of defensive policy. Thus, on whatever roads he travelled, they all terminated in recommending a recognition of their pretended republic, and in the plan of sending an ambassador to it. This was the burden of all his song:—"Everything which we could reasonably hope from war would be obtained from treaty." It is to be observed, however, that, in all these debates, Mr. Fox never once stated to the House upon what ground it was he conceived that all the objects of the French system of united fanaticism and ambition would instantly be given up, whenever England should think fit to propose a treaty. On proposing so strange a recognition and so humiliating an embassy as he moved, he was bound to produce his authority, if any authority he had. He ought to have done this the rather, because Le Brun, in his first propositions, and in his answers to Lord Grenville, defended, on principle, not on temporary convenience , everything which was objected to France, and showed not the smallest disposition to give up any one of the points in discussion. Mr. Fox must also have known that the Convention had passed to the order of the day, on a proposition to give some sort of explanation or modification to the hostile decree of the 19th of November for exciting insurrections in all countries,—a decree known to be peculiarly pointed at Great Britain. The whole proceeding of the French administration was the most remote that could be imagined from furnishing any indication of a pacific disposition: for at the very time in which it was pretended that the Jacobins entertained those boasted pacific intentions, at the very time in which Mr. Fox was urging a treaty with them, not content with refusing a modification of the decree for insurrections, they published their ever-memorable decree of the 15th of December, 1792, for disorganizing every country in Europe into which they should on any occasion set their foot; and on the 25th and the 30th of the same month, they solemnly, and, on the last of these days, practically, confirmed that decree.

23. But Mr. Fox had himself taken good care, in the negotiation he proposed, that France should not be obliged to make any very great concessions to her presumed moderation: for he had laid down one general, comprehensive rule, with him (as he said) constant and inviolable. This rule, in fact, would not only have left to the faction in France all the property and power they had usurped at home, but most, if not all, of the conquests which by their atrocious perfidy and violence they had made abroad. The principle laid down by Mr. Fox is this,—" That every state, in the conclusion of a war, has a right to avail itself of its conquests towards an indemnification ." This principle (true or false) is totally contrary to the policy which this country has pursued with France at various periods, particularly at the Treaty of Ryswick, in the last century, and at the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in this. Whatever the merits of his rule may be in the eyes of neutral judges, it is a rule which no statesman before him ever laid down in favor of the adverse power with whom he was to negotiate. The adverse party himself may safely be trusted to take care of his own aggrandizement. But (as if the black boxes of the several parties had been exchanged) Mr. Fox's English ambassador, by some odd mistake, would find himself charged with the concerns of France. If we were to leave France as she stood at the time when Mr. Fox proposed to treat with her, that formidable power must have been infinitely strengthened, and almost every other power in Europe as much weakened, by the extraordinary basis which he laid for a treaty. For Avignon must go from the Pope; Savoy (at least) from the King of Sardinia, if not Nice. Liege, Mentz, Salm, Deux-Ponts, and Basle must be separated from Germany. On this side of the Rhine, Liege (at least) must be lost to the Empire, and added to France. Mr. Fox's general principle fully covered all this. How much of these territories came within his rule he never attempted to define. He kept a profound silence as to Germany. As to the Netherlands he was something more explicit. He said (if I recollect right) that France on that side might expect something towards strengthening her frontier. As to the remaining parts of the Netherlands, which he supposed France might consent to surrender, he went so far as to declare that England ought not to permit the Emperor to be repossessed of the remainder of the ten Provinces, but that the people should choose such a form of independent government as they liked. This proposition of Mr. Fox was just the arrangement which the usurpation in France had all along proposed to make. As the circumstances were at that time, and have been ever since, his proposition fully indicated what government the Flemings must have in the stated extent of what was left to them. A government so set up in the Netherlands, whether compulsory, or by the choice of the sans-culottes , (who he well knew were to be the real electors, and the sole electors,) in whatever name it was to exist, must evidently depend for its existence, as it had done for its original formation, on France. In reality, it must have ended in that point to which, piece by piece, the French were then actually bringing all the Netherlands,—that is, an incorporation with France as a body of new Departments, just as Savoy and Liege and the rest of their pretended independent popular sovereignties have been united to their republic. Such an arrangement must have destroyed Austria; it must have left Holland always at the mercy of France; it must totally and forever cut off all political communication between England and the Continent. Such must have been the situation of Europe, according to Mr. Fox's system of politics, however laudable his personal motives may have been in proposing so complete a change in the whole system of Great Britain with regard to all the Continental powers.