nual attempt he had made to induce a negotiation, and desired to know whether our perverse continuance in the proud denial that it was a proper time to negotiate, had bettered our situation? On the contrary, he said, the practicability of peace upon safe and honourable terms had become more hopeless. He hoped the gentleman who admitted the restoration of the emigrants and of the house of Bourbon to be hopeless, and that ministers were convinced that it was prudent to calculate the value of an object, and not to pursue it, however desirable, beyond the rational hope of obtainment, spoke from authority. If the disasters of the war had produced this conviction in ministers, however he lamented the calamity which produced this restoration to reason, he should think our situation improved. The expedition to Quiberon was, he supposed, one cause of this conviction. Mr. Fox, with an uncommon glow of expression and energy of manner, reprobated this ill-fated expedition, and the savage barbarity of denying to the gallant and dying Sombreuil the consolation of publish ing his letter. Yet, in defiance of this lesson, he observed, another expedition was framed to l'Isle Dieu, which, if carried into effect in the same manner as the first, would have been equally disastrous. He pointedly noticed the inconsistency of ministers in summon. ing Belleisle to surrender in the name of Louis XVIII. Had Belleisle or Noirmontier yielded to this summons, we must have landed and taken possession of them in the name of Louis XVIII. and pledged ourselves to restore him to his rights, which would have reduced us to the alternative of abandoning the prince and his followers with infamy, or of prosecuting his cause with despair, as this was a hopeless cause. He ridiculed with much force the arguments supported by the different speakers in the debate in favour of the war. They were, he said, theories which might suit well for a literary or political disputant, and be amusing in a clubroom or a pamphlet; but for a man to undertake the

office of a statesman, and to bring such theories into practice, was an outrage, not only upon common sense, but upon moral duty. Mr. Fox commented upon the ex. treme folly of entering into a war against opinions. He contended, that, at every moment from the commenceP ment of the war to the present time, ministers might have negotiated upon better terms with the French than they now could, and that our relative situation had been gradually growing worse. He pointed out several periods when, according to the language held out by ministers, it might have been prudent and consistent to treat. Yet, when a motion was made for this purpose on the 26th of January last, which it was not convenient directly to oppose, an amendment was moved, that they were ready to enter into a negotiation whenever a government was established capable of maintaining the accustomed relations of amity and peace. Was negotiation offered when such a government appeared? It was proved that France did maintain such relations, since Prussia, Spain, many of the states of Germany, and even the elector of Hanover, had made peace with her. Mr. Fox ridiculed the idea of waiting to treat till there was some experience of the new constitution of France, since experience had proved that neither the changes of men nor of constitutions affected the engagements they had formed with foreign countries. It was, he said, idle to talk of the theory of a constitution being a dependence for the observance of a treaty : if a rational treaty was made, and it was the interest of the parties to keep it, that was the only true and wise dependence for the continuance of peace. The offer of negotiation, he thought, ought to come from us, as having made declarations which stood in the way of negotiation. This was neither the time nor the place to settle the terms of peace. The terms in every negotiation must certainly depend upon the relative situation of the parties! but he could not admit of the eternal evasion, that one year we were too high to treat, another year

we were too low; and thus war was prolonged without one calculation, whether the expence of continuing it for one year was not more than the difference of terms to be expected between a good and a bad relative situation. We were now left with one ally, and that ally must be bribed to continue. Adverting to the apprehen ded scarcity, Mr. Fox said, it was an insult upon common sense to urge that war and military expeditions did not in their nature aggravate scarcity. The quantity of increased consumption, without taking into account the quantities damaged and lost, was immense. Had go. vernment, pursuing the example of France, unloaded the transports that were sent to Quiberon, they would have done more towards alleviating the scarcity, than all the corn which their agents imported. Again adverting to his majesty's speech, Mr. Fox observed that when he had first mentioned negotiating with the French, it was said, What, would you negotiate with men about to stain their hands with the blood of their sovereign? Yet, if the present speech meant any thing, it meant that with these very men ministers would have no objection to treat, and even with Tallien, who had dipped his hands in royal blood. He ended by moving an amendment, which, after enumerating the circumstances of our disastrous campaign, and stating from experience, that the French were able to maintain the accustomed relations of peace and amity with other nations, prayed his majesty that such terms of peace should be offered to the French republic as should be consistent with the ho nour of the crown, and with the security and interest of the people,

MR. PITT.

In Reply.

HE considered the amendment as merely the mockery of returning to a state of security and peace. He vindicated the first proposition contained in his majesty's speech. The period comprised in this proposition contained, he said, the space between the opening of the last session of parliament, and the present moment; and he expressed his satisfaction in the present state of security compared to that ten months ago. His grounds of satisfaction were, he said, that, allowing for the victories and advantages obtained by the enemy, and for all the calamities which had befallen this country or our allies, the house, from looking at the present principles of the war, must observe the grounds of his satisfaction, and the state of our improvement!! They could not but perceive the enemy's reduced means of prosecuting the war. They were now in a situation to afford us fair prospects of their being soon perhaps more capable of giving reasonable security for engagements of peace. They felt a greater necessity for peace, and were more disposed to it. Their reduced means were demonstrable: at the commencement of the last session, the value of the assignats was from 20 to 25 per cent. they were now only one and a half per cent. they have at present only one sixteenth of their value ten months ago. The prodigality of their system forced into circulation between 6 and 7 milliards, which was equal to 280 millions sterling; this was three or four times more than the amount of all the money in France in its richest state, and which its commerce wanted for its circulating medium. The French had, he said,

now assignats in circulation to the amount of 720 millions sterling, and the number was still increasing; they had therefore to face another campaign under these circumstances; and, were the other powers of Europe to put them to the hard necessity of trying the experiment, he believed that the prodigal resources of their system could not be supported without the restoration of the system of terror. Mr. Pitt allowed the advantages derived by the enemy from the equivocal conduct of Prussia, and the disbanding of the armies withdrawn from Spain. But it was to be observed, that, for every pound sterling formerly paid to each man in such an army, sixteen pounds sterling must be given at the beginning of the present year. After urging a variety of arguments to prove the ruinous situation of their resources, Mr. Pitt observed, that these resources might last a longer or a shorter time, before they produced their final effect; but they had in them the seeds of decay, and the inevitable cause of a violent dissolution. The remedies proposed in France for this evil were not less ruinous; and the losses they sustained in commerce and manufactures were enormous. He admitted the successes of the French on the Rhine, the calamitous fate of the expedition to Quiberon, and that the enemy had been only kept on the defensive on the side of Italy; but still the internal situation of France was most wretched and deplorable. On the mischiefs of paper currency he again expatiated— if the assignats were taken out of circulation, the French could not command the labour of their own subjects, either for civil or military operations. To many persons employed by the state, they had been obliged to allot a number of necessary articles in kind. They had also been compelled to add one seventh in money to the daily pay of their soldiers, who thus received ten times the amount of their pay in assignats. When he considered their total inability to carry on the war for another campaign, he could not doubt the situation of things was materially improved.