if it is to be done by referring back to state papers of this description, or by resuming the principles of those good old anti-jacobin times, or by finishing the war as it was begun. There would be no end of precedents and documents for prosecuting the war with vigour under every variety of circumstances, in order never to bring it to a conclusion. As a proof of the aggressions and implacable hatred of France, he might cite that monument of romantic and disinterested generosity "of heroic sentiment and manly enterprise," on the part of the Allies, the treaty of Pilnitz.[1] He might proceed to those pacific manifestations—Lord Hawkesbury's march to Paris—the Bellum internecinum of Mr. Windham, and his consistent phrenzy at the treaty of Amiens—Mr. Pitt's abstract impossibility of maintaining the relations of peace and amity with the French Republic, or with the child and champion of Jacobinism—Mr. Burke's Regicide Peace—the project of starving France in 1796—of hurling her down the gulph of bankruptcy in 1797—the coalitions of different periods in which England saved herself and Europe from peace by her energy, or her example—the contemptuous rejection of every offer of negociation in every situation, the unwearied prosecution of the war on the avowed principle that we were never to leave it off as long as we could carry it on, or get any one to carry it on for us, or till we had buried ourselves under the ruins of the civilized world (a prediction which we narrowly escaped verifying)—all these undeniable proofs and substantial demonstrations of our fond desires, our longings after peace, and of the determination of France to aggrandize herself by war and conquest, would, indeed, with the ingenious glosses of our well-meaning commentator form a very entertaining volume, and would at least teach us, if not what to follow, what we ought to shun, in our future advances to this first of earthly blessings, so long and studiously and systematically
- ↑ As he is fond of the good old times before the Revolution, the writer might go still farther back to that magnanimous undertaking, concerted and executed by the same persons of honour, the partition of Poland.
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