contest at home, as an ordinary party squabble | pulsory reflection comes, then be pleased to turn about place or patronage; and to regard this jacobin war abroad as a common war about trade or territorial boundaries, or about a political balance of power among rival or jealous states: above all, it is my protest against that mistake or perversion of sentiment, by which they, who agree with us in our principles, may on collateral considerations be regarded as enemies; and those who, in this perilous crisis of all human affairs, differ from us fundamentally and practically, as our best friends. Thus persons of great importance may be made to turn the whole of their influence to the destruction of their principles. I now make it my humble request to your Grace, that you will not give any sort of answer to the paper I send, or to this letter, except barely to let me know that you have received them. I even wish that at present you may not read the paper which I transmit; lock it up in the drawer of your library table; and when a day of com to it. Then remember that your Grace had a true friend, who had, comparatively with men of your description, a very small interest in opposing the modern system of morality and policy; but who, under every discouragement, was faithful to publick duty and to private friendship. I shall then probably be dead. I am sure I do not wish to live to see such things. But whilst I do live, I shall pursue the same course; although my merits should be taken for unpardonable faults, and such avenged, not only on myself, but on my posterity. Adieu, my dear Lord; and do me the justice to believe me ever, with most sincere respect, veneration, and affectionate attachment, Your Grace's most faithful friend, Beaconsfield, Sept. 29, 1793. OBSERVATIONS, &c. APPROACHING towards the close of a long period, of publick service, it is natural I should be desirous to stand well (I hope I do stand tolerably well) with that publick, which, with whatever fortune, I have endeavoured faithfully and zealously to serve. I am also not a little anxious for some place in the estimation of the two persons to whom I address this paper. I have always acted with them, and with those whom they represent. To my knowledge, I have not deviated, no not in the minutest point, from their opinions and principles. Of late, without any alteration in their sentiments, or in mine, a difference of a very unusual nature, and which, under the circumstances, it is not easy to describe, has arisen be tween us. alienation on his part, a complete publick separation has been made between that gentleman and me. Until lately the breach between us appeared reparable. I trusted that time and reflection, and a decisive experience of the mischiefs which have flowed from the proceedings and the system of France, on which our difference had arisen, as well as the known sentiments of the best and wisest of our common friends upon that subject, would have brought him to a safer way of thinking. Several of his friends saw no security for keeping things in a proper train after this excursion of his, but in the re-union of the party on its old grounds, under the Duke of Portland. Mr. Fox, if he pleased, might have been comprehended in that system, with the rank and consideration to which his great talents entitle him, and indeed must secure to him in any party arrangement that could be made. The Duke of Portland knows how much I wished for, and how earnestly I laboured, that re-union, and upon terms that might every way be honourable and advantageous to Mr. Fox. His conduct in the last session has extinguished these hopes for ever. In my journey with them through life, I met Mr. Fox in my road; and I travelled with him very cheerfully as long as he appeared to me to pursue the same direction with those in whose company I set out. In the latter stage of our progress, a new scheme of liberty and equality was produced in the world, which either dazzled his imagination, or was suited to some new walks of Mr. Fox has lately published in print a defence ambition, which were then opened to his view. of his conduct. On taking into consideration The whole frame and fashion of his politicks ap- that defence, a society of gentlemen, called the pear to have suffered about that time a very ma- Whig Club, thought proper to come to the folterial alteration. It is about three years since, in lowing resolution-"That their confidence in consequence of that extraordinary change, that," Mr. Fox is confirmed, strengthened, and enafter a pretty long preceding period of distance," creased, by the calumnies against him." coolness, and want of confidence, if not total To that resolution my two noble friends, the Duke of Portland and Lord Fitzwilliam, have given their concurrence. This proceeding of Mr. Fox does not (as I conceive) amount to absolute high treason; Russia, though on bad terms, not having been then declaredly at war with this kingdom. But such a proceeding is, in law, not very remote from that offence, and is undoubtedly a most unconstitutional act, and a high treasonable misdemeanour. The legitimate and sure mode of communication between this nation and foreign powers is rendered uncertain, precarious, and treacherous, by being divided into two channels, one with the government, one with the head of a party in opposition to that government; by which means the The calumnies supposed in that resolution can be nothing else than the objections taken to Mr. Fox's conduct in this session of Parliament; for to them, and to them alone, the resolution refers. I am one of those who have publickly and strongly urged those objections. I hope I shall be thought only to do what is necessary to my justification, thus publickly, solemnly, and heavily censured by those whom I most value and esteem, when I firmly contend that the objections which I, with many others of the friends to the Duke of Portland, have made to Mr. Fox's conduct, are not calum-foreign powers can never be assured of the real nies, but founded on truth; that they are not few, authority or validity of any publick transaction but many; and that they are not light and trivial, whatsoever. but, in a very high degree, serious and important. That I may avoid the imputation of throwing out, even privately, any loose, random imputations against the publick conduct of a gentleman, for whom I once entertained a very warm affection, and whose abilities I regard with the greatest admiration, I will put down, distinctly and articulately, some of the matters of objection which I feel to his late doctrines and proceedings, trusting that I shall be able to demonstrate to the friends whose good opinion I would still cultivate, that not levity, nor caprice, nor less defensible motives, but that very grave reasons, influenced my judgment. I think that the spirit of his late proceedings is wholly alien to our national policy, and to the peace, to the prosperity, and to the legal liberties, of this nation, according to our ancient domestick and appropriated mode of holding them. Viewing things in that light, my confidence in him is not encreased, but totally destroyed, by those proceedings. I cannot conceive it a matter of honour or duty, (but the direct contrary,) in any member of parliament to continue systematick opposition for the purpose of putting government under difficulties, until Mr. Fox (with all his present ideas) shall have the principal direction of affairs placed in his hands; and until the present body of administration (with their ideas and measures) is of course overturned and dissolved.. To come to particulars : 1. The laws and constitution of the kingdom entrust the sole and exclusive right of treating with foreign potentates to the king. This is an undisputed part of the legal prerogative of the Crown. However, notwithstanding this, Mr. Fox, without the knowledge or participation of any one person in the house of commons, with whom he was bound by every party principle, in matters of delicacy and importance, confidentially to communicate, thought proper to send Mr. Adair, as his representative, and with his cypher, to St. Petersburgh, there to frustrate the objects for which the minister from the Crown was authorized to treat. He succeeded in this his design, and did actually frustrate the king's minister in some of the objects of his negociation. On the other hand, the advantage taken of the discontent which at that time prevailed in parliament and in the nation, to give to an individual an influence directly against the government of his country, in a foreign court, has made a highway into England for the intrigues of foreign courts in our affairs. This is a sore evil; an evil from which, before this time, England was more free than any other nation. Nothing can preserve us from that evil-which connects cabinet factions abroad with popular factions here-but the keeping sacred the Crown, as the only channel of communication with every other nation. This proceeding of Mr. Fox has given a strong countenance and an encouraging example to the doctrines and practices of the Revolution and Constitutional Societies, and of other mischievous societies of that description, who, without any legal authority, and even without any corporate capacity, are in the habit of proposing, and, to the best of their power, of forming, leagues and alliances with France. This proceeding, which ought to be reprobated on all the general principles of government, is, in a more narrow view of things, not less reprehensible. It tends to the prejudice of the whole of the Duke of Portland's late party, by discrediting the principles upon which they supported Mr. Fox in the Russian business, as if they, of that party also, had proceeded in their parliamentary opposition, on the same mischievous principles which actuated Mr. Fox in sending Mr. Adair on his embassy. 2. Very soon after his sending this embassy to Russia, that is, in the spring of 1792, a covenanting club or association was formed in London, calling itself by the ambitious and invidious title of "The Friend of the People." It was composed of many of Mr. Fox's own most intimate, personal, and party friends, joined to a very considerable part of the members of those mischievous associations called the Revolution Society, and the Constitutional Society. Mr. Fox must have been well apprized of the progress of that society, in every one of its steps; if not of the very origin of it. I certainly was informed of both, who had no connexion with the design, directly or indirectly. His influence over the persons who composed the leading part in that association was, and is, unbounded. I hear, that he expressed some disapprobation of this club in one case, (that of Mr. St. John,) where his consent was formally asked; yet he never attempted seriously to put a stop to the association, or to disavow it, or to controul, check, or modify it in any way whatsoever. If he had pleased, without difficulty, he might have suppressed it in its beginning. However, he did not only not suppress it in its beginning, but encouraged it in every part of its progress, at that particular time, when jacobin clubs (under the very same, or similar titles) were making such dreadful havock in a country not thirty miles from the coast of England, and when every motive of moral prudence called for the discouragement of societies formed for the encrease of popular pretensions to power and direction. 3. When the proceedings of this society of the friends of the people, as well as others acting in the same spirit, had caused a very serious alarm in the mind of the Duke of Portland, and of many good patriots, he publickly, in the house of commons, treated their apprehensions and conduct with the greatest asperity and ridicule. He condemned and vilified, in the most insulting and outrageous terms, the proclamation issued by government on that occasion-though he well knew, that it had passed through the Duke of Portland's hands, that it had received his fullest approbation, and that it was the result of an actual interview between that noble duke and Mr. Pitt. During the discussion of its merits in the house of commons, Mr. Fox countenanced and justified the chief promoters of that association; and he received, in return, a publick assurance from them of an inviolable adherence to him, singly and personally. On account of this proceeding, a very great number (I presume to say not the least grave and wise part) of the Duke of Portland's friends in parliament, and many out of parliament, who are of the same description, have become separated from that time to this from Mr. Fox's particular cabal; very few of which cabal are, or ever have, so much as pretended to be attached to the Duke of Portland, or to pay any respect to him or his opinions. 4. At the beginning of this session, when the sober part of the nation was a second time generally and justly alarmed at the progress of the French arms on the continent, and at the spreading of their horrid principles and cabals in England, Mr. Fox did not (as had been usual in cases of far less moment) call together any meeting of the Duke of Portland's friends in the house of commons, for the purpose of taking their opinion on the conduct to be pursued in parliament at that critical juncture. He concerted his measures (if with any persons at all) with the friends of Lord Lansdowne, and those calling themselves Friends of the People, and others not in the smallest degree attached to the Duke of Portland; by which conduct he wilfully gave up (in my opinion) all pretensions to be considered as of that party, and much more to be considered as the leader and mouth of it in the house of commons. This could not give much encouragement to those who had been separated from Mr. Fox, on account of his conduct on the first proclamation, to rejoin that party. 5. Not having consulted any of the Duke of Portland's party in the house of commons; and not having consulted them, because he had reason to know, that the course he had resolved to pursue would be highly disagreeable to them, he represented the alarm, which was a second time given and taken, in still more invidious colours than those in which he painted the alarms of the former year. He described those alarms in this manner, although the cause of them was then grown far less equivocal, and far more urgent. He even went so far as to treat the supposition of the growth of a jacobin spirit in England as a libel on the nation. As to the danger from abroad, on the first day of the session, he said little or nothing upon the subject. He contented himself with defending the ruling factions in France, and with accusing the publick councils of this kingdom of every sort of evil design on the liberties of the people; declaring distinctly, strongly, and precisely, that the whole danger of the nation was from the growth of the power of the Crown. The policy of this declaration was obvious. It was in subservience to the general plan of disabling us from taking any steps against France. To counteract the alarm given by the progress of jacobin arms and principles, he endeavoured to excite an opposite alarm concerning the growth of the power of the Crown. If that alarm should prevail, he knew that the nation never would be brought by arms to oppose the growth of the jacobin empire; because it is obvious that war does, in its very nature, necessitate the commons considerably to strengthen the hands of government; and if that strength should itself be the object of terrour, we could have no war. 6. In the extraordinary and violent speeches of that day, he attributed all the evils which the publick had suffered, to the proclamation of the preceding summer; though he spoke in presence of the Duke of Portland's own son, the Marquis of Titchfield, who had seconded the address on that proclamation; and in the presence of the Duke of Portland's brother, Lord Edward Bentinck, and several others of his best friends and nearest relations. 7. On that day, that is, on the 13th of December, 1792, he proposed an amendment to the address, which stands on the journals of the house, and which is, perhaps, the most extraordinary record which ever did stand upon them. To introduce this amendment, he not only struck out the part of the proposed address which alluded to insurrections, upon the ground of the objections which he took to the legality of calling together parliament, (objections which I must ever think litigious and sophistical,) but he likewise bins. struck out that part which related to the cabals | vote expressed their abhorrence of his amendand conspiracies of the French faction in England, ment, their sense of its inevitable tendency, and although their practices and correspondences were their total alienation from the principles and of publick notoriety. Mr. Cooper and Mr. Watt maxims upon which it was made; yet, the very had been deputed from Manchester to the jaco- next day, that is, on Friday the 14th of DecemThese ambassadors were received by them ber, he brought on what in effect was the very as British representatives. Other deputations of same business, and on the same principles, a English had been received at the bar of the Na- second time. tional Assembly. They had gone the length of 10. Although the house does not usually sit giving supplies to the jacobin armies; and they on Saturday, he a third time brought on another in return had received promises of military assist-proposition, in the same spirit, and pursued it ance to forward their designs in England. A rewith so much heat and perseverance as to sit into gular correspondence for fraternizing the two Sunday; a thing not known in parliament for nations had also been carried on by societies in many years. London with a great number of the jacobin socie- 11. In all these motions and debates he wholly ties in France. This correspondence had also departed from all the political principles relative for its object the pretended improvement of the to France, (considered merely as a state, and inBritish constitution.-What is the most remark-dependent of its jacobin form of government,) able, and by much the more mischievous part of his proceedings that day, Mr. Fox likewise struck out every thing in the address which related to the tokens of ambition given by France, her aggressions upon our allies, and the sudden and dangerous growth of her power upon every side; and instead of all those weighty, and, at that time, necessary matters, by which the house of commons was (in a crisis, such as perhaps Europe never stood) to give assurances to our allies, strength to our government, and a check to the common enemy of Europe, he substituted nothing but a criminal charge on the conduct of the British government for calling parliament together, and an engagement to enquire into that conduct. 8. If it had pleased God to suffer him to succeed in this his project for the amendment to the address, he would for ever have ruined this nation, along with the rest of Europe. At home all the jacobin societies, formed for the utter destruction of our constitution, would have lifted up their heads, which had been beaten down by the two proclamations. Those societies would have been infinitely strengthened and multiplied in every quarter; their dangerous foreign communications would have been left broad and open; the Crown would not have been authorized to take any measure whatever for our immediate defence by sea or land. The closest, the most natural, the nearest, and, at the same time, from many internal as well as external circumstances, the weakest of our allies, Holland, would have been given up, bound hand and foot, to France, just on the point of invading that republick. A general consternation would have seized upon all Europe; and all alliance with every other power, except France, would have been for ever rendered impracticable to us. I think it impossible for any man, who regards the dignity and safety of his country, or indeed the common safety of mankind, ever to forget Mr. Fox's proceedings in that tremendous crisis of all human affairs. 9. Mr. Fox very soon had reason to be apprized of the general dislike of the Duke of Portland's friends to this conduct. Some of those who had even voted with him, the day after their which had hitherto been held fundamental in this country, and which he had himself held more strongly than any man in parliament. He at that time studiously separated himself from those to whose sentiments he used to profess no small regard, although those sentiments were publickly declared. I had then no concern in the party, having been for some time, with all outrage, excluded from it; but, on general principles, I must say, that a person who assumes to be leader of a party composed of freemen and of gentlemen ought to pay some degree of deference to their feelings, and even to their prejudices. He ought to have some degree of management for their credit and influence in their country. He shewed so very little of this delicacy, that he compared the alarm raised in the minds of the Duke of Portland's party, (which was his own,) an alarm in which they sympathized with the greater part of the nation, to the panick produced by the pretended popish plot in the reign of Charles the Second-describing it to be, as that was, a contrivance of knaves, and believed only by wellmeaning dupes and madmen. 12. The Monday following (the 17th of December) he pursued the same conduct. The means used in England to co-operate with the jacobin army in politicks agreed with their modes of proceeding; I allude to the mischievous writings circulated with much industry and success, as well as the seditious clubs, which at that time added not a little to the alarm taken by The writings observing and well-informed men. and the clubs were two evils which marched together. Mr. Fox discovered the greatest possible disposition to favour and countenance the one as well as the other of these two grand inHe would struments of the French system. hardly consider any political writing whatsoever as a libel, or as a fit object of prosecution. At a time in which the press has been the grand instrument of the subversion of order, of morals, of religion, and I may say of human society itself, to carry the doctrines of its liberty higher than ever it has been known by its most extravagant assertors even in France, gave occasion to very serious reflections. Mr. Fox treated the associations for prosecuting these libels, as tending to prevent the improvement of the human mind, and as a mobbish tyranny. He thought proper to compare them with the riotous assemblies of Lord George Gordon in 1780, declaring that he had advised his friends in Westminster to sign the associations, whether they agreed to them or not, in order that they might avoid destruction to their persons or their houses, or a desertion of their shops. This insidious advice tended to confound those who wished well to the object of the association, with the seditious, against whom the association was directed. By this stratagem, the confederacy intended for preserving the British constitution, and the publick peace, would be wholly defeated. The magistrates, utterly incapable of distinguishing the friends from the enemies of order, would in vain look for support when they stood in the greatest need of it. 13. Mr. Fox's whole conduct, on this occasion, was without example. The very morning after these violent declamations in the house of commons against the association, (that is on Tuesday the 18th,) he went himself to a meeting of St. George's parish, and there signed an association of the nature and tendency of those he had the night before so vehemently condemned; and several of his particular and most intimate friends, inhabitants of that parish, attended and signed along with him. 14. Immediately after this extraordinary step, and in order perfectly to defeat the ends of that association against jacobin publications, (which, contrary to his opinions, he had promoted and signed,) a mischievous society was formed under his auspices, called, the Friends of the liberty of the press. Their title groundlessly insinuated, that the freedom of the press had lately suffered, or was now threatened with some violation. This society was only, in reality, another modification of the society calling itself the Friends of the People, which in the preceding summer had caused so much uneasiness in the Duke of Portland's mind, and in the minds of several of his friends. This new society was composed of many, if not most, of the members of the club of the Friends of the People, with the addition of a vast multitude of others (such as Mr. Horne Tooke) of the worst and most seditious dispositions that could be found in the whole kingdom. In the first meeting of this club, Mr. Erskine took the lead, and directly (without any disavowal ever since on Mr. Fox's part) made use of his name and authority in favour of its formation and purposes. In the same meeting Mr. Erskine had thanks for his defence of Paine, which amounted to a complete avowal of that jacobin incendiary; else it is impossible to know how Mr. Erskine should have deserved such marked applauses for acting merely as a lawyer for his fee, in the ordinary course of his profession. 15. Indeed Mr. Fox appeared the general patron of all such persons and proceedings. When Lord Edward Fitzgerald and other persons, for practices of the most dangerous kind, in Paris and in London, were removed from the King's Guards, Mr. Fox took occasion, in the house of commons, heavily to censure that act as unjust and oppressive, and tending to make officers bad citizens. There were few, however, who did not call for some such measures on the part of government, as of absolute necessity for the king's personal safety, as well as that of the publick; and nothing but the mistaken lenity (with which such practices were rather discountenanced than punished) could possibly deserve reprehension in what was done with regard to those gentlemen. 16. Mr. Fox, regularly and systematically, and with a diligence long unusual to him, did every thing he could to countenance the same principle of fraternity and connexion with the jacobins abroad, and the National Convention of France, for which these officers had been removed from the Guards. For when a bill (feeble and lax indeed, and far short of the vigour required by the conjuncture) was brought in for removing out of the kingdom the emissaries of France, Mr. Fox opposed it with all his might. He pursued a vehement and detailed opposition to it, through all its stages, describing it as a measure contrary to the existing treaties between Great Britain and France; as a violation of the law of nations, and as an outrage on the great charter itself. 17. In the same manner, and with the same heat, he opposed a bill, which (though aukward and inartificial in its construction) was right and wise in its principle, and was precedented in the best times, and absolutely necessary at that juncture,-I mean the Traitorous Correspondence Bill. By these means the enemy, rendered infinitely dangerous by the links of real faction and pretended commerce, would have been (had Mr. Fox succeeded) enabled to carry on the war against us by our own resources. For this purpose that enemy would have had his agents and traitors in the midst of us. 18. When at length war was actually declared by the usurpers in France against this kingdom, and declared whilst they were pretending a negociation through Dumourier with Lord Auckland, Mr. Fox still continued, through the whole of the proceedings, to discredit the national honour and justice, and to throw the entire blame of the war on parliament, and on his own country, as acting with violence, haughtiness, and want of equity. He frequently asserted, both at the time and ever since, that the war, though declared by France, was provoked by us, and that it was wholly unnecessary, and fundamentally unjust. 19. He has lost no opportunity of railing, in the most virulent manner, and in the most unmeasured language, at every foreign power with whom we could now, or at any time, contract any useful or effectual alliance against France, declaring that he hoped no alliance with those powers was made, or was in a train of being |