Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

ance, but with all that personal earnestness and party zeal with which an honest conviction of their value had inspired the statesmen who took part in them. Exaggeration, of course, on both sides soon embittered our divisions; and such was the extent of alarm and horror excited among all ranks of our population, by the doctrines and actions of the French revolutionary chiefs, that every endeavour to find out some rational means of avoiding war was regarded as an approbation of their enormities, and the proposer of such a course as little better than their accomplice.

The war, consequently, had not continued long before there began to prevail among a great portion of what may be called the governing classes of this country, an opinion that Mr. Fox had become so enamoured of the French Revolution as to have lost sight of all his old English principles. How this opinion became prevalent it would be long, although not difficult, to explain. It originated, undoubtedly, in the separation which, from the opposite views entertained of that revolution as influencing the destinies of the world, and more especially with regard to the most prudent manner of dealing with it in reference to ourselves, had taken place among the leaders of the Whig party. With the classes abovementioned the speeches and writings of Mr. Burke were decisive. Every where they had given the tone to the public feeling. When to these considerations are added the really mischievous designs of an extreme popular faction then beginning to form itself, Mr. Pitt's dexterity in connecting and confounding the old reformers with this faction, and in availing himself of the vantage ground thus given him, so as, in all discussions on our existing institutions, to throw his antagonists on the defensive, it will not be wondered at that such powerful causes, all operating together and aided by nearly the whole of the daily

press, should have produced the effect described, and that through them Mr. Fox should have been exhibited to the world as a dangerous man, who, if ever he obtained power, would use it to bring about such changes in our English system as he and his friends might think best calculated to fit and adapt it to that of France.

If, with all their absurdity, such notions as these obtained credit at home, they could not fail to be received generally abroad. In France especially,-and such was the necessary consequence of this unwise scheme of detraction-he was believed to be so much. on their side in his views of foreign affairs, that his accession to office was looked forward to as the epoch, not only of a peace favourable to France in its direct stipulations, but of a strict incorporating alliance with her.

Such were the circumstances personal to Mr. Fox, under which he came into power, in February, 1806. It was not long afterwards that negociations for peace were set on foot. Here, therefore, in the judgment of those who did not know him, was to be the test of his character as an English statesman. Here would speedily be brought to the proof the consistency of his opposition to the war-system of his predecessors, with his old opinions as a supporter and advocate of the European policy of King William. As Minister for Foreign Affairs, the negociations were to be under his immediate conduct and control. How, and on what principles would he conduct them? Having condemned the war as unjust, would he incline towards France in the terms of the peace? Having reprobated the intervention of the continental powers in the settlement of her internal concerns as a violation of the law of nations, would he take for his guidance the new version of that law asserted and promulgated by France, or would he adhere to the

established usages of Europe, and his own early principles of resistance to her power and prepon

derance?

The reader of the following pages, after considering them, will answer these questions for himself. He will form his judgment from the transactions to which they relate; and perhaps in a small degree from the part borne by the Author, small as the then circumstances and condition of Europe necessarily rendered it, in executing Mr. Fox's instructions to him on his appointment as Minister to the Court of Vienna.

It is for this purpose that he now offers to the public, with permission from the proper authorities, some extracts from his despatches while at the Court of Vienna. They extend from June 1806 to February 1808, when his mission was brought to an end. They were carried on consequently beyond Mr. Fox's life, and the continuance in office of the administration of which he formed a part. During the whole of this latter period the Author continued in the same course of action with which he began his mission, without receiving from the Ministers who succeeded Lord Grenville's government any instructions in a different sense or spirit. He is entitled therefore to assume that on the main points of English European policy which, under Mr. Fox's directions, he had been pressing on the consideration of the Austrian government, they saw no reason to alter the line of conduct which had been prescribed to him by their predecessors.

These letters, it will be observed, relate to a point of history which may be said to stand alone, in some measure, in the picture of Mr. Fox's political life. Since his twenty years' exclusion from power, which began when he was but six and thirty years old, and during the whole of the war with France, this was the only opportunity he had had of proving by his actions

when he came into direct contact with the new system, how much better adapted he considered the old one to be for the administration of the foreign interests of such a country as Great Britain.

The Author has a further motive for dwelling somewhat particularly on the negociation for peace in 1806. On its failure some of Mr. Fox's warm friends so far mistook the character of that transaction, as to have persuaded themselves that it had been rendered ineffectual, not so much from any disinclination on his part to conclude a treaty on the terms offered by Napoleon, as from his having been over-ruled by what, in their total ignorance of facts, they called a warparty in the Cabinet. The same notion was taken up at the time by a great portion of the continental press, as well as by individuals of no small note, with whom the Author has had the benefit of conversing at various periods of his intercourse with foreign statesmen. is his wish, and he thinks it his duty, to correct this error as far as he possesses the means; and he trusts that whoever may be disposed to study this period of English history with the special purpose of understanding the true character of Mr. Fox's policy, and not to rest satisfied with what he will find about it in

It

the party records, and "basse littérature" of the day, may read with some advantage the documents which are here laid before him.

7

MEMOIR.

THE state of Europe in 1806-the new combination of interests which had arisen upon the breaking out afresh of the war between Great Britain and France, by the rupture of the Treaty of Amiens-the continued subjection of Prussia and Germany to the ascendancy of France, together with the line of policy which, after the disastrous peace of Presburg, an overwhelming necessity prescribed to Austria, until the great day of their common emancipation, have long become matter of history. They are divested of that obscurity which attends diplomatic transactions while in progress, and may now be understood by any one who will give himself the trouble to examine the public documents within his reach. Not so the efforts made by England and Russia, and, in her own prudent way, by Austria herself, although not then in alliance with either, to save the sinking vessel of European independence. These are but little known; and are besides so lost in the great results of succeeding years, that it will be a task of some difficulty to revive their remembrance, and to place them where they deserve to stand in the history of our eventful times. I will endeavour to perform this task.

Among the first and wisest of those efforts, was the attempt made by the administration recently formed by Lord Grenville and Mr. Fox, to make peace with

« НазадПродовжити »