preamble passed the Commons; but when | trines it came to the lords, it was thought better to throw it out entirely than suffer it to pass with a doubt expressed in it on a point of such constitutional importance. During the debates on this subject lord Camden had laid it down as a maxim, that the law knew no distinction between peace and war, with respect to the right of bringing foreign troops into this country, and that it could be done at no time without the previous consent of parliament.* The Bill of Rights was to be considered as declaring the constitution on particular points recited in it, which had been previously attacked and endangered, not as declaring the whole of the constitution. In what books, or in what practice anterior to the Revolution, did gentlemen find this distinction between peace and war, which they now so much relied on? The Dutch guards in the time of William 3d, were not suffered to remain in this kingdom by virtue of the royal prerogative. They were voted in the army estimates, and had therefore the sanction of parliament. Where could an instance be brought of foreign forces being introduced, without the approbation of the Commons? In 1745, it was true, they were introduced; but then the country was in a state of rebellion, and even at a period so alarming, it was acknowledged that the minister did an illegal act, for doing which he was indemnified by the subsequent approbation of parliament. In 1775, there was a previous consent of the House, and therefore all these precedents went to deny that any such dangerous prerogative existed in the crown. An act of indemnity, he confessed, was unusual where it applied to the officers of the crown, when acting illegally; but where a number of persons were implicated; for instance, if these troops were resisted by those on whom they were billeted, in consequence of their being an illegal force, a circumstance which might lead to consequences the most dangerous, then a bill of indemnity was necessary to avert the evil. So far such a bill, in his mind, would have been a more salutary measure, than the previous question. Mr. Fox entreated gentlemen to act with great caution on a question as momentous as ever arrested the attention of a British parliament, and to resist, with a manly firmness, the strange and incoherent doc See Vol. 18, p. 811,. advanced by his majesty's ministers. It had been asserted, that these foreign forces had been introduced here for the purpose of foreign service; but he cared not what was the cause, where the consequences to the Bill of Rights were so fatal. Subsequent events might reveal the mystery. But again he would wish to impress on the House the consequences that might attend this unwarrantable exercise of the prerogative, if these troops were to become the instruments in the hands of a wicked prince, or a venal minister. The divine prerogative of the crown, was language which he did not expect to have heard in the course of that night's debate. During the arbitrary reign of James, it was true that it was considered blasphemous to attempt defining that prerogative, to which he set no bounds; but he conceived, at this time, that words more suitable to the tongues of British freemen, were those that defined and supported the divine rights of the Commons. They were assured by his majesty's ministers, as an excuse for the landing of these troops, that they were not to remain long in the country. But this was not the question. Would the minister say, that the introduction of these troops was legal or consistent with the spirit of the constitution? Who were to tell an army of Austrians, Hessians, Hanoverians, Dutch, that their farther continuance in England was contrary to law? He would appeal to the right hon. gentleman's own good sense, whether it would be wise or prudent to neglect ascertaining our rights, till we were surrounded by an army of foreign mercenaries-till the critical period arrived, when the members of that House would be questioned on their ingress and egress, respecting their political sentiments-till they were surrounded by perhaps 30,000 usurpers, who, under the pretext of defending their liberties, would sacrifice and violate the few remains of the constitution. Let gentlemen recollect the danger of an imperious military government-let them recollect, that a powerful army was an engine of the most alarming nature-let them remember, that such a weapon had more than once overthrown the liberties of Europe - that if we yielded in the first instance, we betrayed the confidence reposed in us by our fellow citizens-that he who dared present our Bill of Rights as a remonstrance to an army of foreigners, would find it a useless piece of parchment-and that our wisest conduct would be a steady adherence to the maxims of our ancestors, who had uniformly resisted, upon this point, every act of innovation. By pursuing a contrary conduct, we should hazard the liberties of the people, and the privileges of parliament; and he entreated those who heard him not to desert either, through private friendship or personal interest. If there existed a party in this country, who manifested a wish to lower the monarchical branch of the constitution, that party would be defeated by not rendering that power odious by a wicked and dangerous extension of the prerogative of the crown. Let the Commons prove true to the people, and the people would remain obedient to the Commons. We had no invasion to fear, but an invasion of the constitution; and the parliament, which was its natural watchman, should regard with a jealous eye any measures calculated to destroy the balance of power in the three estates, by an unconstitutional extension of the prerogatives of the crown. The previous question being put, the House divided. Debate on the Marquis of Lansdown's Motion for Peace with France.] Feb. 17. The Marquis of Lansdown said: My Lords, I assure your lordships that it is with no personal satisfaction I rise to make the motion which I now hold in my hand. I would have infinitely preferred to see it come from those whose information on the subject, and whose influence in this House would have insured its success. I would have particularly wished to have seen it in the hands of ministers, because I am anxious only for the object, and have no personal feeling to gratify. I have deferred it, in hopes, at least, that it would have been taken up by some lord of more consideration than myself; and I should have been happy to have seconded it, come from what quarter it might. Happy should I have been to have allowed to them all the gratitude which it would have excited in the breasts of their country; for, however high the tone and lan guage of men may be for a moment, I am convinced that the real sentiments of the kingdom is in favour of peace. Seeing, my lords, the immense preparations that are making for a continuance of the war, seeing the volume of engagements into which we have entered with foreign powers, and the solemn declarations, that we are daily making of perseverance, I think it high time that your Lordships should deliberate in order just to inquire into the cause and the object of our pursuit. I will not detain you by any animadversion on the conduct of the war; but shall confine myself to the consideration of what is the object of the war, and what are the means by which we hope to accomplish it? I will not enlarge in the shape of declamation; I will not address myself to your passions; but what, my lords, must be the feelings of a burdened nation, when they see thirteen millions of money voted by their representatives, towards the continuance of this war, without even a single consideration being taken of the merits of the cause, when they see this done, on the mere pretext of a French pamphlet! Such is the melancholy fact; for though ministers have already drawn this sum from the pockets of the people, all the grounds upon which they have gone, all the arguments they have used, all the explanations they have given to their country, are extracts from a French pamphlet. They have, indeed, laid bundles of papers upon the table, subsidiary treaties with foreign states, which may be called bonds, judgments, and mortgages on the estate of every man in this country; but without entering into any examination of the principles on which it is undertaken, or the object which is in view, other than a few comments on the pamphlet of M. Brissot. My Lords, the people of Great Britain are not likely to think the sentiments of a single individual, and that individual the member of a faction that was crushed at the time of his writing, a good ground for perpetuating the horrors of an unexplained war. The faction of Brissot was overthrown, as the present faction may be overthrown; and inflammatory pamphlets by the partizans of each successive faction, may furnish pretexts for the continuance of hostilities, if such wretched pretexts are to be considered as legitimate grounds of war. After two campaigns, the last of which has been, in truth, the most disastrous, both in the effusion of blood and in the waste of treasure, that the modern world has suffered, it will not be unworthy of your lordships to pause for a moment, and, before you involve Europe in the horrors of a third, to inquire into the success of the past, I speak the heartfelt sentiment of every man of every country, that the campaigns have been as unfortunate as to the object, as they have been melancholy in regard to the sacrifice of blood and treasure. No pompous declaration can reconcile you to falsehood. Our failure is matter of history. The question, therefore, is, whether the innumerable treaties that we have made are calculated to secure to us the rational hopes of success in the campaign that is to come. I have no hesitation in saying, that we have no more probability of success now than before. If we are to draw wisdom from the experience of ages, your lordships will not disdain the testimonies that have been borne, by the ablest generals that the world ever saw, against the line of war in which we are involved. From the illustrious duke of Marlborough down to general Lloyd, the last officer who has written on the subject, the opinion of all the men of great military talents of Europe has been, that an attempt to penetrate France through its garrisoned frontiers is impracticable; and that it is madness so to attack it. This opinion of military men has been verified by the fate of the two last campaigns. Let us see what was the line of the war: the first attack was made by the line of Champagne, the second by Lisle, the third by Strasbourg; and these three attacks have been made under men of the greatest military fame in Europe. Of the duke of Brunswick it was impossible to speak in terms of panegyric too lofty: his retreat had subjected him to the most cruel reflections; it is attributed to his want of management; whereas, I can take upon me to say, on the concurring evidence of every military man with whom I have conversed, that his retreat from Champagne was highly honourable to his military talents. It was the natural result of an attempt to penetrate the kingdom of France; and you see that the same fate has followed the two subsequent attempts. Did Clairfait fare better at Lisle? Has Cobourg fared better? Has Wurmser fared better? All these officers, the highest in reputation, all bred in the best military schools of Europe, have had the same fortune.-I [VOL. XXX. ] forbear to go farther, for reasons that will be obvious to your lordships; but I might pursue the question, without any hazard of finding an exception in any of the other attempts that have been made by other commanders; and we are now beginning a third campaign after this melancholy experience. But it seems a new officer, of middle rank, has formed a new plan, upon which all the cabinets of Europe rest their hopes, and upon which we are again to hazard the lives of our fellowcreatures. My lords, I will not affect to dispute with the cabinets of Europe on the question of the new project suggested by this distinguished officer (Mack), in whom they affect to have such confidence. Genius is undoubtedly not confined to any rank; and I have found many instances of the high and meritorious services performed by officers of the middle ranks. It certainly, however, is a received opinion that the proper sphere of their service is in operations, subservient to the main design, where vigour and rapidity of execution are required. All the received doctrines of the military school assign to long experience the province of design. It is not certainly a novel thing to find in the military profession, as we find in every other profession, men of such zeal and warmth, as to form the most sanguine plans, to undertake the most improbable adventures. I am not, therefore, so much astonished that we should find an officer suggesting a new plan, as I am to see the credulous avidity with which it is embraced. It is surely of consequence to your lordships, to look back to the only rational ground upon which any estimate of success can be made the experience that we have had already. We are told that Flanders has been saved; let us inquire into the fact: Flanders was lost by one battle, and regained by another. If this experience is good for any thing, it ought to teach you that the fate of Flanders depends upon a single battle, and that it may be lost by the next which shall happen. A little of the secret history of the last campaign would also show you, that the loss of Flanders to the French was the result of the animosities of private faction, which first gave to Dumourier the ascendant over one of the parties, and subjected him to the triumph of another. To the animosities of these factions may be attributed their failure by the defection of Dumourier. But the result of these animosities has at length given to the govern [4 U] ment of France more formidable power than ever was possessed by any state; and you ought to look at the consequences which are likely to follow from your keeping up in France that enthusiasm of spi. rit and energy of execution which they at present display. You will run the hazard of establishing in the centre of Europe a military republic; you will cherish and confirm a spirit, that it will be impossible for Europe afterwards to extinguish. You will give a new turn to their thoughts, a new pursuit, a new genius, a new character to the people. Lord Bolingbroke says, that all the Spanish statesmen with whom he conversed said of Philip, that they would have been able to have made him a good Spaniard but for the provocation which he met with, and which confirmed him French. Thus, if we persevere to goad, to attack, and to hunt the French, we should only confirm a military republic in the very heart of Europe. And do not let us proudly conceive, that our combination will make us formidable, because it is opposed to a single people; when we sharpen talents by irascibility, when we inflame the natural energies of the soul, when we call forth and rouse every faculty of nature, while every individual man becomes a god, the consequences are not 'to be calculated by the arithmetic of common events. And such has ever been the experience of ages. Great moments have always produced great men, and great actions. The time of conflict is the time in which nature seems to delight in her grandest productions. From the Grecian republics, down even to our modern history, the most resplendent powers of man have been shown in the times of the greatest danger. The present, therefore, is a school for Frenchmen; every youth devotes himself to the cause of liberty, and thus actively engaged on the grand scene, all the powers of his soul take a warlike direction; it becomes a fashion, and the whole of the rising generation are educated in the military art; not, my lords, as our youth are educated to the military art, as one only of the professions in which they may rise to eminence or distinction, but the enthusiasm of war enters into the heart only from the enthusiasm of liberty; and the whole country is taught to feel that their only occupa tion, their only passion, ought to be arms, because their only good, their only blessing, is independence. Such is the war in which we are en gaged, and in which England has taken the lead; and has become, if I may make use of the common expression, the cat's paw of Europe; and such are the effects, which our confederacy is to produce. I wish therefore, my lords, to draw your consideration to the point of honour, of policy, of prudence; and to demand of you as reasonable men, and as Englishmen, whether you ought to persevere in such a war? whether, upon the principles which are avowed, you ought to succeed? and whether by the treaties which you have made, you are likely to do so? But above all, I wish you to inquire, as Englishmen, whether the war is not likely to produce consequences fearful to England fearful to Europe, fearful to the liberty of mankind? And our first inquiry must be, what are the treaties and alliances upon which we place our hopes? I shall run over them with rapidity, as I think it only necessary to point out some of their leading features, and to show you how little rational confidence ought to be placed in them. First, as to Spain, who will ensure to us, even for a single cam paign, the continuance of our Spanish alliance? It is obvious that your views on the West India islands of France throw Spain upon your mercy. All the object of your rival interests; all that contraband trade, which it has been so much your object to encourage to her discontent, all the points that have so long been at issue between you, fall at once to the ground, and you gain the complete ascendancy so as even to demolish the foundations of her power. Do you flatter yourselves that Spain is blind to all this? Do you believe that she will tamely see you gain the possession of islands that must determine her fate? My lords, you must not trust to so unreasonable a hope; Spain cannot have forsaken so completely her uniform system. I have the highest repect for the Spanish character; noble, manly, candid, and open: the Spaniard is a dignified character, but the genius of its government is suspicious; and without descending to inquire into circumstances that have recently happened at Toulon, without demanding whether unequivocal signs of uneasiness were not manifested, when they saw a ship of 110 guns taken away by the English, which they thought belonged in preference to them, as the natural guardians of Louis 17th, and how little satisfaction they found in the flimsy pretext, that the French chose rather to be under the English protection than | no value, really an important addition to theirs, I will simply demand whether we her strength; and thus has she been able can entertain any substantial confidence to lay the seeds of power, the future proin this alliance?-As to our next ally, duce of which it is perhaps impossible to the king of Prussia, it is obvious that calculate. As to her alliance, we may there are no political relations which can reason from her past conduct what will interest him to the continuance of this be her future; it is her invariable policy war: all his real relations must lead him to embroil the southern powers of Euthe other way as the head of the Ger- rope, in order to exhaust them. We manic alliance it must ever be his policy have constantly experienced this disposito resist the aggrandizement of the house tion; she endeavoured to interfere as a of Austria. That Germanic alliance, mediatrix in the peace of 1782, only with upon which the liberties of Europe de- a design of throwing obstructions in the pend, seems for the moment to be sacri- way, and of retarding the event. It reficed to this project against France; and quired address to resist her efforts; and he is now allied with the House of Aus- she was displeased at not being permitted tria to accomplish an object which must to use her good offices to embroil us. ruin the very object of the Germanic Such has been her craft in the present league. Is it to be believed that the ca- war, instead of sending troops to aid the binet of Vienna has changed its object, confederacy, she has been building forand that Europe has no longer any thing tresses, that as soon as she sees her rivals to dread from its unbounded ambition? properly exhausted, she may be able to No such thing. Your lordships all know attack her devoted victim the Turk. My the memorable expression of the late king lords, it is a serious consideration that of Prussia, "I have seen the Austrian you are thus assisting her project, and generals make faults, but the cabinet of countenancing the plan of exhausting the Vienna never makes a fault." That cabi- finances of every state in Europe, so as net has been distinguished, not merely by to prepare them for the general overthrow its systematic ambition, but by its inces- which she meditates against them. I can sant, uninterrupted ability in the prosecu- speak upon the most authentic information of its horrid designs. In no moment tion, that of merchants who have recently has it ever changed; in no moment has it come from the keenest and most obserever abated from its course; and this vant mercantile country in Europe, that power, so restless, so hostile to every the resources of the empress, in men and other government, which so recently money, are inexhaustible, and that they plotted, and was so near obtaining the go beyond the calculation of all men not mighty object of the change of Bavaria, intimately acquainted with the foundaby which alone the liberties of Europe tions of her power. -Our next ally to be would have been demolished, we now see considered is Holland: Holland, that was in an unnatural alliance with that very dragged into the confederacy by us against body who are to prevent its designs. Can her own better judgment; Holland, that we believe that a thing so monstrous will has been made the cat's paw of the cat's continue; or that the independent states paw. What aid are we likely to obtain of Germany can long be kept so stupidly from the Dutch? Though so formidable a blind to their permanent interests as to maritime power, have they sent a single aid and abet the court of Vienna in the ship to sea? As to their army, I forbear present war? Our next great ally is Rus- to speak. If it be true that they displayed sia, the Colossus of Europe: I call the any backwardness, it only exhibits a strikempress of Russia the Colossus of Eu- ing example of the difference that there is rope, for the best reasons; since, by her in the conduct of men, when engaged in vigorous and persevering policy, she has defence of their own liberties, and when raised herself to an enormous magnitude drawn in to fight against others.-There of power. The good sense of the British is another ally, the king of Sardinia, from nation recently saved us from a profitless whom certainly much cannot be expected. and impracticable war; while, by the As to the suspicion which some how or shameful dereliction of all system, by an other has gone abroad, that it would be unpardonable countenance of her ambi- his inclination to continue the war for tion, they have suffered her to take pos- the sake of the subsidy that we give him, session of all the west of Poland, so as to it is an aspersion to which I cannot give make the rock of Ockzakow, of itself of credit. The king of Sardinia I believe to |