The whole proceeding of the
French administration was the most remote that could be imagined from
furnishing any indication of a pacific disposition: for at the very time
in which it was pretended that the Jacobins entertained those boasted
pacific intentions, at the very time in which Mr. Fox was urging a
treaty with them, not content with refusing a modification of the decree
for insurrections, they published their ever-memorable decree of the
15th of December, 1792, for disorganizing every country in Europe into
which they should on any occasion set their foot; and on the 25th and
the 30th of the same month, they solemnly, and, on the last of these
days, practically, confirmed that decree.
23. But Mr. Fox had himself taken good care, in the negotiation he
proposed, that France should not be obliged to make any very great
concessions to her presumed moderation: for he had laid down one
general, comprehensive rule, with him (as he said) constant and
inviolable. This rule, in fact, would not only have left to the faction
in France all the property and power they had usurped at home, but most,
if not all, of the conquests which by their atrocious perfidy and
violence they had made abroad. The principle laid down by Mr. Fox is
this,--"_That every state, in the conclusion of a war, has a right to
avail itself of its conquests towards an indemnification_." This
principle (true or false) is totally contrary to the policy which this
country has pursued with France at various periods, particularly at the
Treaty of Ryswick, in the last century, and at the Treaty of
Aix-la-Chapelle, in this.
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