The moment when, by
the incredible exertions of Austria, (very little through ours,) the
temporary deliverance of Holland (in effect our own deliverance) had
been achieved, he advised the House instantly to abandon her to that
very enemy from whose arms she had freed ourselves and the closest of
our allies.
30. But we are not to be imposed on by forms of language. We must act on
the substance of things. To abandon Austria in this manner was to
abandon Holland itself. For suppose France, encouraged and strengthened
as she must have been by our treacherous desertion,--suppose France, I
say, to succeed against Austria, (as she had succeeded the very year
before,) England would, after its disarmament, have nothing in the world
but the inviolable faith of Jacobinism and the steady politics of
anarchy to depend upon, against France's renewing the very same attempts
upon Holland, and renewing them (considering what Holland was and is)
with much better prospects of success. Mr. Fox must have been well
aware, that, if we were to break with the greater Continental powers,
and particularly to come to a rupture with them, in the violent and
intemperate mode in which he would have made the breach, the defence of
Holland against a foreign enemy and a strong domestic faction must
hereafter rest solely upon England, without the chance of a single ally,
either on that or on any other occasion. So far as to the pretended sole
object of the war, which Mr.
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