If all that for some months I have heard have the least foundation, (I
hope it has not,) the ministers are, perhaps, not quite so much to be
blamed as their condition is to be lamented. I have been given to
understand that these proceedings are not in their origin properly
theirs. It is said that there is a secret in the House of Commons. It is
said that ministers act, not according to the votes, but according to
the dispositions, of the majority. I hear that the minority has long
since spoken the general sense of the nation; and that to prevent those
who compose it from having the open and avowed lead in that House, or
perhaps in both Houses, it was necessary to preoccupy their ground, and
to take their propositions out of their mouths, even with the hazard of
being afterwards reproached with a compliance which it was foreseen
would be fruitless.
If the general disposition of the people be, as I hear it is, for an
immediate peace with Regicide, without so much as considering our public
and solemn engagements to the party in France whose cause we had
espoused, or the engagements expressed in our general alliances, not
only without an inquiry into the terms, but with a certain knowledge
that none but the worst terms will be offered, it is all over with us.
It is strange, but it may be true, that, as the danger from Jacobinism
is increased in my eyes and in yours, the fear of it is lessened in the
eyes of many people who formerly regarded it with horror.
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