In discussing the last of these questions, we shall be led to consider what inference is to be drawn from the circumstances and the result of our own negotiations in former periods of the war;—­whether, in the comparative state of this country and France, we now see the same reason for repeating our then unsuccessful experiments;—­or whether we have not thence derived the lessons of experience, added to the deductions of reason, marking the inefficacy and danger of the very measures which are quoted to us as precedents for our adoption.  Unwilling, Sir, as I am to go into much detail on ground which has been so often trodden before, yet, when I find the learned gentleman, after all the information which he must have received, if he has read any of the answers to his work (however ignorant he might be when he wrote it), still giving the sanction of his authority to the supposition that the order to M. Chauvelin to depart from this kingdom was the cause of the war between this country and France, I do feel it necessary to say a few words on that part of the subject.

Inaccuracy in dates seems to be a sort of fatality common to all who have written on that side of the question; for even the writer of the note to His Majesty is not more correct, in this respect, than if he had taken his information only from the pamphlet of the learned gentleman.  The House will recollect the first professions of the French Republic, which are enumerated, and enumerated truly, in that note—­they are tests of everything which would best recommend a Government to the esteem and confidence of foreign Powers, and the reverse of everything which has been the system and practice of France now for near ten years.  It is there stated, that their first principles were love of peace, aversion to conquest, and respect for the independence of other countries.  In the same note, it seems, indeed, admitted, that they since have violated all those principles; but it is alleged that they have done so only in consequence of the provocation of other Powers.  One of the first of those provocations is stated to have consisted in the various outrages offered to their Ministers, of which the example is said to have been set by the King of Great Britain in his conduct to M. Chauvelin.  In answer to this supposition, it is only necessary to remark that, before the example was given, before Austria and Prussia are supposed to have been thus encouraged to combine in a plan for the partition of France, that plan, if it ever existed at all, had existed and been acted upon for above eight months:  France and Prussia had been at war eight months before the dismissal of M. Chauvelin.  So much for the accuracy of the statement.

[Mr. Erskine here observed that this was not the statement of his argument.]