Here finishes the history of the wars in which France was engaged, antecedent to the war with Great Britain, with Holland, and with Spain.  With respect to Spain, we have seen nothing in any part of its conduct which leads us to suspect that either attachment to religion, or the ties of consanguinity, or regard to the ancient system of Europe, was likely to induce that Court to connect itself in offensive war against France.  The war was evidently and incontestably begun by France against Spain.  The case of Holland is so fresh in every man’s recollection, and so connected with the immediate causes of the war with this country, that it cannot require one word of observation.  What shall I say, then, on the case of Portugal?  I cannot indeed say that France ever declared war against that country; I can hardly say even that she ever made war, but she required them to make a treaty of peace, as if they had been at war; she obliged them to purchase that treaty; she broke it as soon as it was purchased, and she had originally no other ground of complaint than this:  that Portugal had performed, though inadequately, the engagements of its ancient defensive alliance with this country, in the character of an auxiliary—­a conduct which cannot of itself make any Power a principal in a war.

I have now enumerated all the nations at war at that period, with the exception only of Naples.  It can hardly be necessary to call to the recollection of the House the characteristic feature of revolutionary principles which was shown, even at this early period, in the personal insult offered to the King of Naples by the commander of a French squadron, riding uncontrolled in the Mediterranean, and (while our fleets were yet unarmed) threatening destruction to all the coast of Italy.

It was not till a considerably later period that almost all the other nations of Europe found themselves equally involved in actual hostility:  but it is not a little material to the whole of my argument, compared with the statement of the learned gentleman, and with that contained in the French note, to examine at what period this hostility extended itself.  It extended itself, in the course of 1796, to the states of Italy which had hitherto been exempted from it.  In 1797 it had ended in the destruction of most of them; it had ended in the virtual deposition of the King of Sardinia, it had ended in the conversion of Genoa and Tuscany into democratic republics; it had ended in the revolution of Venice, in the violation of treaties with the new Venetian republic; and finally, in transferring that very republic, the creature and vassal of France, to the dominion of Austria.