policy.  Thus, on whatever roads he travelled, they all terminated in recommending a recognition of their pretended republic, and in the plan of sending an ambassador to it.  This was the burden of all his song:—­“Everything which we could reasonably hope from war would be obtained from treaty.”  It is to be observed, however, that, in all these debates, Mr. Fox never once stated to the House upon what ground it was he conceived that all the objects of the French system of united fanaticism and ambition would instantly be given up, whenever England should think fit to propose a treaty.  On proposing so strange a recognition and so humiliating an embassy as he moved, he was bound to produce his authority, if any authority he had.  He ought to have done this the rather, because Le Brun, in his first propositions, and in his answers to Lord Grenville, defended, on principle, not on temporary convenience, everything which was objected to France, and showed not the smallest disposition to give up any one of the points in discussion.  Mr. Fox must also have known that the Convention had passed to the order of the day, on a proposition to give some sort of explanation or modification to the hostile decree of the 19th of November for exciting insurrections in all countries,—­a decree known to be peculiarly pointed at Great Britain.  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.  Whatever the merits