29.  Had Mr. Fox’s disgraceful proposal been complied with, this kingdom would have been stained with a blot of perfidy hitherto without an example in our history, and with far less excuse than any act of perfidy which we find in the history of any other nation.  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. Fox supposed to be so completely obtained (but which then was not at all, and at this day is not completely obtained) as to leave us nothing else to do than to cultivate a peaceful, quiet correspondence with those quiet, peaceable, and moderate people, the Jacobins of France.

31.  To induce us to this, Mr. Fox labored hard to make it appear that the powers with whom we acted were full as ambitious and as perfidious as the French.  This might be true as to other nations.  They had not, however, been so to us or to Holland.  He produced no proof of active ambition and ill faith against Austria.  But supposing the combined powers had been all thus faithless, and been all alike so, there was one circumstance which made an essential difference between them and France.  I need not, therefore, be at the trouble of contesting this point,—­which, however, in this latitude, and as at all affecting Great Britain and Holland, I deny utterly.  Be it so.  But the great monarchies have it in their power to keep their faith, if they please, because they are governments of established and recognized authority at home and abroad.  France had, in reality, no government.  The very factions who exercised power had no stability.