The French Convention had no powers of peace or war.  Supposing the Convention to be free, (most assuredly it was not,) they had shown no disposition to abandon their projects.  Though long driven out of Liege, it was not many days before Mr. Fox’s motion that they still continued to claim it as a country which their principles of fraternity bound them to protect,—­that is, to subdue and to regulate at their pleasure.  That party which Mr. Fox inclined most to favor and trust, and from which he must have received his assurances, (if any he did receive,) that is, the Brissotins, were then either prisoners or fugitives.  The party which prevailed over them (that of Danton and Marat) was itself in a tottering condition, and was disowned by a very great part of France.  To say nothing of the royal party, who were powerful and growing, and who had full as good a right to claim to be the legitimate government as any of the Parisian factions with whom he proposed to treat,—­or rather, (as it seemed to me,) to surrender at discretion.

32.  But when Mr. Fox began to come from his general hopes of the moderation of the Jacobins to particulars, he put the case that they might not perhaps be willing to surrender Savoy.  He certainly was not willing to contest that point with them, but plainly and explicitly (as I understood him) proposed to let them keep it,—­though he knew (or he was much worse informed than he would be thought) that England had at the very time agreed on the terms of a treaty with the King of Sardinia, of which the recovery of Savoy was the casus foederis.  In the teeth of this treaty, Mr. Fox proposed a direct and most scandalous breach of our faith, formally and recently given.  But to surrender Savoy was to surrender a great deal more than so many square acres of land or so much revenue.  In its consequences, the surrender of Savoy was to make a surrender to France of Switzerland and Italy, of both which countries Savoy is the key,—­as it is known to ordinary speculators in politics, though it may not be known to the weavers in Norwich, who, it seems, are by Mr. Fox called to be the judges in this matter.

A sure way, indeed, to encourage France not to make a surrender of this key of Italy and Switzerland, or of Mentz, the key of Germany, or of any other object whatsoever which she holds, is to let her see that the people of England raise a clamor against the war before terms are so much as proposed on any side.  From that moment the Jacobins would be masters of the terms.  They would know that Parliament, at all hazards, would force the king to a separate peace.  The crown could not, in that case, have any use of its judgment.  Parliament could not possess more judgment than the crown, when besieged (as Mr. Fox proposed to Mr. Gurney) by the cries of the manufacturers.  This description of men Mr. Fox endeavored in his speech by every method to irritate and inflame.  In effect, his two speeches were, through the whole,