you are giving that pledge from the throne, and engaging Parliament to counter-secure it?  It is an awful consideration.  It was on the very day of the date of this wonderful pledge,[38] in which we assumed the Directorial government as lawful, and in which we engaged ourselves to treat with them whenever they pleased,—­it was on that very day the Regicide fleet was weighing anchor from one of your harbors, where it had remained four days in perfect quiet.  These harbors of the British dominions are the ports of France.  They are of no use but to protect an enemy from your best allies, the storms of heaven and his own rashness.  Had the West of Ireland been an unportuous coast, the French naval power would have been undone.  The enemy uses the moment for hostility, without the least regard to your future dispositions of equity and conciliation.  They go out of what were once your harbors, and they return to them at their pleasure.  Eleven days they had the full use of Bantry Bay, and at length their fleet returns from their harbor of Bantry to their harbor of Brest.  Whilst you are invoking the propitious spirit of Regicide equity and conciliation, they answer you with an attack.  They turn out the pacific bearer of your “how do you dos,” Lord Malmesbury; and they return your visit, and their “thanks for your obliging inquiries,” by their old practised assassin, Hoche.  They come to attack—­what?  A town, a fort, a naval station?  They come to attack your king, your Constitution, and the very being of that Parliament which was holding out to them these pledges, together with the entireness of the empire, the laws, liberties, and properties of all the people.  We know that they meditated the very same invasion, and for the very same purposes, upon this kingdom, and, had the coast been as opportune, would have effected it.

Whilst you are in vain torturing your invention to assure them of your sincerity and good faith, they have left no doubt concerning their good faith and their sincerity towards those to whom they have engaged their honor.  To their power they have been true to the only pledge they have ever yet given to you, or to any of yours:  I mean the solemn engagement which they entered into with the deputation of traitors who appeared at their bar, from England and from Ireland, in 1792.  They have been true and faithful to the engagement which they had made more largely,—­that is, their engagement to give effectual aid to insurrection and treason, wherever they might appear in the world.  We have seen the British Declaration.  This is the counter Declaration of the Directory.  This is the reciprocal pledge which Regicide amity gives to the conciliatory pledges of kings.  But, thank God, such pledges cannot exist single.  They have no counterpart; and if they had, the enemy’s conduct cancels such declarations,—­and, I trust, along with them, cancels everything of mischief and dishonor that they contain.