The fact is, that neither this Declaration, nor the negotiation which is its subject, could serve any one good purpose, foreign or domestic; it could conduce to no end, either with regard to allies or neutrals.  It tends neither to bring back the misled, nor to give courage to the fearful, nor to animate and confirm those who are hearty and zealous in the cause.

I hear it has been said (though I can scarcely believe it) by a distinguished person, in an assembly where, if there be less of the torrent and tempest of eloquence, more guarded expression is to be expected, that, indeed, there was no just ground of hope in this business from the beginning.

It is plain that this noble person, however conversant in negotiation, having been employed in no less than four embassies, and in two hemispheres, and in one of those negotiations having fully experienced what it was to proceed to treaty without previous encouragement, was not at all consulted in this experiment.  For his Majesty’s principal minister declared, on the very same day, in another House, “his Majesty’s deep and sincere regret at its unfortunate and abrupt termination, so different from the wishes and hopes that were entertained,”—­and in other parts of the speech speaks of this abrupt termination as a great disappointment, and as a fall from sincere endeavors and sanguine expectation.  Here are, indeed, sentiments diametrically opposite, as to the hopes with which the negotiation was commenced and carried on; and what is curious is, the grounds of the hopes on the one side and the despair on the other are exactly the same.  The logical conclusion from the common premises is, indeed, in favor of the noble lord; for they are agreed that the enemy was far from giving the least degree of countenance to any such hopes, and that they proceeded in spite of every discouragement which the enemy had thrown in their way.  But there is another material point in which they do not seem to differ:  that is to say, the result of the desperate experiment of the noble lord, and of the promising attempt of the great minister, in satisfying the people of England, and in causing discontent to the people of France,—­or, as the minister expresses it, “in uniting England and in dividing France.”

For my own part, though I perfectly agreed with the noble lord that the attempt was desperate, so desperate, indeed, as to deserve his name of an experiment, yet no fair man can possibly doubt that the minister was perfectly sincere in his proceeding, and that, from his ardent wishes for peace with the Regicides, he was led to conceive hopes which were founded rather in his vehement desires than in any rational ground of political speculation.  Convinced as I am of this, it had been better, in my humble opinion, that persons of great name and authority had abstained from those topics which had been used to call the minister’s sincerity into doubt, and had not adopted the sentiments