The first means that were used, by any one professing our principles, to change the minds of this party upon that subject, appeared in a small pamphlet circulated with considerable industry.  It was commonly given to the noble person himself who has passed judgment upon all hopes from negotiation, and justified our late abortive attempt only as an experiment made to satisfy the country; and yet that pamphlet led the way in endeavoring to dissatisfy that very country with the continuance of the war, and to raise in the people the most sanguine expectations from some such course of negotiation as has been fatally pursued.  This leads me to suppose (and I am glad to have reason for supposing) that there was no foundation for attributing the performance in question to that author; but without mentioning his name in the title-page, it passed for his, and does still pass uncontradicted.  It was entitled, “Some Remarks on the Apparent Circumstances of the War in the Fourth Week of October, 1795.”

This sanguine little king’s-fisher, (not prescient of the storm, as by his instinct he ought to be,) appearing at that uncertain season before the rigs of old Michaelmas were yet well composed, and when the inclement storms of winter were approaching, began to flicker over the seas, and was busy in building its halcyon nest, as if the angry ocean had been soothed by the genial breath of May.  Very unfortunately, this auspice was instantly followed by a speech from the throne in the very spirit and principles of that pamphlet.

I say nothing of the newspapers, which are undoubtedly in the interest, and which are supposed by some to be directly or indirectly under the influence of ministers, and which, with less authority than the pamphlet I speak of, had indeed for some time before held a similar language, in direct contradiction to their more early tone:  insomuch that I can speak it with a certain assurance, that very many, who wished to administration as well as you and I do, thought, that, in giving their opinion in favor of this peace, they followed the opinion of ministry;—­they were conscious that they did not lead it.  My inference, therefore, is this:  that the negotiation, whatever its merits may be, in the general principle and policy of undertaking it, is, what every political measure in general ought to be, the sole work of administration; and that, if it was an experiment to satisfy anybody, it was to satisfy those whom the ministers were in the daily habit of condemning, and by whom they were daily condemned,—­I mean the leaders of the opposition in Parliament.  I am certain that the ministers were then, and are now, invested with the fullest confidence of the major part of the nation, to pursue such measures of peace or war as the nature of things shall suggest as most adapted to the public safety.  It is in this light, therefore, as a measure which ought to have been avoided and ought not to be repeated, that I take the liberty of discussing the merits of this system of Regicide negotiations.  It is not a matter of light experiment, that leaves us where it found us.  Peace or war are the great hinges upon which the very being of nations turns.  Negotiations are the means of making peace or preventing war, and are therefore of more serious importance than almost any single event of war can possibly be.