XIII. 1793. were commenced both in Scotland and England against CHAP. the most violent of the demagogues. Some of them were clearly necessary; the expedience of others, especially in Scotland, was more than doubtful, at least to the extent to which punishment was carried against generous, and often well-meaning, though dangerous and deluded men.* Those vindictive measures on the part of government are seldom really beneficial, which excite the sympathy of the humane as well as the turbulent, and convert the transient ebullition of popular feeling into the lasting bitterness of political hatred.1 The true course in periods of public excitement, is firmness with- p. out severity; steady defiance of revolutionary intimida interests of all classes that had ever existed in the world; that, least of all, could the manufacturing or commercial bodies complain that their interests were not duly attended to in parliament, since the whole policy of the state, for above a century, had been directed, perhaps too exclusively, to their advantage; that the representation which the great colonial, commercial, and shipping interests now obtained, by means of the purchase of close boroughs, would be annihilated if this mode of entering parliament were closed; that thus the real effect of reform would be to vest the supreme power in the mob of England, to the exclusion of all the great and varied interests which had risen up over the whole globe in the British dependencies; that such a state of things had proved fatal to all former republics, and could not fail speedily to lead to the dismemberment of the British empire: that if corruption were the evil which was really apprehended, no mode of increasing it could be so effectual as diminishing the close boroughs, where it existed from the paucity of inhabitants on the smallest, and increasing the middling ones, where experience had proved bribery was practised on the most extensive scale; that any reform would thus diminish the private to increase the venal boroughs; that, as it was evident wealth could maintain its ground in the contest with numbers, only by means of the expenditure of money, it was incomparably better that this necessary influence should be exerted in the decent retirement of antiquated boroughs, than in the shameless prostitution of great cities; that the danger of revolution, so strongly urged on the other side, in fact only existed if the reform measure was carried, inasmuch as history demonstrated, that no convulsions had ever shaken the English monarchy but those which emanated from the House of Commons; that it was rash measures of legislation which were alone to be dreaded, and words spoken from authority that set the world on fire; that the constitution had now, by accident, or more probably by the providence of God, become adapted to the curious and complicated interests of the British empire, and had enjoyed a degree of stability unknown to free institutions in any former age; and therefore nothing could be more rash or culpable than to run the risk of destroying so venerable a fabric, under which so much practical benefit had been experienced, in the pursuit of imaginary, and hitherto unattainable perfection. Some of these were transported fourteen years for conspiracy and sedition, without any overt act of high treason.--State Trials in Scotland, i. 351, 417. Parl. De bates, xxx. 615, 620. XIII. CHAP. tion, but cautious consideration of real evils; decided resistance to needless innovation, but careful abstinence from individual oppression. 1793. 13. Prepara tions for war by Great Britain and the Allies. The internal tranquillity of the British empire being thus provided for, the government took the most vigorous measures which the limited extent of their military resources would permit, to strengthen the Grand Army on the Continent. A corps, consisting of twenty thousand 20th April. English, was embarked and landed in Holland, under the command of the Duke of York, and being united to ten thousand Hanoverians and Hessians, formed a total of thirty thousand men in the British pay. The French 24th Feb. Convention, early in the year, had ordered a levy of three hundred thousand men ; but these troops could not come into the field till April. The present forces of the Allies consisted of three hundred and sixty-five thousand men, acting on the whole circumference of France, from Calais to Bayonne, while those of the Republicans amounted to two hundred and seventy thousand, for the most part of inferior quality, but possessing the advantages of unity of language, government, and public feeling, besides the important circumstance of acting in an interior and concentric circle, which enabled one corps rapidly to communicate with and support another, while the troops of the Allies, scattered over a much larger circumference, were deprived of that advantage.1* 1 Jom. vi. 49, 52. *The relative strength of the forces on the opposite sides in July 1793, was as follows:- XIII. 1793. 14. cution of England. No difficulty was experienced by government in getting CHAP. parliament to agree to any measures which were deemed necessary to avert from the British shores the scourge of revolutionary convulsion. The execution of Louis pro- vastect duced a profound and universal impression in Great of the exeBritain. Nothing, since the time when the head of Louis in Charles I. fell under the axe of the Long Parliament, had ever produced so general and mournful a feeling. It was hard to say whether the sturdy old Tories, or the ardent Liberals of the new school, received the intelligence with most consternation. The former beheld in this event the clearest confirmation of their dismal forebodings, and the realisation of their worst predictions: the latter, the overthrow of long-cherished hopes, the blasting of impassioned and sanguine expectations. It was impossible any longer to represent the popular cause in France as that of justice and philanthropy, when the first sacrifice to which it had led had been that of their upright and beneficent monarch, whose only fault had been an imprudent zeal for the public good, and his only weakness an unconquerable aversion to the shedding of blood. It was now apparent that the boasted regeneration of society had purified it of none of its vices, and that the philanthropic movement of the philosophers was to terminate in the usual atrocities of bloodshed, massacre, and confiscation. Indescribable was the effect The French, however, had the superiority in the field till the end of April; from that time till the end of August, the Allies had the advantage: after which, from the great levies of the Republicans coming forward, they resumed the ascendency, which went on continually increasing till the close of the campaign, and was never lost till the memorable campaign of 1799.-JOMINI, iii. 51, 52, 53. XIII. 1793. Feb. 1. CHAP. which this impression produced on all classes in the British isles, from the throne to the cottage. By a spontaneous feeling the House of Commons, on the night on which the melancholy intelligence was discussed in parliament, on occasion of the royal message for an augmentation of the forces, assembled in mourning. One or two alone appeared in coloured dress, who afterwards bore a conspicuous part in English history as the leaders of the great movement which terminated in the Revolution of 1832.* 15. * The impression made at St Petersburg by the execuEffect of the tion of Louis was fully as vivid as at London: already it Louis at St was evident that these two capitals were the centres of Petersburg. the great contest which was approaching. No sooner death of 1 Hard. ii. 191, 192. did the melancholy intelligence reach the Empress Catherine, than she instantly took the most decisive measures all Frenchmen were ordered to quit her territories within three weeks, if they did not renounce the principles of the Revolution, and all correspondence with their relations in that country and it was publicly announced, that the great fleet of Cronstadt, with forty thousand men on board, should, early in spring, unite itself to the British navy, to pursue measures in common against the enemies of humanity. The efforts of the Czarine had been incessant and energetic to organise an alliance capable of restraining the progress of revolutionary principles. With that view she had restrained the uplifted arm of conquest over Gustavus III. of Sweden in 1790; and hardly were her troops disengaged from their Turkish enemies on the banks of the Danube, by the peace of Jassy in 1792, than she made arrangements for transporting the Muscovite legions to the heart of Germany.1 Nor did these energetic resolutions evaporate in mere empty words, on the part of the cabinet either of St Petersburg or St James's. An intimate and confiden tial correspondence immediately commenced between CHAP. Count Woronzoff, the Russian ambassador at London, XIII. 1793. tween Great March 25. and Lord Grenville, the British secretary of state for 16. foreign affairs, which terminated in a treaty between the Treaty betwo powers, signed in London on the 25th March. By Britain and this convention, which laid the basis of the grand alliance Russia. which afterwards brought the war to a glorious termination, it was provided that the two powers should "employ their respective forces, as far as circumstances shall permit, in carrying on the just and necessary war in which they find themselves engaged against France; and they reciprocally engage not to lay down their arms until restitution is compelled of all the conquests which France may have made upon either of the respective powers, or upon such other states or allies to whom, by common consent, they shall extend the benefit of this treaty." They agreed, also, to shut their ports against France, and not permit the export of any naval stores to that power, " and to unite all their efforts to prevent other powers not implicated in this war from giving, on this occasion of common concern to every civilised state, any protection whatever, in consequence of their neutrality, to the commerce or property of the French, on the sea, or in the ports France." The existing commercial treaties were at the ii. 198. same time, by a separate convention, ratified and con- 433,439. firmed between the two powers.1 of 1 Parl. Hist. xxx. 1082, and Hard. Martens, v. 17. Sardinia, Shortly after, a similar convention was entered into between Great Britain and Sardinia, by which the latter And with power was to receive an annual subsidy of £200,000 Prussia, during the whole continuance of the war, and to keep Spain. on foot an army of fifty thousand men ; and the British 25th April. government engaged to procure for it entire restitution of its dominions as they stood at the commencement of the war. By another convention with the cabinet of Madrid, signed at Aranjuez on the 25th of 25th May. May, they engaged not to make peace till they had obtained full restitution for the Spaniards " of all places, |