Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 — John Shaqi
Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914
History
Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914
Great Britain -- Foreign relations; Speeches, addresses, etc., English
Inaccuracy in dates seems to be a sort of fatality common to all who
have written on that side of the question; for even the writer of the
note to His Majesty is not more correct, in this respect, than if
he had taken his information only from the pamphlet of the learned
gentleman. The House will recollect the first professions of the
French Republic, which are enumerated, and enumerated truly, in that
note--they are tests of everything which would best recommend a
Government to the esteem and confidence of foreign Powers, and the
reverse of everything which has been the system and practice of
France now for near ten years. It is there stated, that their first
principles were love of peace, aversion to conquest, and respect for
the independence of other countries. In the same note, it seems,
indeed, admitted, that they since have violated all those principles;
but it is alleged that they have done so only in consequence of the
provocation of other Powers. One of the first of those provocations
is stated to have consisted in the various outrages offered to their
Ministers, of which the example is said to have been set by the King
of Great Britain in his conduct to M. Chauvelin. In answer to this
supposition, it is only necessary to remark that, before the example
was given, before Austria and Prussia are supposed to have been thus
encouraged to combine in a plan for the partition of France, that
plan, if it ever existed at all, had existed and been acted upon for
above eight months: France and Prussia had been at war eight months
before the dismissal of M. Chauvelin. So much for the accuracy of the
statement.
[Mr. Erskine here observed that this was not the statement of his
argument.]
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