The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 1838Gillman, James
General
The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 1838
Gillman, James
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834; Critics -- Great Britain -- Biography; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
If the honourable gentleman will tell me, that the object of Austria
is to regain the Netherlands, and to reconquer all she may leave lost
in Germany and Italy, so far from feeling this as a cause of distress,
I feel it a ground of consolation, as giving us the strongest
assurance of his sincerity, added to that right which we possess of
believing Austria sincere, from our experience that Austria, above
all, must know the insecurity of peace with Jacobins. This, Sir, would
be a ground of consolation and confident hope; and though we should go
farther than the Emperor of Germany, and stop short of Russia, still,
however, we should all travel in the same road. Yet even were less
justifiable objects to animate our ally, were ambition her inspiring
motive, yet even on that ground I contend that her arms and victories
would conduce to our security. If it tend to strip France of territory
and influence, the aggrandisement of Austria is elevated by comparison
into a blessing devoutly to be wished! The aggrandisement of Austria,
founded on the ruins of Jacobinism, I contend, Sir, to be a truly
British object. But, Sir, the honourable gentleman says, he thinks the
war neither just nor necessary, and calls upon me, without the
qualifying reservations and circuitous distinctions of a special
pleader; in short, without BUTS or IFS, to state the real object; and
affirms that in spite of these buts and ifs, the restoration of
monarchy in France is the real and sole object of ministers, and that
all else contained in the official notes are unmeaning words and
distinctions fallacious, and perhaps meant to deceive. Is it, Sir, to
be treated as a fallacious distinction, that the restoration of
monarchy is not my sole or ultimate object; that my ultimate object is
security, that I think no pledge for that security so unequivocal as
the restoration of monarchy, and no means so natural and so effectual?
'but' if you can present any other mode, that mode I will adopt. I am
unwilling to accept an inadequate security; but the nature of the
security which it may be our interest to demand, must depend on the
relative and comparative dangers of continuing the war, or concluding
a peace. And 'if' the danger of the war should be greater than that of
a peace, and 'if' you can shew to me that there is no chance of
diminishing Jacobinism by the war, and 'if' you can evince that we are
exhausting our means more than our enemies are exhausting theirs, then
I am ready to conclude a peace without the restoration of monarchy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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