The debate which ensued in Parliament was most instructive, because the First Consul was entirely right. Great Britain was the mainspring of the coalition. The wits of London said in public that England had contracted half of her national debt to destroy the Bourbons and the other half to restore them to power. This was the key-note of the Liberal opposition. Lord Holland was willing to be sponsor for Bonaparte's sincerity, but the Lords laughed at him. In the Commons Whitbread charged the excesses of the French Revolution to the unwarrantable interference of other powers; England owed it to herself to make peace when she could, even with a usurper. Erskine could see in England's course nothing but a blind obstinacy which had overwhelmed the nation with debt and disaster. "What would you say," said Tierney, "if Bonaparte victorious should refuse to treat except with the Stuarts?" But the temper of Parliament and the people was for continuing the war. Grenville, in the upper house, declared that Bonaparte was merely a new exponent of the revolutionary wickedness of the Directory. He had made treaties or armistices with Sardinia, Tuscany, Modena, and the minor Italian states, only to violate them; he had scorned the neutrality of Parma; he had dragged Venice into war for her own destruction; he had trampled Genoa underfoot; and he had destroyed the liberty of Switzerland while uttering false promises of peace and friendship. His hearers sustained him by an overwhelming majority. In the lower house Canning denounced the First Consul as a usurper who, like a specter, wore on his head something which resembled a crown. Pitt rose to the height of his majestic powers in one of the great orations of his life. Minor political considerations must be waived. Bonaparte was the destroyer of Europe. The sole refuge from the calamities with which he was about to flood the nations was England. He himself had unwillingly consented to the negotiations at Lille; it was Fructidor which had broken them off, and it was Bonaparte who was the author of Fructidor. He might be reproached for desiring the restoration of the ancient monarchy to France, but an exhausted and desperate country could not find the long repose essential for recuperation except under the Bourbons. The success of his plea was even greater than Grenville's. Thus by an appeal to the old detestation of revolutionary excess which was so deep-seated in the English masses, and by an adroit insinuation that it was this for which Bonaparte stood,--a fact which seemed to be shown by his career,--the ministry gained a new lease of life, and men believed that a few months would see France fall in utter exhaustion before the coalition.