ld had there
been more wisely clever men, such as Charles James Fox, in public life
in this and other countries during Napoleon's time. He was the one
great Englishman who towered above any of the ministers who were
contemporary with him in this country, and certainly no public man had
a finer instinct than he as to the policy Great Britain should observe
towards a nation that was being dragged out of the cesspool of
corruption and violence into a democratic grandeur of government that
was the envy of Continental as well as British antiquarians. Fox saw
clearly the manifest benefit to both countries if they could be made
to understand and not to envy each other. In 1802, Fox was received in
Paris like a highly popular monarch. The whole city went wild with the
joy of having him as the guest of France. He was the great attraction
at the theatres next to the First Consul, whom Fox declared "was a
most decided character, that would hold to his purpose with more
constancy and through a longer interval than is imagined; his views
are not directed to this, i.e. the United Kingdom, but to the
Continent only." "I never saw," he says, "so little indirectness in
any statesman as in the First Consul." Had Fox been supported by
sufficient strong men to counteract the baneful influence of the weeds
who were a constant peril to the country over whose destinies George
III and they ruled, we should have been saved the ghastly errors that
were committed in the name of the British people. The King's dislike
to Fox was openly avowed. He used to talk incessantly of going back
to Hanover whenever he was thwarted in his disastrous policy of giving
the country a stab, or when the inevitable brought Fox into office.
Everything that emanated from the great statesman was viewed with
aversion and as being unjust and indecent by the royal Lilliputian,
while Fox's estimate of the King could not be uttered on a lower
plane. He says, in speaking of His Majesty, "It is intolerable to
think that it should be in the power of _one_ blockhead to do so much
mischief"--meaning, I presume, amongst many other blunders, the mess
he was persisting in making over American affairs.

Had there been capable statesmen during that crisis, the Continent of
Europe and the vast dominions of Great Britain would not have been at
war this day with the pernicious Power that we, more than any other
nation, as has been previously stated, helped to create and foster.

V