is taunts at
Ministers for seeking to stamp out the discontent which their injustice
and violence had created.

You have gone upon the principles of slavery in all your
proceedings; you neglect in your conduct the foundation of all
legitimate government, the rights of the people; and, setting up
this bugbear, you spread a panic for the very purpose of
sanctifying this infringement, while again the very infringement
engenders the evil which you dread. One extreme naturally leads
to another. Those who dread republicanism fly for shelter to the
Crown. Those who desire Reform and are calumniated are driven by
despair to republicanism. And this is the evil that I dread.
These are the extremes into which these violent agitations hurry
the people, to the decrease of that middle order of men who
shudder as much at republicanism on the one hand as they do at
despotism on the other.[142]

He then taunted Ministers with abandoning Poland and not opposing the
coalition of Austria and Prussia, and asserted that the Cabinet refused
to negotiate with France because she was a Republic, and her Ministers
had not been anointed with the holy oil of Rheims. The weakest part of
the speech was that which dealt with the existing crisis. For of what
use was it to point out where Ministers had gone astray months and years
before, if he did not now mark out for them a practicable course? In
truth, though the prince of debaters, Fox lacked self-restraint, balance
of judgement, and practical sagacity. The sole important issue was the
encouraging of the peace party at Paris, with a view to the revocation
of the aggressive decrees of the Convention. In private, Fox had
admitted that they were wholly indefensible; and yet, in order to snatch
an oratorical triumph, he fired off a diatribe which could not but
stiffen the necks of the French Jacobins. At such a crisis the true
statesman merges the partisan in the patriot and says not a word to
weaken his own Government and hearten its opponents. To this height of
self-denial Fox rarely rose; and the judgement alike of his fellows and
of posterity has pronounced this speech a masterpiece of partisan
invective and of political fatuity.

For how was it possible to recognize the French Republic until it had
withdrawn its threats to existing Governments? Pitt had reason to
believe that a firm protest against the aggressive decrees of November
was the on