e reality is not
substantially within my reach. _Cur igitur pacem nolo? Quia infida est,
quia periculosa, quia esse non potest._"[526] In reply to a verbal
challenge from Tierney a fortnight later, he fired off an harangue which
ranks among the ablest and most fervid of improvisations. The Whig
leader having defied him to state in one sentence without _ifs_ and
_buts_ the object of the war, Pitt flung back the retort:

... I know not whether I can do it in one sentence, but in one
word I can tell him that it is security; security against a
danger the greatest that ever threatened the world; ... against
a danger which has been resisted by all the nations of Europe,
and resisted by none with so much success as by this nation,
because by none has it been resisted so uniformly and with so
much energy.... How or where did the honourable gentleman
discover that the Jacobinism of Robespierre, of Barere, of the
Triumvirate, of the Five Directors, which he acknowledged to be
real, has vanished and disappeared because it has all been
centred and condensed into one man, who was reared and nursed in
its bosom, whose celebrity was gained under its auspices, who
was at once the child and champion of all its atrocities and
horrors? Our security in negotiation is to be this Buonaparte,
who is now the sole organ of all that was formerly dangerous and
pestiferous in the Revolution.... _If_ peace afford no prospect
of security; _if_ it threaten all the evils which we have been
struggling to avert; _if_ the prosecution of the war afford the
prospect of attaining complete security; and _if_ it may be
prosecuted with increasing commerce, with increasing means, and
with increasing prosperity, except what may result from the
visitations of the seasons; then I say it is prudent in us not
to negotiate at the present moment. These are my _buts_ and my
_ifs_. This is my plea, and on no other do I wish to be tried by
God and my country.

One who heard that spirited retort left on record the profound
impression which it produced on the House.[527]

Seeing that Bonaparte was then known merely as an able _condottiere_,
not as the re-organizer of French society, Pitt's haughty attitude,
though deplorable, is intelligible. The prospects of the war were not
unfavourable. He hoped that Austria, now about to invade Nice and Savoy,
would be able by her ow