Financial Statement.....
Mission of Lord Malmesbury to Paris..... Stoppage of Cash-
payments at the Bank..... Meeting in the Fleets..... .
Grey's Motion for Reform, &c...... French Descent on
Wales..... Battle of Cape St. Vincent..... Battle of
Camperdown..... The Blockade of Cadiz, &c...... War on the
Continent..... Internal History of France..... Meeting of
Parliament

{A.D. 1796}

GREY'S MOTION FOR PEACE, ETC.

After the Christmas recess, on the 15th of February, Mr. Grey moved
an address to the king, praying him to communicate to the executive
government of France his readiness to meet any disposition to negociate
a general peace. Pitt in reply said that there was a sincere desire for
peace, if it could be obtained on honourable terms; but that the country
could not break her faith with her allies that remained true to her, or
consent to any arrangement which should leave the French in possession
of Belgium, Holland, Savoy, Nice, &c. The motion was negatived by
one hundred and ninety against fifty. On the 10th of March the same
honourable gentleman moved that the house should resolve itself into
a committee, to inquire into the state of the nation; in his speech on
which he dwelt upon the enormous expenses and hopeless prospects of
the war, and represented our commerce as declining, and the country as
reduced to a state in which it could not bear any more taxes. Pitt and
his friends insisted, however, that the commerce of the country had
increased, and was increasing, and justified the lavish expenditure,
though much of it was unjustifiable. This motion was also negatived; but
a few weeks later Mr. Grey moved a long series of resolutions, charging
ministers with numerous acts of misappropriation of the public money,
in flagrant violation of various acts of parliament, and of presenting
false accounts, calculated to mislead the judgment of the house. The
order of the day was likewise carried against this motion, by a majority
of two hundred and nine to thirty-eight. On the 10th of May an address
to the king was moved in the upper house by the Earl of Guildford, and
in the lower house by Mr. Fox, declaring that the duty incumbent on
parliament no longer permitted them to dissemble their deliberate
opinion, that the distress, difficulty, and peril, to which this
country was then subjected, had arisen from the misconduct of the king's
ministers aud was likely to increase as l