overtures. Government applied for passports for an ambassador
to go to Paris; and Lord Malmesbury arrived there on the 22nd of
October. But all negociation for peace was vain. It-lasted for several
weeks; and then, the directors having required Lord Malinesbury to
define what compensation would be demanded for the restoration of the
French colonies, and to state all his demands within four and twenty
hours, his lordship replied that their requisition precluded all further
negociation; and on the next day his lordship was told that he must quit
Paris within forty-eight hours.

In the meantime Pitt had prepared for a vigorous prosecution of the war.
In order to confirm the cabinet in the warlike disposition displayed,
to rouse the national spirit for renewed exertions, and to point out the
dishonour of forming treaties with men notorious for their bad faith, in
the course of this summer Mr. Burke published his celebrated "Letters on
a Regicide Peace." These letters, and the two others that were published
after his death, are among the most splendid efforts of his mind. In
them he took a different view of the war from Pitt; he thought that
it would be both violent and protracted. At the same time he did not
despair of the final result, provided only a check could be given
to that despondence which had seized upon many minds, and which the
opposition were inculcating and promoting. It was his opinion that
it was essential to success to disclaim all partition of the soil of
France, to distinguish between the government and the nation, and to
declare against the Jacobins, as distinct from the people; that France
ought to be attacked in her own territory, and, in the first instance,
by a British army sent into the Vendee; that it was impolitic to employ
troops and fleets in reducing West Indian islands while the French
armies were overrunning the Continent; and that England, with a force
of nearly 300,000 men, with a navy of 500 ships of war, might make an
irresistible impression on any part of the French territory. This was
the last effort which Burke made to stem the onward torrent of the
progress of the French revolutionists. He had recently endured a severe
calamity in the death of his only son, of whose talents he had formed
the highest expectations, and for whose advancement he had vacated his
seat in parliament; and in the next year he himself was brought to
the grave. He was one of the greatest men of his age; and his