the wild profligate intrigue and turbulency of Marat, and the impious fophiftry of Condorcet, in his infolent addreffes to the Batavian republick? Could Keppel, who idolized the house of Naffau, who was himself given to England, along with the bleffings of the British and Dutch revolutions ; with revolutions of ftability; with revolutions which confolidated and married the liberties and the interefts of the two nations for ever, could he fee the fountain of British liberty itself in fervitude to France? Could he fee with patience a prince of Orange expelled as a fort of diminutive defpot, with every kind of contumely, from the country, which that family of deliverers had fo often refcued from flavery, and obliged to live in exile in another country, which owes its liberty to his houfe? Would Keppel have heard with patience, that the conduct to be held on fuch occafions was to become short by the knees to the faction of the homicides, to intreat them quietly to retire? or if the fortune of war fhould drive them from their firft wicked and unprovoked invafion, that no fecurity should be taken, no arrangement made, no barrier formed, no alliance entered into for the fecurity of that, which under a foreign name is the most precious part of England? What would he have faid, if it was even proposed that the Auftrian Netherlands (which ought to be a barrier to Holland, and the tie of an alliance, to protect her against any species of rule that might be erected, or even be restored in France) should be formed into a republick under her influence, and dependent upon her power? But above all, what would he have faid, if he had heard it made a matter of accufation against me, by his nephew the duke of Bedford, that Į was the author of the war? Had I a mind to keep that high distinction to myself, as from pride I might, but from juftice I dare not, he would have fnatched his fhare of it from my hand, and held it with the grasp of a dying convulfion to his end. It would be a moft arrogant prefumption in me to affume to myself the glory of what belongs to his majefty, and to his minifters, and to his par liament, and to the far greater majority of his faithful people: But had I ftood alone to counsel, and that all were determined to be guided by my advice, and to follow it implicitly-then I should have been the fole author of a war. But it fhould have been a war on my ideas and my principles. However, let his Grace think as he may of my demerits with regard to the war with regicide, he will find my guilt confined to that alone. He never fhall, with the fmalleft colour of reafon, accufe me of being the author of a peace with regicide. |