The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 05 (of 12) by Edmund Burke
page 29 of 451 (06%)
page 29 of 451 (06%)
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the _political_ effect aimed at, evidently, was to turn our indignation
from France, with whom we were at war, upon Russia, or Prussia, or Austria, or Sardinia, or all of them together. In consequence of his knowledge that we _could_ not effectually do _without_ them, and his resolution that we _should_ not act _with_ them, he proposed, that, having, as he asserted, "obtained the only avowed object of the war (the evacuation of Holland) we ought to conclude an instant peace." 28. Mr. Fox could not be ignorant of the mistaken basis upon which his motion was grounded. He was not ignorant, that, though the attempt of Dumouriez on Holland, (so very near succeeding,) and the navigation of the Scheldt, (a part of the same piece,) were among the _immediate_ causes, they were by no means the only causes, alleged for Parliament's taking that offence at the proceedings of France, for which the Jacobins were so prompt in declaring war upon this kingdom. Other full as weighty causes had been alleged: they were,--1. The general overbearing and desperate ambition of that faction; 2. Their actual attacks on every nation in Europe; 3. Their usurpation of territories in the Empire with the governments of which they had no pretence of quarrel; 4. Their perpetual and irrevocable consolidation with their own dominions of every territory of the Netherlands, of Germany, and of Italy, of which they got a temporary possession; 5. The mischiefs attending the prevalence of their system, which would make the success of their ambitious designs a new and peculiar species of calamity in the world; 6. Their formal, public decrees, particularly those of the 19th of November and 15th and 25th of December; 7. Their notorious attempts to undermine the Constitution of this country; 8. Their public reception of deputations of traitors for that direct purpose; 9. Their murder of their sovereign, declared by most of the members of the Convention, who spoke with their vote, (without a disavowal from any,) to be perpetrated |
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