peace or war. Supposing the Convention to be free, (most assuredly it
was not,) they had shown no disposition to abandon their projects.
Though long driven out of Liege, it was not many days before Mr. Fox's
motion that they still continued to claim it as a country which their
principles of fraternity bound them to protect,--that is, to subdue and
to regulate at their pleasure. That party which Mr. Fox inclined most to
favor and trust, and from which he must have received his assurances,
(if any he did receive,) that is, the _Brissotins_, were then either
prisoners or fugitives. The party which prevailed over them (that of
Danton and Marat) was itself in a tottering condition, and was disowned
by a very great part of France. To say nothing of the royal party, who
were powerful and growing, and who had full as good a right to claim to
be the legitimate government as any of the Parisian factions with whom
he proposed to treat,--or rather, (as it seemed to me,) to surrender at
discretion.

32. But when Mr. Fox began to come from his general hopes of the
moderation of the Jacobins to particulars, he put the case that they
might not perhaps be willing to surrender Savoy. He certainly was not
willing to contest that point with them, but plainly and explicitly (as
I understood him) proposed to let them keep it,--though he knew (or he
was much worse informed than he would be thought) that England had at
the very time agreed on the terms of a treaty with the King of Sardinia,
of which the recovery of Savoy was the _casus fœderis_. In the teeth of
this treaty, Mr. Fox proposed a direct and most scandalous breach of our
faith, formally and recently given. But to surrender Savoy was to
surrender a great deal more than so many square acres of land or so much
revenue. In its consequences, the surrender of Savoy was to make a
surrender to France of Switzerland and Italy, of both which countries
Savoy is the key,--as it is known to ordinary speculators in politics,