But, it was asked, how could it be said that France had threatened the general tranquility when she had solemnly renounced all designs of conquest, and had remained neutral in the midst of the internal dissensions of Belgium and Liege? The French nation had indeed proclaimed that sovereignty belongs exclusively to the people, whose right to delegate power is limited by the rights of posterity; that no usage, no law, no consent, no convention could irrevocably bind a society of men to any human authority. But the enunciation of these maxims could not be considered as disturbing the tranquility of other states; and to require the suppression of the writings in which they were propagated was to demand a law against the liberty of the press, and to declare war against the progress of human reason. As to the pretended attempts of Frenchmen to excite other nations to insurrection, no proof had been offered in support of the allegation and even supposing it to be true, those powers would have no right to complain, who had suffered the assemblage of the emigrants, who had given them aid and succour, who had publicly received their ambassadors, and who had endeavoured to excite civil war among the French; unless indeed it be lawful to extend servitude, and unlawful to propagate liberty; unless every thing be permitted against the people, and kings alone have rights.

If violence and crimes had marked some of the epochs of the French revolution, the power of punishing, or of casting over them the veil of oblivion, belonged exclusively to the depositaries of the national authority: every citizen, every magistrate, whatever might be his title, has a right to seek for justice from the laws of his country alone. Foreign powers, so long as their subjects had not suffered from these events, could have no just motive either to complain, or to take hostile measures to prevent their recurrence. The relationship between kings, their personal alliances, are indifferent to nations, whether free or slaves: nature had made their happiness to consist in peace, and in mutual aid as brethren; and they would see with indignation the fate of

twenty millions of men placed in the same scale with the affections and pride of a few individuals.

As to the claims of the German princes in Alsace, and of the Pope in the Comtat, it was answered that the sovereignty over the former province had been transferred to France, with the reservation of certain rights, which were but privileges. The true sense of this reservation was that these privileges should be preserved, so long as the general laws of France recognized the feudal system in its various forms, and that when abolished, the nation owed an indemnity to the former possessors for the real losses they had sustained. This was all that a regard to the rights of property could require, when opposed to the law and to the public interest. The citizens of Alsace were Frenchmen, and the nation could not, without injustice, suffer them to be deprived of the smallest portion of the rights common to all those whom this character ought to protect. The citizens of the Comtat, who might have declared themselves independent, have preferred to be French, and France will not abandon those whom she has adopted.

It had been pretended that the wish of the French nation for the preservation of its equality and independence was that of a faction. But that nation had a constitution; this constitution had been adopted by the great mass of the people: so long as it subsisted, the authorities established by it have the exclusive right of manifesting the national will, and it was by them that this will had been announced to foreign nations. It was the King who, on the invitation of the national assembly, and fulfilling the functions attributed to him. by the constitution, had complained of the protection given to the emigrants; who had demanded explanations respecting the league formed against France; who had required that the league should be dissolved; and yet the solemn. will of the people, thus publicly expressed by its lawful representative, had been considered as the voice of an inconsiderable faction.

The continuance of the hostile protection given to the

emigrants, the open violation of the promise to disperse them, the refusal to renounce an offensive league, the exceptionable motives of that refusal, announcing the desire of destroying the French constitution, furnished sufficient reasons to authorize hostilities, which must be considered as defensive; since it was not an act of aggression to refuse to permit our avowed enemy to choose his own time and manner of attack. The national assembly had shown its desire of avoiding war, by every means consistent with the maintenance of the constitution, the independence of the national sovereignty, and the safety of the state. The ultimatum of Austria offered no other alternative than the reestablishment of the feudal servitude and its humiliating inequality, bankruptcy, and the payment of taxes by the people alone, the restoration of the national domains to their former owners, and the blood of the nation to be lavished in supporting the designs of an enemy house.h

The King of Prussia published on the 26th of June, an exposition of the motives which had induced him to take up arms against France. These were stated to be the violation of the treaties between the empire and France in the suppression of the rights and possessions of the German princes in Alsace; the propagation in other countries of those principles subversive of social order which had thrown France into a state of confusion; the toleration, encouragement, and even official publication of discourses and writings, the most offensive against the sacred persons and lawful authority of sovereigns; and finally the unjust declaration of war against the King of Hungary and Bohemia, followed by the actual invasion of the Belgic provinces of that monarch, included in the German empire, as a part of the circle of Burgundy, and the occupation of the territory of Bâle forming incontestably a portion of that empire. His Prussian

Thiers, Histoire de la Révolution Française, tom. ii. pp. 311-320. Notes et pieces justificatives.

majesty took up arms, not only in defence of his ally, his apostolic majesty, and of the empire, unjustly attacked by the rulers of France; but to prevent the incalculable evils which might result to France, to Europe, and to humanity in general, from the fatal spirit of insubordination, licen tiousness, and anarchy, the progress of which ought already to have been arrested by unhappy and dear bought experience. No state interested in maintaining the balance of power in Europe could see with indifference the kingdom of France, which formerly formed so considerable a weight in that balance, longer abandoned to internal agitations, and the horrors of anarchy, which had, so to speak, destroyed its political existence. There was no Frenchman, who sincerely loved his country, who must not ardently desire. to see them terminated; no man, the sincere friend of humanity, who would not desire to see checked this phantom of false liberty, which had led the people astray from the path of true happiness, by weakening the ties of attachment and confidence which should unite them to princes, their strength and their defence; and this phrenzy of evil disposed men, who sought to destroy the respect due to governments, in order to erect upon the ruins of thrones the idols of their insatiable ambition and vile cupidity. To suppress anarchy in France; to re-establish, for this purpose, a lawful power on the essential basis of a monarchial form; and, by these means, to secure other governments against the criminal and incendiary efforts of a band of mad-men :—such was the great object of the king and his ally, certain in this enterprize of receiving the approbation of all the powers of Europe, who could not fail to acknowledge its justice and necessity, but also the good wishes of all who sincerely interested themselves in the happiness of mankind.i

We have already seen that the object of the continental § 3. Object

Motifs du Roi de Prusse pour prendre les armes contre la France. Se

gur, Histoire de F. Guillaume II, tom. ii. p. 355. Pieces justificatives.

of the war on alliance against France was the restoration of the ancient the part of G order of things in that country. It was an armed interven

Britain.

tion against the principles of the French revolution, deemed to be cf dangerous example and contagious influence on the neighboring monarchies. But that revolution, so far as it aimed merely at a reform of the internal government of France, could not justly be considered as obnoxious to a country whose constitution was founded upon the national will expressed by the expulsion of one race of kings and the substitution of another with more limited or defined prerogatives. Even the British minister who subsequently devoted his life and all the resources of his country to waging a war of extermination against the French revolution did not, at first, view with any feeling of jealousy the prospect that its termination in a system of "freedom rightly understood, freedom resulting from good order and good government, might contribute to render France more formidable, since she would enjoy that just kind of liberty which he venerated, and which it was his duty as an Englishman peculiarly to cherish." And the statesman who had sounded the trumpet of alarm against that revolution, as menacing with destruction the social and political order } of Europe, saw in it the total destruction of the external power of France. In his speech on the same occasion, Mr. Burke stated, that France was, at that time, to be considered as expunged from the system of Europe. Whether she could ever appear in it again as a leading power, was not easy to determine: but at present he considered France as not politically existing; and most assuredly it would take much time to restore her to her former active existence. Gallos quoque in bellos floruisse audivimus, might possibly be the language of the rising generation. He did not mean to deny that it was their duty to keep their eye on that nation, and to regulate their preparation by the symptoms of

Mr. Pitt's Speech in the House of Commons, 9th Feb. 1790.