262 NEW ZEALAND-NEW SOUTH WALES. [1793. those two islands, now so familiar to us as New Zealand. Long neglected, this fine country had no regular settlement till 1840, when it became an accredited colony of the British government-a land henceforth to be inhabited by a great off-shoot of the Anglo-Saxon stock, with all the manifold blessings of the religion, the knowledge, the industry, of our own nation, whose process of civilization, under Roman colonizers, was far less rapid. The New Zealander himself, thirty years ago a clever cannibal, has already been absorbed into British citizenship, by the all-dominant superiority of higher intellect and purer morals. But this great good has been accomplished by treating the New Zealander as an accountable being, with rights not to be taken from him by the rapacity of conquest. He has been dealt with as the proprietor of the soil; and the territory of the settlers has been purchased and not seized. The New Zealanders, by far the highest in capacity of the barbarous tribes, have, in their brief colonization of twenty years, manifested the possibility of raising a native race to an appreciation of the value of what constitutes civilization, by imparting to them the blessings on which we pride ourselves as Christians and freemen. The Dutchmen had discovered New Holland; but they left it unexplored. Cook minutely surveyed the Eastern Coast, which he called New South Wales. The naturalists of the expedition, Mr. Joseph Banks and Dr. Solander, found many curious plants in an inlet of this coast, which they denominated "Botany Bay." What a word of terror was Botany Bay," when, in 1792, there were only sixty-seven free settlers in New South Wales. When the American colonies became independent, and even before their independence, they refused to receive "those unfortunate individuals who were convicted of such smaller felonies as are too frequent in a country where, from the freedom of the government, no strict police can be established." There was a very summary remedy for the higher offences, such as stealing in a dwelling-house above the value of five shillings-death. The capital-punishment system Sinclair, History of the Revenue," vol. ii. p. 102. 1793.] MILITARY AND NAVAL ESTABLISHMENTS, 263 grew somewhat odious, and the system of the hulks was more generally adopted. At last it was recollected that Captain Cook had found a convenient place, to which criminals, not worthy of Tyburn, might be banished; and so, from 1787 to 1792, about five thousand convicts had been sent to New South Wales and Norfolk Island. In the first years of the colony these wretched. creatures were literally slaves-employed in clearing woods to gain a spot for cultivation; half-starved-with no hope of escape, with the sea before them, and a boundless waste behind. The "Botany Bay Eclogues" of Southey, written in 1794, open with this lament of a female convict :— "Once more to daily toil, once more to wear Contrast the felon of Sydney Cove with the prosperous merchants and artisans of Sydney;-contrast the miserable outcast flying for his life to the deserts of the kangaroo, with the flock master reckoning his thousands of sheep on the fertile plains which he calls his own;-contrast England paying millions for the transport of convicts, with England receiving new impulses to her industry from the Australian gold fields. The most extravagant dreams in 1793 of the believers in the probable results of commercial and colonizing enterprize, never could picture any change approaching that gradual result of British energy, "which converted a transmarine gaol into one of the greatest communities of free men on the earth." "'* The very remote possibility of founding a great empire in Australia when the flag of England was first hoisted on the shores of Sydney Cove in 1788, could offer no prospect of compensation for the loss of our American colonies. Canada, at the time when war with France was imminent, was not wholly to be relied upon for loyalty to her conquerors, with her mixed French population; and with her proximity to the United States, whose people, if not her government, were rather too much enamoured of the ideal liberty of the French Republic to open their eyes to its aggressions. Britain must rely upon herself alone. She would persist in submitting to hard bargains with mercenary despotisms to make them fight for their own existence; but she would mainly have to depend upon her own right arm. Her military establishment was not equal to any sudden emergency. "It certainly was impolitic," says Sir John Sinclair, " reducing the peace establishment of this country so low as it was in 1792, when from the state of France it was evident that all Europe was likely to get into a convulsed state."† The military expenditure of that year was under two millions. The expected rupture with Spain in 1790, and with Russia in 1791, had occasioned great activity in the English dockyards; and an improved plan of providing imperishable stores in the magazines had enabled ships to be quickly equipped for service. The British fleet, at the commencement of 1793, included 115 ships of the line, carrying 8718 guns. The ships of the French line were 76, carrying 6002 guns. The British navy, at the commencement of 1793, 264 FRANCE DECLARES WAR. [1793. comprised 411 vessels of all rates, of which only 135 were in commission.* "At no previous period had France possessed so powerful a navy," says Mr. James. The English fleet was not so readily manned as the French fleet. The appeals to republican enthusiasm to fit out privateers were more stimulating than the sober addresses to the loyalty of our mercantile classes. On the 31st of December the French Minister of Marine addressed a letter to the friends of liberty in the sea-ports :-" The government of England is arming. .... The king and his parliament intend to make war against us. Will the English republicans suffer it? Already these free men show their discontent, and the repugnance which they have to bear arms against their brothers the French. Well! we will fly to their succour; we will make a descent on the island; we will lodge there fifty thousand caps of liberty; we will plant there the sacred tree; and we will stretch out our arms to our republican brethren. The tyranny of their government shall soon be destroyed." M. Chauvelin returned to Paris with the same wild notions of the amount of disaffection. He judged, as foreigners are too apt to judge, that our freedom of writing and speaking-the safety-valves of the political machine-indicated violence and revolt. The war was probably inevitable; but the French Convention took the initiative in declaring war. On the 11th of February, a Message from the king was delivered to the two Houses, in which it was stated that "the Assembly now exercising the powers of government in France have, without previous notice, directed acts of hostility to be committed against the persons and property of his majesty's subjects, in breach of the law of nations, and of the most positive stipulations of treaty; and have since, on the most groundless pretensions, declared war against his majesty and the United Provinces." * See Tables to James's "History," No. I. Resolutions proposed by Mr. Fox against war with France-Commercial distress-Parliamentary Reform opposed by Mr. Pitt-Traitorous Correspondence Bill-Pitt, Burke, Fox,-the diversity of their views of England's policy-Sanguine expectations of warlike success-Dumouriez in Holland-Battle of Neerwinden-Defection of Dumouriez-Measures of the Jacobins-Revolutionary Tribunal-Committee of Public Salvation-Excessive prices of commodities in Paris-Produced by the depreciation of Assignats-Plunder of the Shops Law of Maximum-Forced Levy of troops-La Vendée in insurrection-Mr. Fox's motion for Peace-Insurrection against the Girondin Deputies-Their arrest and flight-Assassination of Marat by Charlotte Corday-Note on the French Revolutionary Kalendar. THE opposition of Mr. Fox to the war with France, supported as he was by only a small band of his friends, was consistent and unremitting. He moved an amendment to the Address on the King's Message respecting the Declaration of War, and was defeated without a division. He proposed, a week after this royal Message had been delivered, a series of Resolutions, the object of which was to declare, that it was not for the honour or interest of Great Britain to make war upon France, on account of the internal circumstances of that country; that the complaints against the conduct of the French government were not sufficient to justify war in the first instance without having attempted to obtain redress by negotiation; that the pretended grounds of the war with France, the security of Europe, and the rights of independent nations, had been disregarded in the case of Poland; that no engagements ought to be entered into with other powers which might prevent Great Britain making a separate peace. After an acrimonious VOL. VII. T 266 OPPOSITION TO THE WAR BY MR. FOX. [1793. debate, Mr. Fox's motion was rejected by an overwhelming majority, only forty-four members supporting the Resolutions. Again, and again, Fox advocated negotiations for peace with those, whoever they were, who had the government of France in their hands. "Why," he said, was every man in England to be a sufferer because the people of France were in confusion? . . . Let them ask every man in the kingdom who had any commercial dealings, whether the accounts he received from all parts of the kingdom did not call for a conclusion to this war."* The embarrassments in trade had been so serious, from whatever cause, that Parliament had sanctioned an issue of five millions in exchequer bills, to be advanced by commissioners, in loans to commercial firms who could give security for repayment. The demand for peace, upon the plea that war produced distress and privation to the bulk of the people, was thus met by Burke, in one of his most virulent personal attacks upon Fox :-"The ground of a political war is, of all things, that which the poor labourer and manufacturer are the least capable of conceiving. This sort of people know in general that they must suffer by war. It is a matter to which they are sufficiently competent, because it is a matter of feeling. The causes of a war are not matters of feeling, but of reason and foresight, and often of remote considerations, and of a very great combination of circumstances, which they are utterly incapable of comprehending; and, indeed, it is not every man in the higher classes who is altogether equal to it." According to this doctrine, the war with the French republican government was "a political war," of the justice. or expediency of which only the initiated in the mysteries of statesmanship were competent to form an opinion. The bulk of the people might feel the consequences of such a war, but they had no capacity for the investigation of its causes, and had therefore only to confide and suffer. Pitt, proud and confident as he was, made no attempt to measure this war by the calculating foresight only of official wisdom. He was driven into the war, undoubtedly against his wishes, by the violence of popular opinion rather than by the calculations of his own statesmanship. He did not claim an infallibility which regarded with contempt the general tone of public feeling. He carried the greater portion of the industrial community with him in his resistance to extreme democratic principles, by describing with a rhetoric that could not exaggerate the reality, the cruelties and oppressions perpetrated in France under the names of Liberty and Equality. He defended his own abandonment of the cause of Parliamentary Reform by dwelling upon the consequences of extended suffrage in France. In the great debate on Mr. Grey's motion for Reform, previous to which petitions had been read praying for Universal Suffrage, Mr. Pitt said, "In what is called the government of the multitude, they are not the many who govern the few, but the few who govern the many. It is a species of tyranny which adds insult to the wretchedness of its subjects, by styling its own arbitrary decrees the voice of the people, and sanctioning its acts of oppression and cruelty under the pretence of the national will. . . . The question is, whether you will abide by your Constitution, or hazard a change, with all that dreadful train of ... * "Parliamentary History," vol. xxx.--Debate of the 18th June. 66 |