View of the Causes and Consequences of the Present War with France (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1797. Excerpt: ... VIEW, ON the 26th of last December, his Majesty by a gracious message to both Houses of Parliament, communicated with the utmost concern, the abrupc termination of the late negotiation with France, .and directed the details of the embassy to be laid before them for their consideration. Upon this occasion it appeared, that the negotiation, had terminated Upon a difference totally unconnected with the original causes of the war. It was manifest, that this country had completely abandoned the principles which, in the face of all Europe, the great confederacy against France had assigned as the justification of hostilities. The return of peace (now removed to an incalculable distance) turned entirely upon territorial cessions, neither in fact nor in principle con tested at the time of the rupture, but which, as will appear by the following pages, were put at the feet of Great Britain, as the arbitrefs of universal tranquillity. This was our condition. The object of the contest totally funk, but the contest continuing without prospect of conclusion; one hundred millions of debt added to the former grievous weight of national incumbranct s; many channels of our commerce obstructed, and ouf manufactures suffering in proportion; objects of revenue within the pale of luxury threatening unproduction from the necessity of extending them beyond what luxuries will carry whilst the sinews of the laborious poor were cracking under the burdens already imposed upon all the necessaries of life. The English people had heretofore been characterised by an extreme jealousy of their government; by a disposition rather to magnify, and even to imagine evils, than to submit without inquiry to actual and unexampled calamities. A great public sensation might, therefore, have been exp...