while the Porte was admitted as an accessory power. It differed from the preliminary convention in no important respect, except in the illusory safeguards for the claims of the Prince of Orange, the secret arrangement for evading the cost of the French prisoners, and the provisions concerning Malta, pregnant with the seeds of future enmity. These provisions were as follows: Malta was to be restored to the knights of St. John, from whose order both French and British were hereafter to be excluded. The evacuation was to take place within three months of the ratification of the treaty, or sooner if possible. At that date Malta was to be given up, provided the grand master or commissaries of the order were present, and provided the Neapolitan garrison had arrived. Its independence was to be under the guarantee of France, Great Britain, Austria, Spain, Russia, and Prussia. Two thousand Neapolitan troops were to occupy it for one year, and until the order should have raised a force sufficient, in the judgment of the guaranteeing powers, for the defence of the islands.3
On October 29, 1801, parliament was opened with a speech from the throne briefly announcing the conclusion of a convention with the northern powers, and of preliminaries of peace with the French republic. General Lauriston, bearing the ratification of the preliminaries by the first consul, had reached London on the 10th, when he was received by the populace with tumultuous demonstrations of joy. Soon afterwards the "feast of the peace" was celebrated in Paris with equal enthusiasm. Short-lived as they proved to be, these pacific sentiments were doubtless genuine on both sides of the channel. The industrial, though not the military, resources of France were exhausted by her prodigious efforts during the last eight years; while England, suffering grievously from distress among the working-classes and financial difficulties, welcomed the prospect of cheaper provisions and easier times, as well as of emerging from the political difficulties originating in the French revolution.
The preliminary treaty, however, did not escape hostile criticism in either house of parliament. It was the subject of discussion in the lords on November 3, and in the commons on the 3rd and 4th. Its most strenuous assailants were Lord Grenville, who had been foreign secretary under Pitt, and the whigs who had joined Pitt's ministry in 1794, among whom Lords Spencer and Fitzwilliam and above all Windham call for special notice. Windham's powerful and comprehensive speech contained more than one shrewd forecast of the future. For once, Pitt and Fox supported the same measure, and Pitt, dwelling on security as our grand object in the war, specially deprecated any attempt on the part of Great Britain "to settle the affairs of the continent". Fox, in advocating peace, fiercely denounced the war against the French republic, and gloated over the discomfiture of the Bourbons.4 It was admitted on all sides that France was stronger than ever in a military and political sense. She had already made treaties with Austria, Naples, Spain, and Portugal; other treaties with Russia and Turkey were on the point of being signed; while the still more important concordat with the pope was already ratified. On the other hand, Great Britain had largely increased her colonial possessions, and the chief question now discussed was whether she would be the weaker for abandoning some of these recent conquests. The general feeling of the nation was fitly expressed by Sheridan in the phrase: "This is a peace which all men are glad of, but no man can be proud of". Malmesbury, the negotiator of Lille, was absent from the debates; but he has recorded in his diary his disapproval both of the peace and of the violent opposition to it The king told Malmesbury on November 26 that he considered it an experimental peace, but unavoidable.5
DEBATES ON TREATY OF AMIENS.
The debates on the definitive treaty of Amiens took place on May 13 and 14, 1802, and though vigorously sustained, were to some extent a repetition of those on the preliminaries of peace. The opposition to it was headed by Grenville in the lords and in the commons by Windham, who compared it unfavourably with the preliminaries; and the stipulations with respect to Malta were justly criticised as one of its weakest points. Strange to say, Pitt took no effective part in the discussion, which ended in overwhelming majorities for the government. As in the previous session, domestic affairs, except in their bearing on foreign policy, received comparatively little attention from parliament. The income tax was repealed, almost in silence, as the first fruits of peace, and Addington, as chancellor of the exchequer, delivered an emphatic eulogy on the sinking fund by means of which he calculated that in forty-five years the national debt, then amounting to £500,000,000, might be entirely paid off. The house of commons showed no want of economical zeal in scrutinising the claims of the king on the civil list, and those of the Prince of Wales on the revenues of the duchy of Cornwall. Nor did it neglect such abuses as the non-residence of the parochial clergy, and the cruel practice of bull-baiting, though it rejected a bill for the suppression of this practice, after a characteristic apology for it from Windham, in which he dwelt upon its superiority to horse-racing. In this session, too, a grant of £10,000 was voted to Jenner for his recent invention of vaccination. In supporting it, Wilberforce stated that the victims of small-pox, in London alone, numbered 4,000 annually.
The parliament, which had now lasted six years, was dissolved by the king in person on June 28, and a general election was held during the month of July. The new house of commons did not differ materially from the old, and even in Ireland the recent national opposition to the union did not lead to the unseating of a single member who had voted for it.6 Meanwhile the ministry was strengthened by the admission to office of Lord Castlereagh, already distinguished for his share in the negotiations precedent to the union with Ireland. On July 6 he was appointed president of the board of control in succession to Dartmouth, and was admitted to a seat in the cabinet in October. The new parliament did not meet till November 16. During the interval members of both houses, with vast numbers of their countrymen, flocked to Paris, which had been almost closed to English travellers since the early days of the revolution. Fox was presented to Napoleon, as Bonaparte, since the decree which made him consul for life, preferred to be styled. Napoleon conceived a great admiration for him, and afterwards persuaded himself that, had Fox survived, the friendly relations of England and France would not have been permanently interrupted. On the very day on which parliament assembled, a conspiracy was discovered, which, however insane it may now appear, attracted much attention at the time. A certain Colonel Despard with thirty-six followers, mainly labourers, had plotted to kill the king and seize all the government-buildings, with a view to the establishment of what he called the "constitutional independence of Ireland and Great Britain" and the "equalisation of all civic rights". The conspiracy had no wide ramifications, and the arrest of its leader and his companions brought it to an immediate end. Despard was found guilty of high treason and was executed on February 21, 1803.
When parliament met, the king's speech referred ominously to fresh disturbances in the balance of power on the continent; and votes were passed for large additions to the army and navy, in spite of Fox's declaration that he saw no reason why Napoleon, satisfied with military glory, should not henceforth devote himself to internal improvements in France. Nelson, on the contrary, speaking in the house of lords, while he professed himself a man of peace, insisted on the danger arising from "a restless and unjust ambition on the part of our neighbours," and Sheridan delivered a vigorous speech in a like spirit. On the whole, in January, 1803, the prospects of assured peace and prosperity were much gloomier than they had been in January, 1802, before the treaty of Amiens. The funds were going down, the bank restriction act was renewed, and Despard's conspiracy still agitated the public mind. In the month of February a strong anti-Gallican sentiment was roused by Mackintosh's powerful defence of the royalist Jean Peltier, accused and ultimately convicted of a gross libel on the first consul. On March 8 came the royal message calling out the militia, which heralded the rupture of the peace.
The renewal of the war, fraught with so much glory and misery to both nations, can have taken neither by surprise. The ink was scarcely dry on the treaty of Amiens when fresh causes of discord sprung up between France and Great Britain. More than one of these, indeed, had arisen between the signature of the preliminary convention and the actual conclusion of peace. During the negotiations, the first consul had, as we have seen, never ceased to protest against the violent attacks upon himself in the English press, while Cornwallis persistently
Cornwallis,
In a letter to Charles Carey, dated October 22, Fox went the length of expressing extreme pleasure in the triumph of the French government over the English (
Malmesbury,
Lecky,
