The Liberal Tradition

2. OPPOSITION TO THE WAR AGAINST REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE

7. CHARLES JAMES FOX: Speech in the House of Commons, 1 February 1793

None of the professed causes were grounds for going to war. What, then, remained but the internal government of France, always disavowed, but ever kept in mind, and constantly mentioned? . . . Such would be the real cause of the war, if war we were to have—a war which he trusted he should soon see as generally execrated as it was now thought to be popular. He knew that for this wish he should be represented as holding up the internal government of France as an object for imitation. He thought the present state of government in France anything rather than an object of imitation; but he maintained as a principle inviolable that the government of every independent state was to be settled by those who were to live under it, and not by foreign force. The conduct of the French in the Netherlands was the same with such a war as he was now deprecating, and might be an omen of its success. It was a war of pikes and bayonets against opinions; it was the tyranny of giving liberty by compulsion; it was an attempt to introduce a system among a people by force, which the more it was forced upon them the more they abhorred. . . .

To those who proposed repelling opinions by force, the example of the French in the Netherlands might teach the impotence of power to repel or to introduce. But how was a war to operate in keeping opinions supposed dangerous out of this country? It was not surely meant to beat the French out of their own opinions; and opinions were not like commodities, the importation of which from France war would prevent.

Charles James Fox, Speeches during the French Revolution, pp. 67-70.

8. CHARLES JAMES FOX: Speech in the House of Commons, 17 April 1794

Certainly, he thought the war on our part to be both just and necessary, provided it was impossible to obtain, in the first instance, satisfaction and security by negotiation; but he could never agree that we should continue the war for the purpose of imposing a form of government on France. He certainly thought that, even though the government of France was an unjust or wicked government, it was in direct contradiction of the first principles of an independent state, and of the sovereignty of nations, to interfere with its formation. If a people, in the formation of their government, have been ill-advised, if they have fallen into error, if they have acted iniquitously and unjustly towards each other, God was their only judge; it was not the province of other nations to chastise their folly, or punish their wickedness, by choosing who should rule over them, or in what manner and form they should be governed.

Ibid. p. 156.

9. CHARLES JAMES FOX: Speech in the House of Commons, 3 February 1800

One campaign is successful to you—another to them; and in this way, animated by the vindictive passions of revenge, hatred, and rancour, which are infinitely more flagitious even than those of ambition and the thirst of power, you may go on for ever; as, with such black incentives, I see no end to human misery. And all this without an intelligible motive—all this because you may gain a better peace a year or two hence! So that we are called upon to go on merely as a speculation—we must keep Bonaparte for some time longer at war, as a state of probation. Gracious God, Sir! Is war a state of probation? Is peace a rash system? Is it dangerous for nations to live in amity with each other? Is your vigilance, your policy, your common powers of observation, to be extinguished by putting an end to the horrors of war? Cannot this state of probation be as well undergone without adding to the catalogue of human sufferings? ‘But we must pause!’ . . .

If a man were present now at a field of slaughter, and were to inquire for what they were fighting: ‘Fighting!’ would be the answer; ‘they are not fighting, they are pausing.’ ‘Why is that man expiring? Why is that other writhing with agony? What means this implacable fury?’ The answer must be: ‘You are quite wrong, Sir, you deceive yourself.—They are not fighting.—Do not disturb them—they are merely pausing!—This man is not expiring with agony—that man is not dead—he is only pausing! Lord help you, Sir! they are not angry with one another; they have now no cause of quarrel—but their country thinks that there should be a pause. All that you see, Sir, is nothing like fighting—there is no harm, nor cruelty, nor bloodshed in it whatever—it is nothing more than a political pause!—it is merely to try an experiment—to see whether Bonaparte will not behave himself better than heretofore; and in the meantime we have agreed to a pause, in pure friendship!’ And is this the way, Sir, that you are to show yourselves the advocates of order? . . .

Sir, I have done. I have told you my opinion. I think you ought to have given a civil, clear, and explicit answer to the overture which was fairly and handsomely made you. If you were desirous that the negotiation should have included all your allies, as the means of bringing about a general peace, you should have told Bonaparte so; but I believe you were afraid of his agreeing to the proposal. You took that method before. ‘Ay, but,’ you say, ‘the people were anxious for peace in 1797.’ I say they are friends to peace now; and I am confident that you will one day own it. Believe me, they are friends to peace; although, by the laws which you have made, restraining the expression of the sense of the people, public opinion cannot now be heard as loudly and unequivocally as heretofore. But I will not go into the internal state of this country. It is too afflicting to the heart to see the strides which have been made, by means of, and under the miserable pretext of this war, against liberty of every kind, both of speech and of writing; and to observe in another kingdom the rapid approaches to that military despotism which we affect to make an argument against peace. I know, Sir, that public opinion, if it could be collected, would be for peace, as much now as in 1797, and I know that it is only by public opinion—not by the inclination of their minds—that ministers will be brought, if ever, to give us peace.

Ibid. pp. 413-15.