BOOK 1787. BOOK XXIII. State of Europe. Commotions in Holland. Prussian Army enters Holland. England arms in Support of Prussia. Unexpected Acquiescence of France. Alliance between England, Prussia, and Holland. Unpopular Naval Promotion-Resignation of Lord Howe. Resignation of the Earl of Mansfield. India Declaratory Act. Honorable Testimony in Behalf of Mr. Francis. Proceedings against Sir Elijah Impey. Bill for regulating the African Slave Trade. Alarming Illness of the King. Proceedings relative to the Regency. Perfect Recovery of the King. Wise Conduct of the Irish Parliament respecting the Regency. Shop Tar repealed. Hawkers' and Pedlars' Act explained and amended. Mr. Beaufoy's second Motion for a Repeal of the Test. Lord Stanhope's Motion for repealing various Penal Statutes. Mr. Wilberforce's Mction respecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Trial of Mr. Hastings resumed-Indiscretion of Mr. Burke. Mr. Addington chosen Speaker. Tobacco Excise Bill. State of Europe. Political Embarrassments of France. States General convened at Versailles-Assumes the Appellation of National Assembly. Publishes a Declaration of the Rights of Man. Congratulatory Address of the Revolution Society. French Revolution reprobated by Mr. Burke and the King's FriendsVindicated by Mr. Fox and the Friends of the People. Mr. Fox's Motion for a Repeal of the Test. Negatived by a prodigious Majority, with remarkable attendant Circumstances. Mr. Flood's Motion for a Reform in the British Parliament. Trial of Mr. Hastings-Its disgraceful Procrastination. Wise Administration of Lord Cornwallis in India. If the embarrassments of Great Britain at the return of peace, in consequence of the alarming State of addition of debt contracted during the war, were Europe. XXIII. 1787. very great, those of France, it must be confessed,.BOOK were of still greater magnitude. The finances of France during the war had been committed to the management of M. Necker, a Genevan Protestant, a man of strict probity, of genuine philanthropy, of extensive knowledge in the detail of affairs, but who, nevertheless, appears to have been destitute of those clear and comprehensive views which dis-, tinguish the great and enlightened statesman; and his vanity, ostentation, and egotism, formed a great deduction from the aggregate of his virtues. This celebrated financier conceived the romantic and impracticable plan of raising the loans necessary for the service of the war upon the credit of funds to be created by œconomical savings in the public expenditure. The revenue of France was indeed immense, not perhaps falling short in the gross receipt of twenty-five millions sterling; but the civil, military, and naval establishments of that vast kingdom were also upon a proportionable scale and if it had been possible, which it certainly was not, by any efforts within the compass of M. Necker's ability, effectually to have counteracted that spirit of extravagance and corruption which had so long pervaded all the departments of government in France, and to have substituted in their stead the order and frugality of his native republic, still an enormous deficiency must ultimately have resulted from a scheme so XXIII. 1787. BOOK visionary and chimerical as that of carrying on a war without taxes. At the æra of the peace this was found to be actually the case; and M. Necker, who had enraged one party by his attempts, and disappointed the other by his failures, was compelled to resign to M. de Calonne, a man of great talents, but who, immersed in dissipation and intrigue, and neither able nor solicitous to reform the abuses of the government, proposed to supply the present grand deficiency in the revenue in the usual way, by new and heavy imposts. Derangement of the French finances. ror. The excessive and notorious derangement of the French finances, and the consequent indisposition of the court of Versailles to involve itself in hostilities with any of the leading powers of Europe, probably emboldened the restless and ambiAmbitious tious spirit of the emperor, who also, doubtless, projects of the empe- relied on the influence of the queen his sister in the cabinet of France, to venture upon measures which the most powerful of his predecessors would have regarded as harsh and presumptuous. Taking advantage of the animosity subsisting between the maritime powers, he had during the late war formally cancelled the Barrier Treaty originally concluded between the guarantee of England, and had dismissed the Dutch garrisons from the frontier towns of the Low Countries. In the vain expectation of permanent amity with France, he had even dismantled the greater part of those impor XXIII. tant fortresses, leaving by this means the country BOOK wholly exposed, in case of a future rupture, to the inroads of that formidable power. Elated with the facility with which he had accomplished this object, he, in the autumn of the year 1783, suddenly demanded of the States General the appointment of a commission to meet at Brussels, for the accurate ascertainment of the boundaries of the Dutch and Austrian Netherlands. While this extraordinary demand was under discussion, a detachment of the Austrian troops entered the Dutch territory, and seized upon two small forts in the neighbourhood of Sluys; and a new demand was made of the free navigation of the Scheld beyond Fort Lillo, as far as the land of Saftingen. Conferences being at length agreed upon to be held at Brussels, in order to the final settlement of these claims, the plenipotentiaries of the emperor delivered in to those of the States General, May 1784, the entire demands of his im perial majesty, purporting the enlargement of his boundaries on the side of Breda and Bois-le-Duc; the demolition of the forts Kruickshank and Frederic-Henry; the inland navigation of the Scheld as far as Saftingen; the requisition of various sums of money pretended to have been due to the emperor since the beginning of the present century; and the CESSION of the CITY of MAESTRICHT, and 1787. BOOK the contiguous district of Outre Meuse, disjoined from the general mass of the Dutch possessions. XXIII. 1787. Political commo tions in The States, astonished and alarmed at these novel claims, were urgent to obtain the mediation Holland. of the court of Versailles. The situation of Holland was indeed at this period such as to make all opposition apparently fruitless. The weight which she had been accustomed to derive from her intimate connection and alliance with England was no more; and, in consequence of a strange fatality, she was now reduced to the humiliating necessity of resorting for protection to that very power by whom her liberties had been so frequently menaced, and at one time so nearly subverted. Since the termination of the war with England she had been distracted with internal commotions. A great majority of the Dutch nation accused with vehemence the prince of Orange of gross and flagrant partiality to England during the war. It was affirmed that he had betrayed his country, in leaving her intentionally destitute of the means of defence; and had constantly and systematically counteracted the exertions of those who were earnestly desirous to have carried on the war with vigor and effect. The person by whose counsels the prince of Orange was supposed to be chiefly influenced-prince Louis of Brunswick, guardian to the stadtholder during his minority, and generalissimo of the Dutch forceswas even said to be a pensioner of England; and |