Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 2).djvu/441

Rh arms! All these he was afraid must confess there was a Government; and he greatly feared it would not be long before the Prince of Saxe-Coburg and the Duke of York, would allow that there was a Government in France. It did not require much of the spirit of divination to pronounce what would be the consequences of involving the country in a war against opinions; the alleged object of which was to repel unprovoked aggressions, but the real one to prescribe laws to an independent country." In order to place these sentiments on record, Lord Lansdowne towards the commencement of 1794 brought forward a specific motion for peace with France, but though he was powerfully supported by the Duke of Grafton, only thirteen Peers recorded their opinion in favour of it. The days of the American war were returned and the chief actors were the same.

The armies on the Rhine and in the Low Countries soon found out to their cost the force of the French Government, which the cumbrous inefficiency of the Duke of York and Wurmser, of Mollendorf and Clarfayt, rendered doubly conspicuous. The want of energy of the allied commanders on the field of battle and the treachery of the continental statesmen in the council chamber were however compensated by the vigour with which the Ministers of the Crown and the Judges of the land exerted themselves to suppress the liberties which a century before had with difficulty been wrung from the Stuart kings. In Scotland a reign of terror was proclaimed; ancient offences and barbarous punishments were unearthed by the perverse ingenuity of the Lord Justice Clerk ; and prisoners under sentence of transportation for offences which in England would have amounted only to a misdemeanour, were charitably reminded that they might have been condemned to death by the gallows or by exposure to wild beasts. In England the doctrine of was invented, and it was only through the eloquence of Erskine and the independence of an English jury, that this danger-