Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 2).djvu/450

414 The financial difficulties of 1797, the mutinies at the Nore and Spithead, the fresh victories of Bonaparte, the energy with which the followers of Fox in Parliament, though small in numbers, continued to protest against the longer continuance of the war, caused a renewal of the negotiations in the following year. Unfortunately the revolution of the 4th September, which overthrew the peace party in the French Directory, put an untimely end to the discussions. The commissioners sent by the victorious triumviri, Barras, Reubell, and Lepaux, demanded that Great Britain should surrender all her colonial conquests, whether made from France or her allies, and intimated to Lord Malmesbury, in the most insolent terms, that he must quit Lille within twenty-four hours, if he would not accept these conditions. The negotiations were accordingly broken off, and England was left to contend alone; for Austria, tempted by comparatively favourable terms, and the offer of Venice, had early in the year signed a separate treaty of peace with France at Campo Formio, to which Russia, determined as she was to retire at all hazards from the contest, soon formally acceded.

A great revulsion of feeling followed the rupture of the negotiations. It was felt that however different opinions might have been as to the original justice of the war, it was now being continued quite as much owing to the extreme demands of France as of England. Added to this the whole efforts of the enemy were now directed against England alone. An invasion was threatened, and the national spirit rose high before the common danger. The right line of conduct for the Opposition to pursue became more than ever difficult. Fox, after making an eloquent speech in favour of Reform, seceded with many or his immediate followers from the House of Commons: a course which Lord Lansdowne did not at the time approve, though he ultimately agreed to it.

One unfortunate result of the outbreak of national feeling was to encourage a renewal of the prosecutions