Page:Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy, 1738-1914 - ed. Jones - 1914.djvu/56

 M. Chauvelin? He was reduced to the situation of a private individual, and was required to quit the kingdom, under the provisions of the Alien Act, which, for the purpose of securing domestic tranquillity, had recently invested His Majesty with the power of removing out of this kingdom all foreigners suspected of revolutionary principles. Is it contended that he was, then, less liable to the provisions of that Act than any other individual foreigner, whose conduct afforded to Government just ground of objection or suspicion? Did his conduct and connexions here afford no such ground? or will it be pretended that the bare act of refusing to receive fresh credentials from an infant republic, not then acknowledged by any one Power of Europe, and in the very act of heaping upon us injuries and insults, was of itself the cause of war? So far from it, that even the very nations of Europe, whose wisdom and moderation have been repeatedly extolled for maintaining neutrality, and preserving friendship, with the French Republic, remained for years subsequent to this period without receiving from it any accredited Minister, or doing any one act to acknowledge its political existence. In answer to a representation from the belligerent Powers, in December, 1793, Count Bernstorff, the Minister of Denmark, officially declared that 'It was well known that the National Convention had appointed M. Grouville Minister-Plenipotentiary at Denmark, but that it was also well known that he had neither been received nor acknowledged in that quality'. And as late as February, 1796, when the same Minister was at length, for the first time, received in his official capacity, Count Bernstorff, in a public note,