There he made one of his finest flights of oratory. None of his speeches excels it in beauty of diction and matchless energy of thought. Most forcible was the passage in which he derided the ministerial maxim that the canon of English laws and liberties was complete; that we might thenceforth stand still, and call upon a wondering world to admire it as a model of human perfection. Even more biting were his taunts at Ministers for seeking to stamp out the discontent which their injustice and violence had created.
You have gone upon the principles of slavery in all your proceedings; you neglect in your conduct the foundation of all legitimate government, the rights of the people; and, setting up this bugbear, you spread a panic for the very purpose of sanctifying this infringement, while again the very infringement engenders the evil which you dread. One extreme naturally leads to another. Those who dread republicanism fly for shelter to the Crown. Those who desire Reform and are calumniated are driven by despair to republicanism. And this is the evil that I dread. These are the extremes into which these violent agitations hurry the people, to the decrease of that middle order of men who shudder as much at republicanism on the one hand as they do at despotism on the other.[142]
He then taunted Ministers with abandoning Poland and not opposing the coalition of Austria and Prussia, and asserted that the Cabinet refused to negotiate with France because she was a Republic, and her Ministers had not been anointed with the holy oil of Rheims. The weakest part of the speech was that which dealt with the existing crisis. For of what use was it to point out where Ministers had gone astray months and years before, if he did not now mark out for them a practicable course? In truth, though the prince of debaters, Fox lacked self-restraint, balance of judgement, and practical sagacity. The sole important issue was the encouraging of the peace party at Paris, with a view to the revocation of the aggressive decrees of the Convention. In private, Fox had admitted that they were wholly indefensible; and yet, in order to snatch an oratorical triumph, he fired off a diatribe which could not but stiffen the necks of the French Jacobins. At such a crisis the true statesman merges the partisan in the patriot and says not a word to weaken his own Government and hearten its opponents. To this height of self-denial Fox rarely rose; and the judgement alike of his fellows and of posterity has pronounced this speech a masterpiece of partisan invective and of political fatuity.