Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr Pope | Page 9

found, if on
our part there had been a real intention of concluding. But there was no
such intention, and the plan of those who meant to prolong the war was
established among the Allies as the plan which ought to be followed
whenever a peace came to be treated. The Allies imagined that they had
a right to obtain at least everything which had been demanded for them
respectively, and it was visible that nothing less would content them.
These considerations set the vastness of the undertaking in a sufficient
light.
The importance of succeeding in the work of the peace was equally
great to Europe, to our country, to our party, to our persons, to the
present age, and to future generations. But I need not take pains to
prove what no man will deny. The means employed to bring it about
were in no degree proportionable. A few men, some of whom had
never been concerned in business of this kind before, and most of
whom put their hands for a long time to it faintly and timorously, were
the instruments of it. The Minister who was at their head showed
himself every day incapable of that attention, that method, that
comprehension of different matters, which the first post in such a

Government as ours requires in quiet times. He was the first spring of
all our motion by his credit with the Queen, and his concurrence was
necessary to everything we did by his rank in the State, and yet this
man seemed to be sometimes asleep and sometimes at play. He
neglected the thread of business, which was carried on for this reason
with less dispatch and less advantage in the proper channels, and he
kept none in his own hands. He negotiated, indeed, by fits and starts, by
little tools and indirect ways, and thus his activity became as hurtful as
his indolence, of which I could produce some remarkable instances. No
good effect could flow from such a conduct. In a word, when this great
affair was once engaged, the zeal of particular men in their several
provinces drove it forward, though they were not backed by the
concurrent force of the whole Administration, nor had the common
helps of advice till it was too late, till the very end of the negotiations;
even in matters, such as that of commerce, which they could not be
supposed to understand. That this is a true account of the means used to
arrive at the peace, and a true character of that Administration in
general, I believe the whole Cabinet Council of that time will bear me
witness. Sure I am that most of them have joined with me in lamenting
this state of things whilst it subsisted, and all those who were employed
as Ministers in the several parts of the treaty felt sufficiently the
difficulties which this strange management often reduced them to. I am
confident they have not forgotten them.
If the means employed to bring the peace about were feeble, and in one
respect contemptible, those employed to break the negotiation were
strong and formidable. As soon as the first suspicion of a treaty's being
on foot crept abroad in the world the whole alliance united with a
powerful party in the nation to obstruct it. From that hour to the
moment the Congress of Utrecht finished, no one measure possible to
be taken was omitted to traverse every advance that was made in this
work, to intimidate, to allure, to embarrass every person concerned in it.
This was done without any regard either to decency or good policy, and
from hence it soon followed that passion and humour mingled
themselves on each side. A great part of what we did for the peace, and
of what others did against it, can be accounted for on no other principle.
The Allies were broken among themselves before they began to treat
with the common enemy. The matter did not mend in the course of the

treaty, and France and Spain, but especially the former, profited of this
disunion.
Whoever makes the comparison, which I have touched upon, will see
the true reasons which rendered the peace less answerable to the
success of the war than it might and than it ought to have been.
Judgment has been passed in this case as the different passions or
interests of men have inspired them. But the real cause lay in the
constitution of our Ministry, and much more in the obstinate opposition
which we met with from the Whigs and from the Allies. However, sure
it is that the defects of the peace did not occasion the desertions from
the Tory party which happened about this time, nor those disorders in
the Court which immediately followed.