The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V | Page 5

which conduct he wilfully gave up (in my opinion) all pretensions to be considered as of that party, and much more to be considered as the leader and mouth of it in the House of Commons. This could not give much encouragement to those who had been separated from Mr. Fox, on account of his conduct on the first proclamation, to rejoin that party.
5. Not having consulted any of the Duke of Portland's party in the House of Commons,--and not having consulted them, because he had reason to know that the course he had resolved to pursue would be highly disagreeable to them,--he represented the alarm, which was a second time given and taken, in still more invidious colors than those in which he painted the alarms of the former year. He described those alarms in this manner, although the cause of them was then grown far less equivocal and far more urgent. He even went so far as to treat the supposition of the growth of a Jacobin spirit in England as a libel on the nation. As to the danger from abroad, on the first day of the session he said little or nothing upon the subject. He contented himself with defending the ruling factions in France, and with accusing the public councils of this kingdom of every sort of evil design on the liberties of the people,--declaring distinctly, strongly, and precisely, that the whole danger of the nation was from the growth of the power of the crown. The policy of this declaration was obvious. It was in subservience to the general plan of disabling us from taking any steps against France. To counteract the alarm given by the progress of Jacobin arms and principles, he endeavored to excite an opposite alarm concerning the growth of the power of the crown. If that alarm should prevail, he knew that the nation never would be brought by arms to oppose the growth of the Jacobin empire: because it is obvious that war does, in its very nature, necessitate the Commons considerably to strengthen the hands of government; and if that strength should itself be the object of terror, we could have no war.
6. In the extraordinary and violent speeches of that day, he attributed all the evils which the public had suffered to the proclamation of the preceding summer; though he spoke in presence of the Duke of Portland's own son, the Marquis of Tichfield, who had seconded the address on that proclamation, and in presence of the Duke of Portland's brother, Lord Edward Bentinck, and several others of his best friends and nearest relations.
7. On that day, that is, on the 13th of December, 1792, he proposed an amendment to the address, which stands on the journals of the House, and which is, perhaps, the most extraordinary record which ever did stand upon them. To introduce this amendment, he not only struck out the part of the proposed address which alluded to insurrections, upon the ground of the objections which he took to the legality of calling together Parliament, (objections which I must ever think litigious and sophistical,) but he likewise struck out that part which related to the cabals and conspiracies of the French faction in England, although their practices and correspondences were of public notoriety. Mr. Cooper and Mr. Watt had been deputed from Manchester to the Jacobins. These ambassadors were received by them as British representatives. Other deputations of English had been received at the bar of the National Assembly. They had gone the length of giving supplies to the Jacobin armies; and they, in return, had received promises of military assistance to forward their designs in England. A regular correspondence for fraternizing the two nations had also been carried on by societies in London with a great number of the Jacobin societies in France. This correspondence had also for its object the pretended improvement of the British Constitution. What is the most remarkable, and by much the more mischievous part of his proceedings that day, Mr. Fox likewise struck out everything in the address which _related to the tokens of ambition given by France, her aggressions upon our allies, and the sudden and dangerous growth of her power upon every side_; and instead of all those weighty, and, at that time, necessary matters, by which the House of Commons was (in a crisis such as perhaps Europe never stood) to give assurances to our allies, strength to our government, and a check to the common enemy of Europe, he substituted nothing but a criminal charge on the conduct of the British government for calling Parliament together, and an engagement to inquire into that conduct.
8. If it had pleased God to suffer him to succeed in this his project for the amendment to the