Note 26 — LETTER I. ON THE OVERTURES OF PEACE.
Reading edition
Official Note, extracted from the Journal of the Defenders of the Country.
"EXECUTIVE DIRECTORY.
"Different journals have advanced that an English plenipotentiary had reached Paris, and had presented himself to the Executive Directory, but that, his propositions not having appeared satisfactory, he had received orders instantly to quit France.
"All these assertions are equally false.
"The notices given in the English papers of a minister having been sent to Paris, there to treat of peace, bring to recollection the overtures of Mr. Wickham to the ambassador of the Republic at Basle, and the rumors circulated relative to the mission of Mr. Hammond to the Court of Prussia. The insignificance, or rather the subtle duplicity, the PUNIC style of Mr. Wickham's note, is not forgotten. According to the partisans of the English ministry, it was to Paris that Mr. Hammond was to come to speak for peace. When his destination became public, and it was known that he went to Prussia, the same writer repeated that it was to accelerate a peace, and not withstanding the object, now well known, of this negotiation was to engage Prussia to break her treaties with the Republic, and to return into the coalition. The Court of Berlin, faithful to its engagements, repulsed these perfidious propositions. But in converting this intrigue into a mission for peace, the English ministry joined to the hope of giving a new enemy to France that of justifying the continuance of the war in the eyes of the English nation, and of throwing all the odium of it on the French, government. Such was also the aim of Mr. Wickham's note. Such is still, that of the notices given at this time in the English papers.
This aim will appear evident, if we reflect how difficult it is that the ambitious government of England should sincerely wish for a, peace that would snatch from it its maritime preponderancy, would reëstablish the freedom of the seas, would give a new impulse to the Spanish, Dutch, and French marines, and would carry to the highest degree of prosperity the industry and commerce of those nations in, which it has always found rivals, and which it has considered as enemies of its commerce, when they were tired of being its dupes.
"But there will no longer he any credit given to the pacific intentions of the English ministry when it is known that its gold and its intrigues, its open practices and its insinuations, besiege more than ever the Cabinet of Vienna, and are one of the principal obstacles to the negotiation which, that Cabinet would of itself be induced to enter on for peace.
"They will no longer be credited, finally, when the moment of the rumor of these overtures being circulated is considered. The English nation supports impatiently the continuance of the war; a reply must be made to its complaints, its reproaches: the Parliament is about to reopen, its sittings; the mouths of the orators who will declaim against the war must be shut, the demand of new taxes must he justified; and to obtain these results, it is necessary to be enabled to advance, that the French government refuses every reasonable proposition of peace."