THREE:Next came the declaration of war by the King of Prussia, which Buonaparte styled a treachery; but, on the contrary, the King of Prussia had only preserved faith towards his oppressor and insulter too long. Not only all Prussia, but all Germany was on fire to throw off the detested yoke of the oppressor, and Frederick William would have been a traitor to his people and to common sense to have hesitated. Yet he proposed terms of a mutual settlement. To place himself in a position of independent treaty, he suddenly left Berlin on the 22nd of January, and made his way to Breslau, where he was out of the reach of French arms, and in certainty of the arrival, at no very distant date, of Russian ones. He invited, however, the French ambassador to follow him, and he there proposed an armistice, on the conditions that the French should evacuate Dantzic and all the other Prussian fortresses on the Oder, and retire behind the Elbe, on which the Czar had promised that he would stop the march of his army beyond the Vistula. But Buonaparte treated the proposition with contempt; he was determined to give up nothingto recover everything.
Ad has dicat ridens consetetur, eos eu option persius. Mollis cotidieque conclusionemque per id, ne nam alienum liberavisse.
THREE:
In mea similique vulputate, ea cum amet malorum dissentiunt. Qui deleniti aliquando cu, ullum soluta his an, id inani salutatus sit.
THREE:Before the close of April a great commercial crisis had taken place in England, and Ministers were compelled to make a new issue, by consent of Parliament, of five millions of Exchequer Bills, to assist merchants and manufacturers, under proper security. The sudden expansion of industry which was met by an undue increase of the paper currency rather than bullion, combined[417] with reckless banking, produced the crisis. It was calculated that out of the 350 provincial banks 100 failed. In the circumstances the issue of Exchange Bills was a most successful makeshift.Grey and Fox then made an equally brisk attack on the support of Turkey by Ministers. They greatly applauded the Czarina, and Fox affirmed that so far from Turkey soliciting our interference, it had objected to it. On the same day, in the Lords, Lord Fitzwilliam opened the same question. He contended that we had fitted out an expensive armament to prevent the conquest by Russia of Oczakoff, and yet had not done it, but had ended in accepting the very terms that the Czarina had offered in 1790. Ministers replied that, though we had not saved Oczakoff, we had prevented still more extensive attempts by Russia. Though the Opposition, in both cases, was defeated, the attack was renewed on the 27th of February, when the Earl Stanhopean enthusiastic worshipper of the French Revolutionrecommended, as the best means of preventing aggression by Continental monarchs, a close alliance on our part with France. Two days afterwards Mr. Whitbread introduced a string of resolutions in the Commons, condemning the interference of Ministers between Russia and Turkey, and the needless expenditure thus incurred, in fact, going over[390] much the same ground. A strenuous debate followed, in which Grey, Fox, Windham, Francis, Sheridan, and the whole Whig phalanx, took part. On this occasion, Mr. Jenkinson, afterwards Earl of Liverpool, first appeared, and made his maiden speech in defence of Ministers. He showed that the system of aggression had commenced with Russia, and menaced the profoundest dangers to Europe; that Britain had wisely made alliance with Prussia to stem the evil, and he utterly repudiated all notion of the moderation of the Czarina, whose ambition he asserted to be of the most unscrupulous kind.
Ad has dicat ridens consetetur, eos eu option persius. Mollis cotidieque conclusionemque per id, ne nam alienum liberavisse.
TWO:WILLIAM IV.
