Effective enough too, for the controversial needs of the moment,
was the argument that if France were known, as Ministers pretended,
to be insincere in soliciting peace, "Ministers would certainly treat
with her, since they would again secure the support of the British
people in the war, and expose the ambition of the enemy;" and that,
therefore, the probability was that the British Government knew
France to be sincere, and shrank from negotiation lest it should
expose their own desire to prosecute the war. [5] Most happy, again,
is his criticism of Lord Grenville's note, with its references
to the unprovoked aggression of France (in the matter of the opening of
the Scheldt, etc.) as the sole cause and origin of the war. "If this
were indeed true, in what ignorance must not Mr. Pitt and Mr. Windham
have kept the poor Duke of Portland, who declared in the House of Lords
that the cause of the war was the maintenance of the Christian
religion?"
To add literary excellence of the higher order to the peculiar
qualities which give force to the newspaper article is for a
journalist, of course, a "counsel of perfection;" but it remains to be
remarked that Coleridge did make this addition in a most conspicuous
manner.
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