BRISSOT, Jacques Pierre.

Report of the committee of general defence on the dispositions of the British government towards France, and on the measures to be taken. Addressed to the National Convention of France, in the sitting of January 12, 1793, the second year of the Republic. Also the second report on a declaration of a war with England: . . . Translated from the copy published by order of the National Assembly. To which is added, the protests entered upon the Journals of the Lords House of Parliament against a war with France; by the marquis of Lansdown, earl of Lauderdale and earl of Derby.

London, printed for James Ridgway, 1793. 8vo (230 x 145 mm), pp. [iv], 35, [1, blank]; stitched anduntrimmed as issued; a little soiled. First edition. A translation of Brissot’s report giving the reasons for war with England outlined at the National Convention’s sitting on 12 January 1793, as well as the subsequent declaration of war on 1 February. Brissot, a leading Girondist, directed the Legislative Assembly’s foreign policy throughout this time. In England, most of the opposition blamed Pitt’s government for France’s declaration of war, including the three Whigs who signed the protest included at the end of this tract. William Petty, second earl of Shelburne, first marquess of Lansdowne, and prime minister (1782–3), had ‘close contacts with French writers and statesmen, among them Mirabeau and Talleyrand . . . and he was convinced that the French sought only a liberal constitution’ (Oxford DNB). In August 1792, James Maitland, earl of Lauderdale had travelled to Paris, ‘leaving for Calais during the September massacres and returning in December. A founder member of the Society of the Friends of the People at home, he styled himself Citizen, affected Jacobin costume, and befriended the revolutionary Brissot. Back in the Lords, he twice intemperately attacked the Aliens Bill and on 1 February 1793 attributed French hostilities and atrocities to counter-revolutionary pressure. He subsequently opposed the war with France and the British government’s repression of civil liberties’ (Oxford DNB). Edward Smith Stanley, twelfth earl Derby, was a Foxite who also considered England’s involvement in the war against France as despotic.

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