Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/112

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92
THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONS.

Calne, one Morris temporarily succeeding to it; for in February 1792 Morris made way for Vaughan. Jeremy Bentham, who fancied he had been promised the seat, wrote an angry letter of sixty pages to Lansdowne, but was mollified by his reply.[1] Between July 1792 and June 1793, Vaughan wrote a series of unsigned letters in the Morning Chronicle on the partition of Poland and the threatened dismemberment of France. (These were reprinted as a pamphlet in 1795.) In February 1794 Vaughan made a speech advocating precautions against negro risings in the West Indies, on account of the emancipation of slaves in the French colonies. On the 8th May following, in common with Lord Lauderdale, Sheridan, Major Maitland, and William Smith, he was summoned to a conference with the Cabinet at the Home Office, Vaughan remaining till six in the evening. He was doubtless questioned respecting a letter from him found on Wm. Stone, seemingly addressed to or intended for J. H. Stone, and dissuading the French from an invasion of England. It dwelt on the verdicts of juries in state trials, the readiness to enlist in the army, the little opposition offered to impressment for the navy, the approval of the war by Parliament, and the temper of the nation, as proofs of the expediency of France making peace on fair terms.

  1. lord E. Fitzmaurice's "Life of Shelburne."