* It was stipulated in the treaty of commerce between France and England.
In all this Paine recognized the hand of Burke. While his adherents in England, as we have seen, were finding in Pitt a successor to Satan, there is a notable absence from Paine's writings and letters of any such animosity towards that Minister. He concluded at Paris (1786) that the sending away an ambassador by either party, should be taken as an act of hostility by the other party. The declaration of war (February, 1793) by the Convention... was made in exact conformity to this article in the treaty; for it was not a declaration of war against England, but a declaration that the French republic is in war with England; the first act of hostility having been committed by England. The declaration was made on Chauvelin's return to France, and in consequence of it. "Paine's "Address to the People of France" (1797). The words of the declaration of war, following the list of injuries, are: "La Convention Nationale déclaré, au nom de la nation Française, qu'attendu les actes multipliés et d'agressions ci-dessus mentionnés, la république Française est en guerre avec le roi d'Angleterre." The solemn protest of Lords Lauderdale, Lansdowne, and Derby, February 1st, against the address in answer to the royal message, before France had spoken, regards that address as a demonstration of universal war. The facts and the situation are carefully set forth by Louis Blanc, "Histoire de la Révolution," tome viii., p. 93 seq. regarded Pitt as a victim. "The father of Pitt," he once wrote, "when a member of the House of Commons, exclaiming one day, during a former war, against the enormous and ruinous expense of German connections, as the offspring of the Hanover succession, and borrowing a metaphor from the story of Prometheus, cried out: 'Thus, like Prometheus, is Britain chained to the barren rock of Hanover, whilst the imperial eagle preys upon her vitals.'" It is probable that on the intimations from Pitt, at the close of 1792, of his desire for private consultations with friendly Frenchmen, Paine entered into the honorable though unauthorized conspiracy for peace which was terminated by the expulsion of Chauvelin. In the light of later events, and the desertion of Dumouriez, these overtures of Pitt made through Talleyrand (then in London) were regarded by the French leaders, and are still regarded by French writers, as treacherous. But no sufficient reason is given for doubting Pitt's good faith in that matter. Writing to the President (Washington), December 28, 1792, the American Minister, Gouverneur Morris, states the British proposal to be: