“It may be said that the conditions are glorious for the French Republic: it must be confessed that they are; and there is not a Briton but who ought honestly to rejoice that such is the fact. The people of France resisted, as they ought to do, the whole combination of powers who would have imposed upon them a constitution contrary to their own will. Their's was the cause of liberty—the cause of mankind at large. They had every obstacle to oppose which imagination can suggest—but they have triumphed over such obstacles—their cause has been crowned with an everlasting triumph…We have not, I acknowledge, obtained the objects for which the War was undertaken—so much the better—I rejoice that we have not. I like the Peace the more on this very account.”

— Charles James Fox

Speech to his constituents at the Shakespeare Tavern, Westminster (10 October 1801) on peace with Napoleonic France, reported in The Times (12 October 1801), p. 2.
1800s

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Charles James Fox42

British Whig statesman 1749–1806

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Charles James Fox42

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