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northern powers, he said: ‘We have no need of
them: they can know nothing about our affairs, since it is so hard for us to understand them ourselves; there is need of but three persons to make peace, myself, the
Count de Vergennes, and you.’
‘I shall be as pacific in negotiating as I shall be active for war, if war must be continued,’ he added, on
the fourteenth.
Rayneval replied: ‘
Count de Vergennes will, without ceasing, preach justice and moderation.
It is his own code, and it is that of the king.’
On the fifteenth, they both came up to Lon-
don, where, on the sixteenth,
Rayneval met
Lord Grantham. Nothing could be more decided than his refusal to treat about
Gibraltar.
On the seventeenth,
in bidding farewell to
Rayneval,
Shelburne said, in the most serious tone and the most courteous manner: ‘have been deeply touched by everything you have said to me about the character of the king of
France, his principles of justice and moderation, his love of peace.
I wish, not only to re-establish peace between the two nations and the two sovereigns, but to bring them to a cordiality which will constitute their reciprocal happiness.
Not only are they not natural enemies, as men have thought till now; but they have interests which ought to bring them nearer together.
We have each lost consideration in our furious desire to do each other harm.
Let us change principles that are so erroneous.
Let us reunite, and we shall stop all revolutions in
Europe.’
By revolutions he meant the division of
Poland, the encroachments on
Turkey, and the attempt of the court of Vienna to bring
Italy under its control by seizing the fine harbors of
Dalmatia.