60 THE INFLUENCE OF GRENVILLE ON PITT’S FOREIGN POLICY. 
in his despatches upon the excessive character of the French demands 
and had forwarded those demands in such order as to create a steadily 
increasing irritation with the insolence displayed. The report for¬ 
warded to London of the three preliminary stipulations made by 
France, followed almost immediately by the French refusal to consider 
the cession of any Dutch colony, had resulted in a victory for Gren¬ 
ville in the Cabinet. Pitt did not openly assert that he was ready to 
make peace under the extreme conditions proposed by France, but he 
,opposed stating immediately to France that these conditions were inad¬ 
missible. Grenville urged an immediate reply notifying France that 
such conditions, if insisted on, would render a treaty impossible, and 
his opinion prevailed. The defeat of Pitt and the anxiety felt among 
the friends of peace is clearly brought out in a letter from Canning to 
Ellis, in which the former blames Malmesbury for the character of the 
despatches stating the French demands and for having sent them with¬ 
out delay to England. “The second messenger,” he wrote, “was 
despatched too soon, and brought the proposition of the Directory in a 
shape in which it was the most difficult to discuss it.”* To this 
Ivllis indignantly replied : “ If I understood Mr. Pitt right, you want 
either a tolerably good peace, or the most unreasonable requisitions,”! 
thus defending the despatches in question on the ground that they 
conformed to the latter consideration. Canning’s rejoinder unveiled 
the controversy in the Cabinet. Referring again to Malmesbury’s 
immediate transmittal of the French demands and its unfortunate con¬ 
sequence, he wrote : 
“You will, however, have understood, that what I said upon that 
point belonged rather to the state of things here than that at Lisle—to 
the triumph procured by the particular discussion to those whom I wish 
not to triumph, over those to whom I wish to maintain an asce?idancy , 
which they have so recently obtained, and of which I am not yet sure 
that they have more than a precarious and temporary possession ; and, 
upon my conscience, I believe the safety and welfare of the country 
hereafter to be involved in their maintenance and exercise of this as¬ 
cendancy. And, though I am not so unreasonable as to wish or expect 
that the great work about which you are employed can be squared in 
the whole, or altogether in any one part, with a view to circumstances 
of this nature at home, yet I do not think it an inconsiderable object to 
soften as much as can be done, without hazarding truth and substance, 
the roughnesses of the work to be done here to those who are deter- 
* Ellis to Canning, July 25, 1797. Malmesbury, III, 430. Ellis quotes the phrase 
from Canning’s letter, but the letter itself is not to be found. 
t Ibid. 
