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By Root 952 0

hasten either to punish us for the horrid renewal of these savage practises which once buried England in ashes or remain with their arms across suffering us to be extirpated by those foes which our madness or impolicy had joined against us.” For this reason, Parliament must come to an immediate resolution “declaring their surprise and horror at such proceedings and condemning them in the most pointed and emphatical terms.…” He was glad to hear that the noble lord [Germain] saw nothing to condemn in the matter, for “now it was known and would be proclaimed all over Europe that ministers and not our commanders were the plunderers of St. Eustatius and the violators of the rights of war” and the army and navy [were] thus “rescued from the ignominious aspersion and the character of Sir George Rodney,” his colleague as fellow-member for Westminster, “was rescued from the obloquy which even great and good men must have otherwise thrown upon them.”

With heavy sarcasm, Fox declared he was “happy in the generous acquittal which the noble lord had given of the navy and army. The military of this country and particularly the navy was dear to him and their fame ought to be held sacred to every British heart. It was from that virtuous body of men that the empire had derived all its respect and strength and from which it must continue to receive its security and its fame. If they by some hasty act of rapaciousness or of avarice should blacken the purity of their character and stain their former deeds, Great Britain would sink to a state from which neither their future repentance nor their gallantry could be able to raise her, a state of ignominy more dreadful than disaster since enterprise might retrieve disadvantage but not restore reputation so destroyed.” Fox’s verbal vision of reprisals and contempt of nations flowed on with its wonderful command of words matched only by the exaggeration of its sentiments, which, one would think, would have been more likely to repel his listeners than win them. Following Fox, the Lord Advocate of Scotland entered into what the rapporteur described as a serious “defence of the proceedings at St. Eustatius,” which in his mind were “justifiable on the ground of necessity, policy, and by the laws of nations,” and that it was “good policy in the commanders to destroy that magazine from which the enemy were supplied with arms against us, it was in fact their duty … that as to the laws of war, it was a principle on which Grotius, Puffendorf, Vattel and every writer agreed, that it was just to destroy not only the weapons but also the materiels of war.”

Six more speakers carried the debate to late hours, until it was concluded by Burke with more of his magniloquent rhapsodizing. Upon the vote being taken, all the words might as well have gone unspoken. Burke’s motion for an inquiry was defeated by a safe government majority of 160–86. When the party system regulates, argument addresses the deaf.

Rodney’s savage feelings toward the English merchants’ greed and treason were genuine and profound, as would be those of any man who sees fellow-combatants facing bullets supplied by their own countrymen. He intended to remain on St. Eustatius, he wrote to the Governor of Barbados on February 27, three weeks after taking the island, until the iniquitous “English merchants, base enough from lucrative motives to support the enemies of Great Britain, will for their treason justly merit their own ruin … till all the stores are embarked and till the Lower Town, that nest of vipers, be destroyed, and lumber sent for the use of your unfortunate island and St. Lucie.” He was not going to leave until this “iniquitous island may be no longer the mart for clandestine commerce.”

While it is easy to say, and has frequently been said, that Rodney, mesmerized by the riches lying at hand on St. Eustatius, stayed too long on the island in his desire to gather them up, outrage and desire to punish the traitors were clearly as strong additional motives. “The Chief Judge of St. Kitts, Mr. Georges, is returning to expose the villainy