The Friends of Peace supported and sanctified the war for two brief periods, in 1798 and 1803–5. On both occasions the enemy mustered a large force on the near coast to Britain and appeared ready to attempt invasion and conquest. The first alarm was short-lived. It subsided after a few months, when Napoleon in May 1798, having decided that the operation was too hazardous in the present state of preparation, embarked a French army for Egypt. Five years later the menace of flat-bottomed boats was to last until the midsummer of 1805. Napoleon again ended the suspense by turning eastwards, this time, however, on the defensive in central Europe against Austria and Russia. These crises for the British nation were never crises of belief or action for the Friends of Peace. They insisted on the ‘lawfulness of defensive war’ and were invariably zealous national defenders. If they felt any predicament, it related to the difficulty of showing that their patriotism was still distinctive, that the circumstances of the war had changed but their principles had not. The point may well be made that the threat of foreign attack actually strengthened the anti-war liberals by providing them with opportunities of community leadership.

The unequivocal response of the Friends of Peace in 1798 and 1803 owed much to their belief in the nation as a historic and providential entity. From this was derived their definition of legitimate war as an act of national self-defence when all other means of resistance had failed.