f accepting a
precarious peace: she had (in spite of those pledges repeatedly made
and uniformly violated) surrounded herself by new conquests, on every
part of her frontier but one; that one was Switzerland. The first
effect of being relieved from the war with Austria, of being secured
against all fears of Continental invasion on the ancient territory
of France, was their unprovoked attack against this unoffending and
devoted country. This was one of the scenes which satisfied even those
who were the most incredulous, that France had thrown off the mask,
'_if indeed she had ever worn it_.'[5] It collected, in one view, many
of the characteristic features of that revolutionary system which I
have endeavoured to trace. The perfidy which alone rendered their arms
successful, the pretext of which they availed themselves to produce
division and prepare the entrance of Jacobinism in that country, the
proposal of armistice, one of the known and regular engines of the
revolution, which was, as usual, the immediate prelude to military
execution, attended with cruelty and barbarity, of which there are few
examples: all these are known to the world. The country they attacked
was one which had long been the faithful ally of France, which,
instead of giving cause of jealousy to any other Power, had been, for
ages, proverbial for the simplicity and innocence of its manners, and
which had acquired and preserved the esteem of all the nations of
Europe; which had almost, by the common consent of mankind, been
exempted from the sound of war, and marked out as a land of Goshen,
safe and untouched in the midst of surrounding calamities.

Look, then, at the fate of Switzerland, at the circumstances which led
to its destruction, add this instance to the catalogue of aggression
against all Europe, and then tell me whether the system I have
described has not been prosecuted with an unrelenting spirit,
which cannot be subdued in adversity, which cannot be appeased in
prosperity, which neither solemn professions, nor the general law
of nations, nor the obligation of treaties (whether previous to the
revolution or subsequent to it), could restrain from the subversion
of every state into which, either by force or fraud, their arms could
penetrate. Then tell me whether the disasters of Europe are to be
charged upon the provocation of this country and its allies, or on
the inherent principle of the French revolution, of which the natural
result pr