e who, believing that the danger existed, not
undervaluing its extent, nor mistaking its nature, nevertheless
thinks, from his view of the present pressure on the country, from his
view of its situation and its prospects, compared with the situation
and prospects of its enemies, that we are, with our eyes open, bound
to accept of inadequate security for everything that is valuable and
sacred, rather than endure the pressure, or incur the risk, which
would result from a farther prolongation of the contest.

In discussing the last of these questions, we shall be led to consider
what inference is to be drawn from the circumstances and the result of
our own negotiations in former periods of the war;--whether, in the
comparative state of this country and France, we now see the same
reason for repeating our then unsuccessful experiments;--or whether
we have not thence derived the lessons of experience, added to the
deductions of reason, marking the inefficacy and danger of the very
measures which are quoted to us as precedents for our adoption.
Unwilling, Sir, as I am to go into much detail on ground which has
been so often trodden before, yet, when I find the learned gentleman,
after all the information which he must have received, if he has read
any of the answers to his work (however ignorant he might be when
he wrote it), still giving the sanction of his authority to the
supposition that the order to M. Chauvelin to depart from this kingdom
was the cause of the war between this country and France, I do feel it
necessary to say a few words on that part of the subject.

Inaccuracy in dates seems to be a sort of fatality common to all who
have written on that side of the question; for even the writer of the
note to His Majesty is not more correct, in this respect, than if
he had taken his information only from the pamphlet of the learned
gentleman. The House will recollect the first professions of the
French Republic, which are enumerated, and enumerated truly, in that
note--they are tests of everything which would best recommend a
Government to the esteem and confidence of foreign Powers, and the
reverse of everything which has been the system and practice of
France now for near ten years. It is there stated, that their first
principles were love of peace, aversion to conquest, and respect for
the independence of other countries. In the same note, it seems,
indeed, admitted, that they since have violated all those principl