e beaten path is the
very reverse of the safe road.

As to me, I was always steadily of opinion, that this disorder was not
in its nature intermittent. I conceived that the contest, once begun,
could not be laid down again, to be resumed at our discretion; but
that our first struggle with this evil would also be our last. I never
thought we could make peace with the system; because it was not for
the sake of an object we pursued in rivalry with each other, but with
the system itself, that we were at war. As I understood the matter, we
were at war not with its conduct, but with its existence; convinced
that its existence and its hostility were the same.

The faction is not local or territorial. It is a general evil. Where
it least appears in action, it is still full of life. In its sleep it
recruits its strength, and prepares its exertion. Its spirit lies deep
in the corruption of our common nature. The social order which
restrains it, feeds it. It exists in every country in Europe; and
among all orders of men in every country, who look up to France as to
a common head. The centre is there. The circumference is the world of
Europe wherever the race of Europe may be settled. Everywhere else the
faction is militant; in France it is triumphant. In France it is the
bank of deposit, and the bank of circulation, of all the pernicious
principles that are forming in every state. It will be folly scarcely
deserving of pity, and too mischievous for contempt, to think of
restraining it in any other country whilst it is predominant there.
War, instead of being the cause of its force, has suspended its
operation. It has given a reprieve, at least, to the Christian world.

The true nature of a Jacobin war, in the beginning, was, by most of
the Christian powers, felt, acknowledged, and even in the most precise
manner declared. In the joint manifesto, published by the emperor and
the king of Prussia, on the 4th of August, 1792, it is expressed in
the clearest terms, and on principles which could not fail, if they
had adhered to them, of classing those monarchs with the first
benefactors of mankind. This manifesto was published, as they
themselves express it, 'to lay open to the present generation, as well
as to posterity, their motives, their intentions, and the
_disinterestedness_ of their personal views; taking up arms for the
purpose of preserving social and political order amongst all civilised
nations, and to secure to _each_ st