destroy. If we return the African and the Asiatic
conquests, we put them into the hands of a nominal state (to that
Holland is reduced) unable to retain them; and which will virtually
leave them under the direction of France. If we withhold them, Holland
declines still more as a state. She loses so much carrying trade, and
that means of keeping up the small degree of naval power she holds;
for which policy alone, and not for any commercial gain, she maintains
the Cape, or any settlement beyond it. In that case, resentment,
faction, and even necessity, will throw her more and more into the
power of the new, mischievous republic. But on the probable state of
Holland I shall say more, when in this correspondence I come to talk
over with you the state in which any sort of Jacobin peace will leave
all Europe.

So far as to the East Indies.

As to the West Indies, indeed as to either, if we look for matter of
exchange in order to ransom Europe, it is easy to show that we have
taken a terribly roundabout road. I cannot conceive, even if, for the
sake of holding conquests there, we should refuse to redeem Holland,
and the Austrian Netherlands, and the hither Germany, that Spain,
merely as she is Spain, (and forgetting that the regicide ambassador
governs at Madrid,) will see, with perfect satisfaction, Great Britain
sole mistress of the isles. In truth it appears to me, that, when we
come to balance our account, we shall find in the proposed peace only
the pure, simple, and unendowed charms of Jacobin amity. We shall have
the satisfaction of knowing, that no blood or treasure has been spared
by the allies for support of the regicide system. We shall reflect at
leisure on one great truth, that it was ten times more easy totally to
destroy the system itself, than, when established, it would be to
reduce its power; and that this republic, most formidable abroad, was
of all things the weakest at home; that her frontier was terrible, her
interior feeble; that it was matter of choice to attack her where she
is invincible, and to spare her where she was ready to dissolve by her
own internal disorders. We shall reflect, that our plan was good
neither for offence nor defence.

It would not be at all difficult to prove, that an army of a hundred
thousand men, horse, foot, and artillery, might have been employed
against the enemy on the very soil which he has usurped, at a far less
expense than has been squandered away upon tropical ad