hers; and the philosophers soon made
them sensible that the destruction of religion was to supply them with
means of conquest first at home, and then abroad. The philosophers
were the active internal agitators, and supplied the spirit and
principles: the second gave the practical direction. Sometimes the
one predominated in the composition, sometimes the other. The only
difference between them was in the necessity of concealing the general
design for a time, and in their dealing with foreign nations; the
fanatics going straight forward and openly, the politicians by the
surer mode of zigzag. In the course of events this, among other
causes, produced fierce and bloody contentions between them. But at
the bottom they thoroughly agreed in all the objects of ambition and
irreligion, and substantially in all the means of promoting these
ends. Without question, to bring about the unexampled event of the
French Revolution, the concurrence of a very great number of views and
passions was necessary. In that stupendous work, no one principle, by
which the human mind may have its faculties at once invigorated and
depraved, was left unemployed; but I can speak it to a certainty, and
support it by undoubted proofs, that the ruling principle of those who
acted in the Revolution as _statesmen_, had the exterior
aggrandisement of France as their ultimate end in the most minute part
of the internal changes that were made. We, who of late years have
been drawn from an attention to foreign affairs by the importance of
our domestic discussions, cannot easily form a conception of the
general eagerness of the active and energetic part of the French
nation, itself the most active and energetic of all nations, previous
to its Revolution, upon that subject. I am convinced that the foreign
speculators in France, under the old government, were twenty to one of
the same description then or now in England; and few of that
description there were, who did not emulously set forward the
Revolution. The whole official system, particularly in the diplomatic
part, the regulars, the irregulars, down to the clerks in office, (a
corps, without comparison, more numerous than the same amongst us,)
co-operated in it. All the intriguers in foreign politics, all the
spies, all the intelligencers, actually or late in function, all the
candidates for that sort of employment, acted solely upon that
principle.

On that system of aggrandisement there was but one mind