ve all the magnanimity of good faith. This is a royal and
commanding policy; and as long as we are true to it, we may give the
law. Never can we assume this command, if we will not risk the
consequences. For which reason we ought to be bottomed enough in
principle not to be carried away upon the first prospect of any sinister
advantage. For depend upon it, that, if we once give way to a sinister
dealing, we shall teach others the game, and we shall be outwitted and
overborne; the Spaniards, the Prussians, God knows who, will put us
under contribution at their pleasure; and instead of being at the head
of a great confederacy, and the arbiters of Europe, we shall, by our
mistakes, break up a great design into a thousand little selfish
quarrels, the enemy will triumph, and we shall sit down under the terms
of unsafe and dependent peace, weakened, mortified, and disgraced,
whilst all Europe, England included, is left open and defenceless on
every part, to Jacobin principles, intrigues, and arms. In the case of
the king of France, declared to be our friend and ally, we will still be
considering ourselves in the contradictory character of an enemy. This
contradiction, I am afraid, will, in spite of us, give a color of fraud
to all our transactions, or at least will so complicate our politics
that we shall ourselves be inextricably entangled in them.

I have Toulon in my eye. It was with infinite sorrow I heard, that, in
taking the king of France's fleet in trust, we instantly unrigged and
dismasted the ships, instead of keeping them in a condition to escape in
case of disaster, and in order to fulfil our trust,--that is, to hold
them for the use of the owner, and in the mean time to employ them for
our common service. These ships are now so circumstanced, that, if we
are forced to evacuate Toulon, they must fall into the hands of the
enemy or be burnt by ourselves. I know this is by some considered as a
fine thing for us. But the Athenians ought not to be better than the
English, or Mr. Pitt less virtuous than Aristides.

Are we, then, so poor in resources that we can do no better with
eighteen or twenty ships of the line than to burn them? Had we sent for
French Royalist naval officers, of which some hundreds are to be had,
and made them select such seamen as they could trust, and filled the
rest with our own and Mediterranean seamen, which are all over Italy to
be had by thousands, and put them under judicious English
comm