ch issued the decree?
"An obedience to it would be" (says he) "dishonorable to us, and exhibit
us to the present age and to posterity as submitting to the law
prescribed to us by our enemy."

Here I recognize the voice of a British plenipotentiary: I begin to feel
proud of my country. But, alas! the short date of human elevation! The
accents of dignity died upon his tongue. This author will not assure us
of his sentiments for the whole of a pamphlet; but, in the sole
energetic part of it, he does not continue the same through an whole
sentence, if it happens to be of any sweep or compass. In the very womb
of this last sentence, pregnant, as it should seem, with a Hercules,
there is formed a little bantling of the mortal race, a degenerate, puny
parenthesis, that totally frustrates our most sanguine views and
expectations, and disgraces the whole gestation. Here is this
destructive parenthesis: "Unless some adequate compensation be secured
_to us_." _To us!_ The Christian world may shift for itself, Europe may
groan in slavery, we may be dishonored by receiving law from an
enemy,--but all is well, provided the compensation _to us_ be adequate.
To what are we reserved? An _adequate_ compensation "for the sacrifice
of powers the most nearly connected with us";--an _adequate_
compensation "for the direct or indirect annexation to France of all the
ports of the Continent from Dunkirk to Hamburg";--an _adequate_
compensation "for the abandonment of the independence of Europe"! Would
that, when all our manly sentiments are thus changed, our manly language
were changed along with them, and that the English tongue were not
employed to utter what our ancestors never dreamed could enter into an
English heart!

But let us consider this matter of adequate compensation. Who is to
furnish it? From what funds is it to be drawn? Is it by another treaty
of commerce? I have no objections to treaties of commerce upon
principles of commerce. Traffic for traffic,--all is fair. But commerce
in exchange for empire, for safety, for glory! We set out in our dealing
with a miserable cheat upon ourselves. I know it may be said, that we
may prevail on this proud, philosophical, military Republic, which looks
down with contempt on trade, to declare it unfit for the sovereign of
nations to be _eundem negotiatorem et dominum_: that, in virtue of this
maxim of her state, the English in France may be permitted, as the Jews
are in Poland and in Turkey,