h they have
complained; and the first question of discord will be, whose ally is
that monarchy to be?

Will England agree to the restoration of the family compact against
which she has been fighting and scheming ever since it existed? Will
Prussia agree to restore the alliance between France and Austria, or
will Austria agree to restore the former connection between France and
Prussia, formed on purpose to oppose herself; or will Spain or Russia,
or any of the maritime powers, agree that France and her navy should be
allied to England? In fine, will any of the powers agree to strengthen
the hands of the other against itself? Yet all these cases involve
themselves in the original question of the restoration of the Bourbons;
and on the other hand, all of them disappear by the neutrality of
France.

If their object is not to restore the Bourbons, it must be the
impracticable project of a partition of the country. The Bourbons will
then be out of the question, or, more properly speaking, they will be
put in a worse condition; for as the preservation of the Bourbons made
a part of the first object, the extirpation of them makes a part of the
second. Their pretended friends will then become interested in their
destruction, because it is favourable to the purpose of partition that
none of the nominal claimants should be left in existence.

But however the project of a partition may at first blind the eyes of
the confederacy, or however each of them may hope to outwit the other
in the progress or in the end, the embarrassments that will arise are
insurmountable. But even were the object attainable, it would not be of
such general advantage to the parties as the neutrality of France, which
costs them nothing, and to obtain which they would formerly have gone to
war.

OF THE PRESENT STATE OF EUROPE, AND THE CONFEDERACY.

In the first place the confederacy is not of that kind that forms
itself originally by concert and consent. It has been forced together by
chance--a heterogeneous mass, held only by the accident of the moment;
and the instant that accident ceases to operate, the parties will retire
to their former rivalships.

I will now, independently of the impracticability of a partition
project, trace out some of the embarrassments which will arise among the
confederated parties; for it is contrary to the interest of a majority
of them that such a project should succeed.

To understand this part of the subject it