y to war, he abuses
the French Constitution, which seeks to explode it. He holds up the
English Government as a model, in all its parts, to France; but he
should first know the remarks which the French make upon it. They
contend in favor of their own, that the portion of liberty enjoyed in
England is just enough to enslave a country more productively than by
despotism, and that as the real object of all despotism is revenue,
a government so formed obtains more than it could do either by direct
despotism, or in a full state of freedom, and is, therefore on the
ground of interest, opposed to both. They account also for the readiness
which always appears in such governments for engaging in wars by
remarking on the different motives which produced them. In despotic
governments wars are the effect of pride; but in those governments in
which they become the means of taxation, they acquire thereby a more
permanent promptitude.

The French Constitution, therefore, to provide against both these evils,
has taken away the power of declaring war from kings and ministers, and
placed the right where the expense must fall.

When the question of the right of war and peace was agitating in the
National Assembly, the people of England appeared to be much interested
in the event, and highly to applaud the decision. As a principle it
applies as much to one country as another. William the Conqueror, as
a conqueror, held this power of war and peace in himself, and his
descendants have ever since claimed it under him as a right.

Although Mr. Burke has asserted the right of the Parliament at the
Revolution to bind and control the nation and posterity for ever, he
denies at the same time that the Parliament or the nation had any right
to alter what he calls the succession of the crown in anything but in
part, or by a sort of modification. By his taking this ground he throws
the case back to the Norman Conquest, and by thus running a line of
succession springing from William the Conqueror to the present day, he
makes it necessary to enquire who and what William the Conqueror was,
and where he came from, and into the origin, history and nature of what
are called prerogatives. Everything must have had a beginning, and the
fog of time and antiquity should be penetrated to discover it. Let,
then, Mr. Burke bring forward his William of Normandy, for it is to this
origin that his argument goes. It also unfortunately happens, in running
this line o