be like that of Catiline, the cup of human blood! No; the most
powerful reprobation which ever shot from the indignant lip of the
moralist, would not be too strong for the baseness which stooped to
such a treaty, or the folly which entangled itself in its toils. No
burning language of prophecy would be too solemn and too stinging for
the premeditated wretchedness, and incurable calamity, of such a bond.
No; if we must violate the simplicity of our national interests by
such degrading, and such desperate involvements--if we should not
shrink from this conspiracy against mankind, let it, at least, not be
consummated in the face of day; let us at once abandon the hollow
pretences of human honesty; let us pledge ourselves to a perpetual
league of rapine and revolution; let it be transacted in some lower
region of existence, where it shall not disgrace the light of the sun;
and let its ceremonial be worthy of the spirit of evil which it
embodies, whose power it proclaims, and to whose supremacy it commands
all nations to bow down."

In alluding to the menace that our allies would soon desert us, I
asked, "Is this the magnanimity of party? Is England to be pronounced
so poor, or so pusillanimous, that she must give up all hope unless
she can be suffered to lurk in the rear of the battle? What says her
prince of poets?--

'England shall never rue,
If England to herself shall be but true.'

Is this 'little body with a mighty heart,' to depend for existence on
the decaying strength or the decrepit courage of the Continent? Is she
only to borrow the shattered armour which has hung up for ages in the
halls of continental royalty, and encumber herself with its broken and
rusty panoply for the ridicule of the world? The European governments
have undergone the vicissitudes of fortune. Instead of scoffing at the
facility of their overthrow, let us raise them on their feet again;
or, if that be beyond human means, I shall not join the party-cry
which insults their fall--I certainly shall not exult in that
melancholy pageant of mixed mirth and scorn, in which, like the old
Roman triumph, the soldier with his ruthless jest and song goes before
the chariot, and the captive monarch follows behind; wearing the royal
robe and the diadem only till he has gratified a barbarous curiosity
or a cruel pride, and then exchanging them for the manacle and the
dungeon. I deprecate the loss of these alliances; and yet I doubt
whether the count