schievous enough to have satisfied a mind of
the most unruly ambition. But a system unfavourable to freedom may be so
formed as considerably to exalt the grandeur of the State, and men may
find in the pride and splendour of that prosperity some sort of
consolation for the loss of their solid privileges. Indeed, the increase
of the power of the State has often been urged by artful men, as a
pretext for some abridgment of the public liberty. But the scheme of the
junto under consideration not only strikes a palsy into every nerve of
our free constitution, but in the same degree benumbs and stupefies the
whole executive power, rendering Government in all its grand operations
languid, uncertain, ineffective, making Ministers fearful of attempting,
and incapable of executing, any useful plan of domestic arrangement, or
of foreign politics. It tends to produce neither the security of a free
Government, nor the energy of a Monarchy that is absolute. Accordingly,
the Crown has dwindled away in proportion to the unnatural and turgid
growth of this excrescence on the Court.

The interior Ministry are sensible that war is a situation which sets in
its full light the value of the hearts of a people, and they well know
that the beginning of the importance of the people must be the end of
theirs. For this reason they discover upon all occasions the utmost fear
of everything which by possibility may lead to such an event. I do not
mean that they manifest any of that pious fear which is backward to
commit the safety of the country to the dubious experiment of war. Such
a fear, being the tender sensation of virtue, excited, as it is
regulated, by reason, frequently shows itself in a seasonable boldness,
which keeps danger at a distance, by seeming to despise it. Their fear
betrays to the first glance of the eye its true cause and its real
object. Foreign powers, confident in the knowledge of their character,
have not scrupled to violate the most solemn treaties; and, in defiance
of them, to make conquests in the midst of a general peace, and in the
heart of Europe. Such was the conquest of Corsica, by the professed
enemies of the freedom of mankind, in defiance of those who were formerly
its professed defenders. We have had just claims upon the same
powers--rights which ought to have been sacred to them as well as to us,
as they had their origin in our lenity and generosity towards France and
Spain in the day of their great h