this intercourse, at least, there was nothing to promise a great deal
of success in our future advances. Whilst the fortune of the field was
wholly with the Regicides, nothing was thought of but to follow where it
led: and it led to everything. Not so much as a talk of treaty. Laws
were laid down with arrogance. The most moderate politician in their
clan[24] was chosen as the organ, not so much for prescribing limits to
their claims as to mark what for the present they are content to leave
to others. They made, not laws, not conventions, not late possession,
but physical Nature and political convenience the sole foundation of
their claims. The Rhine, the Mediterranean, and the ocean were the
bounds which, for the time, they assigned to the Empire of Regicide.
What was the Chamber of Union of Louis the Fourteenth, which astonished
and provoked all Europe, compared to this declaration? In truth, with
these limits, and their principle, they would not have left even the
shadow of liberty or safety to any nation. This plan of empire was not
taken up in the first intoxication of unexpected success. You must
recollect that it was projected, just as the report has stated it, from
the very first revolt of the faction against their monarchy; and it has
been uniformly pursued, as a standing maxim of national policy, from
that time to this. It is generally in the season of prosperity that men
discover their real temper, principles, and designs. But this principle,
suggested in their first struggles, fully avowed in their prosperity,
has, in the most adverse state of their affairs, been tenaciously
adhered to. The report, combined with their conduct, forms an infallible
criterion of the views of this republic.

In their fortune there has been some fluctuation. We are to see how
their minds have been affected with a change. Some impression it made on
them, undoubtedly. It produced some oblique notice of the submissions
that were made by suppliant nations. The utmost they did was to make
some of those cold, formal, general professions of a love of peace which
no power has ever refused to make, because they mean little and cost
nothing. The first paper I have seen (the publication at Hamburg) making
a show of that pacific disposition discovered a rooted animosity against
this nation, and an incurable rancor, even more than any one of their
hostile acts. In this Hamburg declaration they choose to suppose that
the war, on the part of Eng