conduct in this low business.

The very idea of a negotiation for peace, whatever the inward sentiments
of the parties may be, implies some confidence in their faith, some
degree of belief in the professions which are made concerning it. A
temporary and occasional credit, at least, is granted. Otherwise men
stumble on the very threshold. I therefore wish to ask what hope we can
have of their good faith, who, as the very basis of the negotiation,
assume the ill faith and treachery of those they have to deal with? The
terms, as against us, must be such as imply a full security against a
treacherous conduct,--that is, such terms as this Directory stated in
its first declaration, to place us "in an utter impossibility of
executing our wretched projects." This is the omen, and the sole omen,
under which we have consented to open our treaty.

The second observation I have to make upon it (much connected,
undoubtedly, with the first) is, that they have informed you of the
result they propose from the kind of peace they mean to grant you,
--that is to say, the union they propose among nations with the view of
rivalling our trade and destroying our naval power; and this they
suppose (and with good reason, too) must be the inevitable effect of
their peace. It forms one of their principal grounds for suspecting our
ministers could not be in good earnest in their proposition. They make
no scruple beforehand to tell you the whole of what they intend; and
this is what we call, in the modern style, the acceptance of a
proposition for peace! In old language it would be called a most
haughty, offensive, and insolent rejection of all treaty.

Thirdly, they tell you what they conceive to be the perfidious policy
which dictates your delusive offer: that is, the design of cheating not
only them, but the people of England, against whose interest and
inclination this war is supposed to be carried on.

If we proceed in this business, under this preliminary declaration, it
seems to me that we admit, (now for the third time,) by something a
great deal stronger than words, the truth of the charges of every kind
which they make upon the British ministry, and the grounds of those foul
imputations. The language used by us, which in other circumstances would
not be exceptionable, in this case tends very strongly to confirm and
realize the suspicion of our enemy: I mean the declaration, that, if we
do not obtain such terms of peace as suits our opi