happiness of a struggle, I shall be found, I was going to
say fighting, (that would be foolish,) but dying, by the side of Mr.
Pitt. I must add, that, if anything defensive in our domestic system
can possibly save us from the disasters of a Regicide peace, he is the
man to save us. If the finances in such a case can be repaired, he is
the man to repair them. If I should lament any of his acts, it is only
when they appear to me to have no resemblance to acts of his. But let
him not have a confidence in himself which no human abilities can
warrant. His abilities are fully equal (and that is to say much for any
man) to those which are opposed to him. But if we look to him as our
security against the consequences of a Regicide peace, let us be assured
that a Regicide peace and a constitutional ministry are terms that will
not agree. With a Regicide peace the king cannot long have a minister to
serve him, nor the minister a king to serve. If the Great Disposer, in
reward of the royal and the private virtues of our sovereign, should
call him from the calamitous spectacles which will attend a state of
amity with Regicide, his successor will surely see them, unless the same
Providence greatly anticipates the course of Nature. Thinking thus, (and
not, as I conceive, on light grounds,) I dare not flatter the reigning
sovereign, nor any minister he has or can have, nor his successor
apparent, nor any of those who may be called to serve him, with what
appears to me a false state of their situation. We cannot have them and
that peace together.

I do not forget that there had been a considerable difference between
several of our friends (with my insignificant self) and the great man at
the head of ministry, in an early stage of these discussions. But I am
sure there was a period in which we agreed better in the danger of a
Jacobin existence in France. At one time he and all Europe seemed to
feel it. But why am not I converted with so many great powers and so
many great ministers? It is because I am old and slow. I am in this
year, 1796, only where all the powers of Europe were in 1793. I cannot
move with this precession of the equinoxes, which is preparing for us
the return of some very old, I am afraid no golden era, or the
commencement of some new era that must be denominated from some new
metal. In this crisis I must hold my tongue or I must speak with
freedom. Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever: but, as
in the