as well as to posterity, their motives,
their intentions, and the _disinterestedness_ of their personal views:
taking up arms for the purpose of preserving social and political order
amongst all civilized nations, and to secure to _each_ state its
religion, happiness, independence, territories, and real
constitution."--"On this ground they hoped that all empires and all
states would be unanimous, and, becoming the firm guardians of the
happiness of mankind, that they could not fail to unite their efforts to
rescue a numerous nation from its own fury, to preserve Europe from the
return of barbarism, and the universe from the subversion and anarchy
with which it was threatened." The whole of that noble performance ought
to be read at the first meeting of any congress which may assemble for
the purpose of pacification. In that piece "these powers expressly
renounce all views of personal aggrandizement," and confine themselves
to objects worthy of so generous, so heroic, and so perfectly wise and
politic an enterprise. It was to the principles of this confederation,
and to no other, that we wished our sovereign and our country to accede,
as a part of the commonwealth of Europe. To these principles, with some
trifling exceptions and limitations, they did fully accede.[34] And all
our friends who took office acceded to the ministry, (whether wisely or
not,) as I always understood the matter, on the faith and on the
principles of that declaration.

As long as these powers flattered themselves that the menace of force
would produce the effect of force, they acted on those declarations; but
when their menaces failed of success, their efforts took a new
direction. It did not appear to them that virtue and heroism ought to be
purchased by millions of rix-dollars. It is a dreadful truth, but it is
a truth that cannot be concealed: in ability, in dexterity, in the
distinctness of their views, the Jacobins are our superiors. They saw
the thing right from the very beginning. Whatever were the first motives
to the war among politicians, they saw that in its spirit, and for its
objects, it was a _civil war_; and as such they pursued it. It is a war
between the partisans of the ancient civil, moral, and political order
of Europe against a sect of fanatical and ambitious atheists which means
to change them all. It is not France extending a foreign empire over
other nations: it is a sect aiming at universal empire, and beginning
with the c