mes that were consuming France, not as a warning to protect their
own buildings, (which were without any party-wall, and linked by a
contignation into the edifice of France,) but as an happy occasion for
pillaging the goods, and for carrying off the materials of their
neighbor's house. Their provident fears were changed into avaricious
hopes. They carried on their new designs without seeming to abandon the
principles of their old policy. They pretended to seek, or they
flattered themselves that they sought, in the accession of new
fortresses and new territories a _defensive_ security. But the security
wanted was against a kind of power which was not so truly dangerous in
its fortresses nor in its territories as in its spirit and its
principles. They aimed, or pretended to aim, at _defending_ themselves
against a danger from which there can be no security in any _defensive_
plan. If armies and fortresses were a defence against Jacobinism, Louis
the Sixteenth would this day reign a powerful monarch over an happy
people.

This error obliged them, even in their offensive operations, to adopt a
plan of war against the success of which there was something little
short of mathematical demonstration. They refused to take any step which
might strike at the heart of affairs. They seemed unwilling to wound the
enemy in any vital part. They acted through the whole as if they really
wished the conservation of the Jacobin power, as what might be more
favorable than the lawful government to the attainment of the petty
objects they looked for. They always kept on the circumference; and the
wider and remoter the circle was, the more eagerly they chose it as
their sphere of action in this centrifugal war. The plan they pursued in
its nature demanded great length of time. In its execution, they who
went the nearest way to work were obliged to cover an incredible extent
of country. It left to the enemy every means of destroying this extended
line of weakness. Ill success in any part was sure to defeat the effect
of the whole. This is true of Austria. It is still more true of England.
On this false plan, even good fortune, by further weakening the victor,
put him but the further off from his object.

As long as there was any appearance of success, the spirit of
aggrandizement, and consequently the spirit of mutual jealousy, seized
upon all the coalesced powers. Some sought an accession of territory at
the expense of France, some at the exp