to rue this iniquitous
measure, and they most who were most concerned in it, for the moment
there was wherewithal in the object to preserve peace amongst
confederates in wrong. But the spoil of France did not afford the same
facilities for accommodation. What might satisfy the House of Austria in
a Flemish frontier afforded no equivalent to tempt the cupidity of the
King of Prussia. What might be desired by Great Britain in the West
Indies must be coldly and remotely, if at all, felt as an interest at
Vienna, and it would be felt as something worse than a negative interest
at Madrid. Austria, long possessed with unwise and dangerous designs on
Italy, could not be very much in earnest about the conservation of the
old patrimony of the House of Savoy; and Sardinia, who owed to an
Italian force all her means of shutting out France from Italy, of which
she has been supposed to hold the key, would not purchase the means of
strength upon one side by yielding it on the other: she would not
readily give the possession of Novara for the hope of Savoy. No
Continental power was willing to lose any of its Continental objects for
the increase of the naval power of Great Britain; and Great Britain
would not give up any of the objects she sought for, as the means of an
increase to her naval power, to further their aggrandizement.

The moment this war came to be considered as a war merely of profit, the
actual circumstances are such that it never could become really a war of
alliance. Nor can the peace be a peace of alliance, until things are put
upon their right bottom.

I don't find it denied, that, when a treaty is entered into for peace, a
demand will be made on the Regicides to surrender a great part of their
conquests on the Continent. 'Will they, in the present state of the war,
make that surrender without an equivalent? This Continental cession must
of course be made in favor of that party in the alliance that has
suffered losses. That party has nothing to furnish towards an
equivalent. What equivalent, for instance, has Holland to offer, who has
lost her all? What equivalent can come from the Emperor, every part of
whose territories contiguous to France is already within the pale of the
Regicide dominion? What equivalent has Sardinia to offer for Savoy, and
for Nice,--I may say, for her whole being? What has she taken from the
faction of France? She has lost very near her all, and she has gained
nothing. What equivalent has