Spain to give? Alas! she has already paid
for her own ransom the fund of equivalent,--and a dreadful equivalent it
is, to England and to herself. But I put Spain out of the question: she
is a province of the Jacobin empire, and she must make peace or war
according to the orders she receives from the Directory of Assassins. In
effect and substance, her crown is a fief of Regicide.

Whence, then, can the compensation be demanded? Undoubtedly from that
power which alone has made some conquests. That power is England. Will
the Allies, then, give away their ancient patrimony, that England may
keep islands in the West Indies? They never can protract the war in good
earnest for that object; nor can they act in concert with us, in our
refusal to grant anything towards their redemption. In that case we are
thus situated: either we must give Europe, bound hand and foot, to
France, or we must quit the West Indies without any one object, great or
small, towards indemnity and security. I repeat it, without any
advantage whatever: because, supposing that our conquest could comprise
all that France ever possessed in the tropical America, it never can
amount in any fair estimation to a fair equivalent for Holland, for the
Austrian Netherlands, for the Lower Germany,--that is, for the whole
ancient kingdom or circle of Burgundy, now under the yoke of Regicide,
to say nothing of almost all Italy, under the same barbarous domination.
If we treat in the present situation of things, we have nothing in our
hands that can redeem Europe. Nor is the Emperor, as I have observed,
more rich in the fund of equivalents.

If we look to our stock in the Eastern world, our most valuable and
systematic acquisitions are made in that quarter. Is it from France they
are made? France has but one or two contemptible factories, subsisting
by the offal of the private fortunes of English individuals to support
them, in any part of India. I look on the taking of the Cape of Good
Hope as the securing of a post of great moment; it does honor to those
who planned and to those who executed that enterprise; but I speak of it
always as comparatively good,--as good as anything can be in a scheme
of war that repels us from a centre, and employs all our forces where
nothing can be finally decisive. But giving, as I freely give, every
possible credit to these Eastern conquests, I ask one question:--On whom
are they made? It is evident, that, if we can keep our Eastern
co