olitics,
all the spies, all the intelligencers, actually or late in function, all
the candidates for that sort of employment, acted solely upon that
principle.

On that system of aggrandizement there was but one mind: but two violent
factions arose about the means. The first wished France, diverted from
the politics of the Continent, to attend solely to her marine, to feed
it by an increase of commerce, and thereby to overpower England on her
own element. They contended, that, if England were disabled, the powers
on the Continent would fall into their proper subordination; that it was
England which deranged the whole Continental system of Europe. The
others, who were by far the more numerous, though not the most outwardly
prevalent at court, considered this plan for France as contrary to her
genius, her situation, and her natural means. They agreed as to the
ultimate object, the reduction of the British power, and, if possible,
its naval power; but they considered an ascendancy on the Continent as a
necessary preliminary to that undertaking. They argued, that the
proceedings of England herself had proved the soundness of this policy:
that her greatest and ablest statesmen had not considered the support of
a Continental balance against France as a deviation from the principle
of her naval power, but as one of the most effectual modes of carrying
it into effect; that such had been her policy ever since the Revolution,
during which period the naval strength of Great Britain had gone on
increasing in the direct ratio of her interference in the politics of
the Continent. With much stronger reason ought the politics of France to
take the same direction,--as well for pursuing objects which her
situation would dictate to her, though England had no existence, as for
counteracting the politics of that nation: to France Continental
politics are primary; they looked on them only of secondary
consideration to England, and, however necessary, but as means necessary
to an end.

What is truly astonishing, the partisans of those two opposite systems
were at once prevalent, and at once employed, and in the very same
transactions, the one ostensibly, the other secretly, during the latter
part of the reign of Louis the Fifteenth. Nor was there one court in
which an ambassador resided on the part of the ministers, in which
another, as a spy on him, did not also reside on the part of the king:
they who pursued the scheme for keeping peace