urope_: a work executed by M. Favier, under the
direction of Count Broglie. A single copy of this was said to have been
found in the cabinet of Louis the Sixteenth. It was published with some
subsequent state-papers of Vergennes, Turgot, and others, as "a new
benefit of the Revolution," and the advertisement to the publication
ends with the following words: "_Il sera facile de se convaincre_, QU'Y
COMPRIS MEME LA REVOLUTION, _en grande partie_, ON TROUVE DANS CES
_MEMOIRES_ ET CES _CONJECTURES_ LE GERME DE TOUT CE QUI ARRIVE
AUJOURD'HUI, _et qu'on ne peut, sans les avoir lus, etre bien au fait
des interets, et meme des vues actuelles des diverses puissances de
l'Europe_." The book is entitled _Politique de tous les Cabinets de
l'Europe pendant la Regnes de Louis XV. et de Louis XVI_. It is
altogether very curious, and worth reading.

[36] See our Declaration.

LETTER III.

ON THE RUPTURE OF THE NEGOTIATION; THE TERMS OF PEACE PROPOSED; AND THE
RESOURCES OF THE COUNTRY FOR THE CONTINUANCE OF THE WAR.

Dear Sir,--I thank you for the bundle of state-papers which I received
yesterday. I have travelled through the negotiation,--and a sad,
founderous road it is. There is a sort of standing jest against my
countrymen,--that one of them on his journey having found a piece of
pleasant road, he proposed to his companion to go over it again. This
proposal, with regard to the worthy traveller's final destination, was
certainly a blunder. It was no blunder as to his immediate satisfaction;
for the way was pleasant. In the irksome journey of the Regicide
negotiations it is otherwise: our "paths are not paths of pleasantness,
nor our ways the ways to peace." All our mistakes, (if such they are,)
like those of our Hibernian traveller, are mistakes of repetition; and
they will be full as far from bringing us to our place of rest as his
well-considered project was from forwarding him to his inn. Yet I see we
persevere. Fatigued with our former course, too listless to explore a
new one, kept in action by inertness, moving only because we have been
in motion, with a sort of plodding perseverance we resolve to measure
back again the very same joyless, hopeless, and inglorious track.
Backward and forward,--oscillation, space,--the travels of a postilion,
miles enough to circle the globe in one short stage,--we have been, and
we are yet to be, jolted and rattled over the loose, misplaced stones
and the treacherous hollows of this