ch the better: so much the further are we removed from the
contact with infectious despotism. No longer a thought of a barrier in
the Netherlands to Holland against France. All that is obsolete policy.
It is fit that France should have both Holland and the Austrian
Netherlands too, as a barrier to her against the attacks of despotism.
She cannot multiply her securities too much; and as to our security, it
is to be found in hers. Had we cherished her from the beginning, and
felt for her when attacked, she, poor, good soul, would never have
invaded any foreign nation, never murdered her sovereign and his family,
never proscribed, never exiled, never imprisoned, never been guilty of
extra-judicial massacre or of legal murder. All would have been a golden
age, full of peace, order, and liberty,--and philosophy, raying out from
Europe, would have warmed and enlightened the universe; but, unluckily,
irritable philosophy, the most irritable of all things, was pat into a
passion, and provoked into ambition abroad and tyranny at home. They
find all this very natural and very justifiable. They choose to forget
that other nations, struggling for freedom, have been attacked by their
neighbors, or that their neighbors have otherwise interfered in their
affairs. Often have neighbors interfered in favor of princes against
their rebellious subjects, and often in favor of subjects against their
prince. Such cases fill half the pages of history; yet never were they
used as an apology, much less as a justification, for atrocious cruelty
in princes, or for general massacre and confiscation on the part of
revolted subjects,--never as a politic cause for suffering any such
powers to aggrandize themselves without limit and without measure. A
thousand times have we seen it asserted in public prints and pamphlets,
that, if the nobility and priesthood of France had stayed at home, their
property never would have been confiscated. One would think that none of
the clergy had been robbed previous to their deportation, or that their
deportation had, on their part, been a voluntary act. One would think
that the nobility and gentry, and merchants and bankers, who stayed at
home, had enjoyed their property in security and repose. The assertors
of these positions well know that the lot of thousands who remained at
home was far more terrible, that the most cruel imprisonment was only a
harbinger of a cruel and ignominious death, and that in this mother
cou