to regulate it according to the convenience of his affairs.
He is to bring it forward at that time when it may best serve to
establish his authority at home and to extend his power abroad, A
dangerous assurance for this nation to give, whether it is broken or
whether it is kept. As all treaty was broken off, and broken off in the
manner we have seen, the field of future conduct ought to be reserved
free and unincumbered to our future discretion. As to the sort of
condition prefixed to the pledge, namely, "that the enemy should be
disposed to enter into the work of general pacification with the spirit
of reconciliation and equity," this phraseology cannot possibly be
considered otherwise than as so many words thrown in to fill the
sentence and to round it to the ear. We prefixed the same plausible
conditions to any renewal of the negotiation, in our manifesto on the
rejection of our proposals at Basle. We did not consider those
conditions as binding. We opened a much more serious negotiation
without any sort of regard to them; and there is no new negotiation
which we can possibly open upon fewer indications of conciliation and
equity than were to be discovered when we entered into our last at
Paris. Any of the slightest pretences, any of the most loose, formal,
equivocating expressions, would justify us, under the peroration of this
piece, in again sending the last or some other Lord Malmesbury to Paris.

I hope I misunderstand this pledge,--or that we shall show no more
regard to it than we have done to all the faith that we have plighted to
vigor and resolution in our former Declaration. If I am to understand
the conclusion of the Declaration to be what unfortunately it seems to
me, we make an engagement with the enemy, without any correspondent
engagement on his side. We seem to have cut ourselves off from any
benefit which an intermediate state of things might furnish to enable us
totally to overturn that power, so little connected with moderation and
justice. By holding out no hope, either to the justly discontented in
France, or to any foreign power, and leaving the recommencement of all
treaty to this identical junto of assassins, we do in effect assure and
guaranty to them the full possession of the rich fruits of their
confiscations, of their murders of men, women, and children, and of all
the multiplied, endless, nameless iniquities by which they have obtained
their power. We guaranty to them the possession of a