ifficulty for the preservation of
that inheritance, who calls on England, the natural ally of his
dominions, to deprive herself of her power of action, and to bind
herself to France. France at no time, and in none of its fashions, least
of all in its last, has been ever looked upon as the friend either of
Russia or of Great Britain. Everything good, I trust, is to be expected
from this prince,--whatever may be without authority given out of an
influence over his mind possessed by that only potentate from whom he
has anything to apprehend or with whom he has much even to discuss.

This sovereign knows, I have no doubt, and feels, on what sort of bottom
is to be laid the foundation of a Russian throne. He knows what a rock
of native granite is to form the pedestal of his statue who is to
emulate Peter the Great. His renown will be in continuing with ease and
safety what his predecessor was obliged to achieve through mighty
struggles. He is sensible that his business is not to innovate, out to
secure and to establish,--that reformations at this day are attempts at
best of ambiguous utility. He will revere his father with the piety of
a son, but in his government he will imitate the policy of his mother.
His father, with many excellent qualities, had a short reign,--because,
being a native Russian, he was unfortunately advised to act in the
spirit of a foreigner. His mother reigned over Russia three-and-thirty
years with the greatest glory,--because, with the disadvantage of being
a foreigner born, she made herself a Russian. A wise prince like the
present will improve his country; but it will be cautiously and
progressively, upon its own native groundwork of religion, manners,
habitudes, and alliances. If I prognosticate right, it is not the
Emperor of Russia that ever will call for extravagant proofs of our
desire to reconcile ourselves to the irreconcilable enemy of all
thrones.

I do not know why I should not include America among the European
powers,--because she is of European origin, and has not yet, like
France, destroyed all traces of manners, laws, opinions, and usages
which she drew from Europe. As long as that Europe shall have any
possessions either in the southern or the northern parts of that
America, even separated as it is by the ocean, it must be considered as
a part of the European system. It is not America, menaced with internal
ruin from the attempts to plant Jacobinism instead of liberty in that
coun