ere triumphed, when they
thought they had obtained it; whereas, when obtained as a basis of a
treaty, it was just the worst we could possibly have chosen. As to our
offer to cede a most unprofitable, and, indeed, beggarly, chargeable
counting-house or two in the East Indies, we ought not to presume that
they would consider this as anything else than a mockery. As to anything
of real value, we had nothing under heaven to offer, (for which we were
not ourselves in a very dubious struggle,) except the island of
Martinico only. When this object was to be weighed against the
Directorial conquests, merely as an object of a value at market, the
principle of barter became perfectly ridiculous: a single quarter in the
single city of Amsterdam was worth ten Martinicos, and would have sold
for many more years' purchase in any market overt in Europe. How was
this gross and glaring defect in the objects of exchange to be supplied?
It was to be made up by argument. And what was that argument? The
extreme utility of possessions in the West Indies to the augmentation of
the naval power of France. A very curious topic of argument to be
proposed and insisted on by an ambassador of Great Britain! It is
directly and plainly this:--"Come, we know that of all things you wish a
naval power, and it is natural you should, who wish to destroy the very
sources of the British greatness, to overpower our marine, to destroy
our commerce, to eradicate our foreign influence, and to lay us open to
an invasion, which at one stroke may complete our servitude and ruin and
expunge us from among the nations of the earth. Here I have it in my
budget, the infallible arcanum for that purpose. You are but novices in
the art of naval resources. Let you have the West Indies back, and your
maritime preponderance is secured, for which you would do well to be
moderate in your demands upon the Austrian Netherlands."

Under any circumstances, this is a most extraordinary topic of argument;
but it is rendered by much the more unaccountable, when we are told,
that, if the war has been diverted from the great object of establishing
society and good order in Europe by destroying the usurpation in France,
this diversion was made to increase the naval resources and power of
Great Britain, and to lower, if not annihilate, those of the marine of
France. I leave all this to the very serious reflection of every
Englishman.

This basis was no sooner admitted than the rejection