That France by its mere geographical position, independently of every other circumstance, must affect every state of Europe: some of them immediately, all of them through mediums not very remote.

That the standing policy of this kingdom ever has been to watch over the external proceedings of France, (whatever form the interior government of that kingdom might take,) and to prevent the extension of its dominion or its ruling influence over other states.

That there is nothing in the present internal state of things in France which alters the national policy with regard to the exterior relations of that country.

That there are, on the contrary, many things in the internal circumstances of France (and perhaps of this country, too) which tend to fortify the principles of that fundamental policy, and which render the active assertion of those principles more pressing at this than at any former time.

That, by a change effected in about three weeks, France has been able to penetrate into the heart of Germany, to make an absolute conquest of Savoy, to menace an immediate invasion of the Netherlands, and to awe and overbear the whole Helvetic body, which is in a most perilous situation: the great aristocratic Cantons having, perhaps, as much or more to dread from their own people, whom they arm, but do not choose or dare to employ, as from the foreign enemy, which against all public faith has butchered their troops serving by treaty in France. To this picture it is hardly necessary to add the means by which Prance has been enabled to effect all this,—namely, the apparently entire destruction of one of the largest and certainly the highest disciplined and best appointed army ever seen, headed by the first military sovereign in Europe, with a captain under him of the greatest renown; and that without a blow given or received on any side. This state of things seems to me, even if it went no further, truly serious.

Circumstances have enabled France to do all this by land. On the other element she has begun to exert herself; and she must succeed in her designs, if enemies very different from those she has hitherto had to encounter do not resist her.

She has fitted out a naval force, now actually at sea, by which she is enabled to give law to the whole Mediterranean. It is known as a fact, (and if not so known, it is in the nature of things highly probable,) that she proposes the ravage of the Ecclesiastical State and the pillage of Rome, as her first object; that nest she means to bombard Naples,—to awe, to humble, and thus to command, all Italy,—to force it to a nominal neutrality, but to a real dependence,—to compel the Italian princes and republics to admit the free entrance of the French commerce, an open intercourse, and, the sure concomitant of that intercourse, the affiliated societies, in a manner similar to those she has established at Avignon, the Comtat, Chambéry, London, Manchester, &c., &c., which are so many colonies planted in all these countries, for extending the influence and securing the dominion of the French republic.

That there never has been hitherto a period in which this kingdom would have suffered a French fleet to domineer in the Mediterranean, and to force Italy to submit to such terms as France would think fit to impose,—to say nothing of what has been done upon land in support of the same system. The great object for which we preserved Minorca, whilst we could keep it, and for which we still retain Gibraltar, both at a great expense, was, and is, to prevent the predominance of France over the Mediterranean.

Thus far as to the certain and immediate effect of that armament upon the Italian States. The probable effect which that armament, and the other armaments preparing at Toulon and other ports, may have upon Spain, on the side of the Mediterranean, is worthy of the serious attention of the British councils.

That it is most probable, we may say in a manner certain, that, if there should be a rupture between France and Spain, France will not confine her offensive piratical operations against Spain to her efforts in the Mediterranean; on which side, however, she may grievously affect Spain, especially if she excites Morocco and Algiers, which undoubtedly she will, to fall upon that power.

That she will fit out armaments upon the ocean, by which the flota itself may be intercepted, and thus the treasures of all Europe, as well as the largest and surest resources of the Spanish monarchy, may be conveyed into France, and become powerful instruments for the annoyance of all her neighbors.

That she makes no secret of her designs.

That, if the inward and outward bound flota should escape, still France has more and better means of dissevering many of the provinces in the West and East Indies from the state of Spain than Holland had, when she succeeded in the same attempt. The French marine resembles not a little the old armaments of the Flibustiers, which about a century back, in conjunction with pirates of our nation, brought such calamities upon the Spanish colonies. They differ only in this,—that the present piratical force is out of all measure and comparison greater: one hundred and fifty ships of the line and frigates being ready-built, most of them in a manner new, and all applicable in different ways to that service. Privateers and Moorish corsairs possess not the best seamanship, and very little discipline, and indeed can make no figure in regular service; but in desperate adventures, and animated with a lust of plunder, they are truly formidable.

That the land forces of France are well adapted to concur with their marine in conjunct expeditions of this nature. In such expeditions, enterprise supplies the want of discipline, and perhaps more than supplies it. Both for this, and for other service, (however contemptible their military is in other respects,) one arm is extremely good, the engineering and artillery branch. The old officer corps in both being composed for the greater part of those who were not gentlemen, or gentlemen newly such, few have abandoned the service, and the men are veterans, well enough disciplined, and very expert. In this piratical way they must make war with good advantage. They must do so, even on the side of Flanders, either offensively or defensively. This shows the difference between the policy of Louis the Fourteenth, who built a wall of brass about his kingdom, and that of Joseph the Second, who premeditatedly uncovered his whole frontier.

That Spain, from the actual and expected prevalence of French power, is in a most perilous situation,—perfectly dependent on the mercy of that republic. If Austria is broken, or even humbled, she will not dare to dispute its mandates.

In the present state of things, we have nothing at all to dread from the power of Spain by sea or by land, or from any rivalry in commerce.

That we have much to dread from the connections into which Spain may be forced.

From the circumstances of her territorial possessions, of her resources, and the whole of her civil and political state, we may be authorized safely and with undoubted confidence to affirm that

Spain is not a substantive power.

That she must lean on France or on England.

That it is as much for the interest of Great Britain to prevent the predominancy of a French interest in that kingdom as if Spain were a province of the crown of Great Britain, or a state actually dependent on it,—full as much so as ever Portugal was reputed to be. This is a dependency of much greater value; and its destruction, or its being carried to any other dependency, of much more serious misfortune.

One of these two things must happen: either Spain must submit to circumstances and take such conditions as France will impose, or she must engage in hostilities along with the Emperor and the king of Sardinia.

If Spain should be forced or awed into a treaty with the republic of France, she must open her ports and her commerce, as well as the land communication for the French laborers, who were accustomed annually to gather in the harvest in Spain. Indeed, she must grant a free communication for travellers and traders through her whole country. In that case it is not conjectural, it is certain, the clubs will give law in the provinces; Bourgoing, or some such miscreant, will give law at Madrid.

In this England may acquiesce, if she pleases; and France will conclude a triumphant peace with Spain under her absolute dependence, with a broad highway into that, and into every state of Europe. She actually invites Great Britain to divide with her the spoils of the New World, and to make a partition of the Spanish monarchy. Clearly, it is better to do so than to suffer France to possess those spoils and that territory alone; which, without doubt, unresisted by us, she is altogether as able as she is willing to do.

This plan is proposed by the French in the way in which they propose all their plans,—and in the only way in which, indeed, they can propose them, where there is no regular communication between his Majesty and their republic.

What they propose is a plan. It is a plan also to resist their predatory project. To remain quiet, and to suffer them to make their own use of a naval power before our face, so as to awe and bully Spain into a submissive peace, or to drive them into a ruinous war, without any measure on our part, I fear is no plan at all.

However, if the plan of coöperation which France desires, and which her affiliated societies here ardently wish and are constantly writing up, should not be adopted, and the war between the Emperor and France should continue, I think it not at all likely that Spain should not be drawn into the quarrel. In that case, the neutrality of England will be a thing absolutely impossible. The time only is the subject of deliberation.

Then the question will be, whether we are to defer putting ourselves into a posture for the common defence, either by armament, or negotiation, or both, until Spain is actually attacked,—that is, whether our court will take a decided part for Spain, whilst Spain, on her side, is yet in a condition to act with whatever degree of vigor she may have, whilst that vigor is yet unexhausted,—or whether we shall connect ourselves with her broken fortunes, after she shall have received material blows, and when we shall have the whole slow length of that always unwieldy and ill-constructed, and then wounded and crippled body, to drag after us, rather than to aid us. Whilst our disposition is uncertain, Spain will not dare to put herself in such a state of defence as will make her hostility formidable or her neutrality respectable.

If the decision is such as the solution of this question (I take it to be the true question) conducts to, no time is to be lost. But the measures, though prompt, ought not to be rash and indigested. They ought to be well chosen, well combined, and well pursued. The system must be general; but it must be executed, not successively, or with interruption, but all together, uno flatu, in one melting, and one mould.

For this purpose we must put Europe before us, which plainly is, just now, in all its parts, in a state of dismay, derangement, and confusion, and, very possibly amongst all its sovereigns, full of secret heartburning, distrust, and mutual accusation. Perhaps it may labor under worse evils. There is no vigor anywhere, except the distempered vigor and energy of France. That country has but too much life in it, when everything around is so disposed to tameness and languor. The very vices of the French system at home tend to give force to foreign exertions. The generals must join the armies. They must lead them to enterprise, or they are likely to perish by their hands. Thus, without law or government of her own, France gives law to all the governments in Europe.

This great mass of political matter must have been always under the view of thinkers for the public, whether they act in office or not. Amongst events, even the late calamitous events were in the book of contingency. Of course they must have been in design, at least, provided for. A plan which takes in as many as possible of the states concerned will rather tend to facilitate and simplify a rational scheme for preserving Spain (if that were our sole, as I think it ought to be our principal object) than to delay and perplex it.

If we should think that a provident policy (perhaps now more than provident, urgent and necessary) should lead us to act, we cannot take measures as if nothing had been done. We must see the faults, if any, which have conducted to the present misfortunes: not for the sake of criticism, military or political, or from the common motives of blaming persons and counsels which have not been successful, but in order, if we can, to administer some remedy to these disasters, by the adoption of plans more bottomed in principle, and built on with more discretion. Mistakes may be lessons.

There seem, indeed, to have been several mistakes in the political principles on which the war was entered into, as well as in the plans upon which it was conducted,—some of them very fundamental, and not only visibly, but I may say palpably erroneous; and I think him to have less than the discernment of a very ordinary statesman, who could not foresee, from the very beginning, unpleasant consequences from those plans, though not the unparalleled disgraces and disasters which really did attend them: for they were, both principles and measures, wholly new and out of the common course, without anything apparently very grand in the conception to justify this total departure from all rule.

For, in the first place, the united sovereigns very much injured their cause by admitting that they had nothing to do with the interior arrangements of France,—in contradiction to the whole tenor of the public law of Europe, and to the correspondent practice of all its states, from the time we have any history of them. In this particular, the two German courts seem to have as little consulted the publicists of Germany as their own true interests, and those of all the sovereigns of Germany and Europe. This admission of a false principle in the law of nations brought them into an apparent contradiction, when they insisted on the reëstablishment of the royal authority in France. But this confused and contradictory proceeding gave rise to a practical error of worse consequence. It was derived from one and the same root: namely, that the person of the monarch of France was everything; and the monarchy, and the intermediate orders of the state, by which the monarchy was upheld, were nothing. So that, if the united potentates had succeeded so far as to reëstablish the authority of that king, and that he should be so ill-advised as to confirm all the confiscations, and to recognize as a lawful body and to class himself with that rabble of murderers, (and there wanted not persons who would so have advised him,) there was nothing in the principle or in the proceeding of the united powers to prevent such an arrangement.

An expedition to free a brother sovereign from prison was undoubtedly a generous and chivalrous undertaking. But the spirit and generosity would not have been less, if the policy had been more profound and more comprehensive,—that is, if it had taken in those considerations and those persons by whom, and, in some measure, for whom, monarchy exists. This would become a bottom for a system of solid and permanent policy, and of operations conformable to that system.

The same fruitful error was the cause why nothing was done to impress the people of France (so far as we can at all consider the inhabitants of France as a people) with an idea that the government was ever to be really French, or indeed anything else than the nominal government of a monarch, a monarch absolute as over them, but whose sole support was to arise from foreign potentates, and who was to be kept on his throne by German forces,—in short, that the king of France was to be a viceroy to the Emperor and the king of Prussia.

It was the first time that foreign powers, interfering in the concerns of a nation divided into parties, have thought proper to thrust wholly out of their councils, to postpone, to discountenance, to reject, and, in a manner, to disgrace, the party whom those powers came to support. The single person of a king cannot be a party. Woe to the king who is himself his party! The royal party, with the king or his representatives at its head, is the royal cause. Foreign powers have hitherto chosen to give to such wars as this the appearance of a civil contest, and not that of an hostile invasion. When the Spaniards, in the sixteenth century, sent aids to the chiefs of the League, they appeared as allies to that league, and to the imprisoned king (the Cardinal de Bourbon) which that league had set up. When the Germans came to the aid of the Protestant princes, in the same series of civil wars, they came as allies. When the English came to the aid of Henry the Fourth, they appeared as allies to that prince. So did the French always, when they intermeddled in the affairs of Germany: they came to aid a party there. When the English and Dutch intermeddled in the succession of Spain, they appeared as allies to the Emperor, Charles the Sixth. In short, the policy has been as uniform as its principles were obvious to an ordinary eye.

According to all the old principles of law and policy, a regency ought to have been appointed by the French princes of the blood, nobles, and parliaments, and then recognized by the combined powers. Fundamental law and ancient usage, as well as the clear reason of the thing, have always ordained it during an imprisonment of the king of France: as in the case of John, and of Francis the First. A monarchy ought not to be left a moment without a representative having an interest in the succession. The orders of the state ought also to have been recognized in those amongst whom alone they existed in freedom, that is, in the emigrants.

Thus, laying down a firm foundation on the recognition of the authorities of the kingdom of France, according to Nature and to its fundamental laws, and not according to the novel and inconsiderate principles of the usurpation which the united powers were come to extirpate, the king of Prussia and the Emperor, as allies of the ancient kingdom of France, would have proceeded with dignity, first, to free the monarch, if possible,—if not, to secure the monarchy as principal in the design; and in order to avoid all risks to that great object, (the object of other ages than the present, and of other countries than that of France,) they would of course avoid proceeding with more haste or in a different manner than what the nature of such an object required.

Adopting this, the only rational system, the rational mode of proceeding upon it was to commence with an effective siege of Lisle, which the French generals must have seen taken before their faces, or be forced to fight. A plentiful country of friends, from whence to draw supplies, would have been behind them; a plentiful country of enemies, from whence to force supplies, would have been before them. Good towns were always within reach to deposit their hospitals and magazines. The march from Lisle to Paris is through a less defensible country, and the distance is hardly so great as from Longwy to Paris.

If the old politic and military ideas had governed, the advanced guard would have been formed of those who best knew the country and had some interest in it, supported by some of the best light troops and light artillery, whilst the grand solid body of an army disciplined to perfection proceeded leisurely, and in close connection with all its stores, provisions, and heavy cannon, to support the expedite body in case of misadventure, or to improve and complete its success.

The direct contrary of all this was put in practice. In consequence of the original sin of this project, the army of the French princes was everywhere thrown into the rear, and no part of it brought forward to the last moment, the time of the commencement of the secret negotiation. This naturally made an ill impression on the people, and furnished an occasion for the rebels at Paris to give out that the faithful subjects of the king were distrusted, despised, and abhorred by his allies. The march was directed through a skirt of Lorraine, and thence into a part of Champagne, the Duke of Brunswick leaving all the strongest places behind him,—leaving also behind him the strength of his artillery,—and by this means giving a superiority to the French, in the only way in which the present France is able to oppose a German force.

In consequence of the adoption of those false politics, which turned everything on the king's sole and single person, the whole plan of the war was reduced to nothing but a coup de main, in order to set that prince at liberty. If that failed, everything was to be given up.

The scheme of a coup de main might (under favorable circumstances) be very fit for a partisan at the head of a light corps, by whose failure nothing material would be deranged. But for a royal army of eighty thousand men, headed by a king in person, who was to march an hundred and fifty miles through an enemy's country,—surely, this was a plan unheard of.

Although this plan was not well chosen, and proceeded upon principles altogether ill-judged and impolitic, the superiority of the military force might in a great degree have supplied the defects, and furnished a corrective to the mistakes. The greater probability was, that the Duke of Brunswick would make his way to Paris over the bellies of the rabble of drunkards, robbers, assassins, rioters, mutineers, and half-grown boys, under the ill-obeyed command of a theatrical, vaporing, reduced captain of cavalry, who opposed that great commander and great army. But—Diis aliter visum. He began to treat,—the winds blew and the rains beat,—the house fell, because it was built upon sand,—and great was the fall thereof. This march was not an exact copy of either of the two marches made by the Duke of Parma into France.

There is some secret. Sickness and weather may defeat an army pursuing a wrong plan: not that I believe the sickness to have been so great as it has been reported; but there is a great deal of superfluous humiliation in this business, a perfect prodigality of disgrace. Some advantage, real or imaginary, must compensate to a great sovereign and to a great general for so immense a loss of reputation. Longwy, situated as it is, might (one should think) be evacuated without a capitulation with a republic just proclaimed by the king of Prussia as an usurping and rebellious body. He was not far from Luxembourg. He might have taken away the obnoxious French in his flight. It does not appear to have been necessary that those magistrates who declared for their own king, on the faith and under the immediate protection of the king of Prussia, should be delivered over to the gallows. It was not necessary that the emigrant nobility and gentry who served with the king of Prussia's army, under his immediate command, should be excluded from the cartel, and given up to be hanged as rebels. Never was so gross and so cruel a breach of the public faith, not with an enemy, but with a friend. Dumouriez has dropped very singular hints. Custine has spoken out more broadly. These accounts have never been contradicted. They tend to make an eternal rupture between the powers. The French have given out, that the Duke of Brunswick endeavored to negotiate some name and place for the captive king, amongst the murderers and proscribers of those who have lost their all for his cause. Even this has not been denied.

It is singular, and, indeed, a thing, under all its circumstances, inconceivable, that everything should by the Emperor be abandoned to the king of Prussia. That monarch was considered as principal. In the nature of things, as well as in his position with regard to the war, he was only an ally, and a new ally, with crossing interests in many particulars, and of a policy rather uncertain. At best, and supposing him to act with the greatest fidelity, the Emperor and the Empire to him must be but secondary objects. Countries out of Germany must affect him in a still more remote manner. France, other than from the fear of its doctrinal principles, can to him be no object at all. Accordingly, the Rhine, Sardinia, and the Swiss are left to their fate. The king of Prussia has no direct and immediate concern with France; consequentially, to be sure, a great deal: but the Emperor touches France directly in many parts; he is a near neighbor to Sardinia, by his Milanese territories; he borders on Switzerland; Cologne, possessed by his uncle, is between Mentz, Treves, and the king of Prussia's territories on the Lower Rhine. The Emperor is the natural guardian of Italy and Germany,—the natural balance against the ambition of France, whether republican or monarchical. His ministers and his generals, therefore, ought to have had their full share in every material consultation,—which I suspect they had not. If he has no minister capable of plans of policy which comprehend the superintendency of a war, or no general with the least of a political head, things have been as they must be. However, in all the parts of this strange proceeding there must be a secret.

It is probably known to ministers. I do not mean to penetrate into it. My speculations on this head must be only conjectural. If the king of Prussia, under the pretext or on the reality of some information relative to ill practice on the part of the court of Vienna, takes advantage of his being admitted into the heart of the Emperor's dominions in the character of an ally, afterwards to join the common enemy, and to enable France to seize the Netherlands, and to reduce and humble the Empire, I cannot conceive, upon every principle, anything more alarming for this country, separately, and as a part of the general system. After all, we may be looking in vain in the regions of politics for what is only the operation of temper and character upon accidental circumstances. But I never knew accidents to decide the whole of any great business; and I never knew temper to act, but that some system of politics agreeable to its peculiar spirit was blended with it, strengthened it, and got strength from it. Therefore the politics can hardly be put out of the question.

Great mistakes have been committed: at least I hope so. If there have been none, the case in future is desperate. I have endeavored to point out some of those which have occurred to me, and most of them very early.

Whatever may be the cause of the present state of things, on a full and mature view and comparison of the historical matter, of the transactions that have passed before our eyes, and of the future prospect, I think I am authorized to form an opinion without the least hesitation.

That there never was, nor is, nor ever will be, nor ever can be, the least rational hope of making an impression on France by any Continental powers, if England is not a part, is not the directing part, is not the soul, of the whole confederacy against it.

This, so far as it is an anticipation of future, is grounded on the whole tenor of former history. In speculation it is to be accounted for on two plain principles.

First, That Great Britain is likely to take a more fair and equal part in the alliance than the other powers, as having less of crossing interest or perplexed discussion with any of them.

Secondly, Because France cannot have to deal with any of these Continental sovereigns, without their feeling that nation, as a maritime power, greatly superior to them all put together,—a force which is only to be kept in check by England.

England, except during the eccentric aberration of Charles the Second, has always considered it as her duty and interest to take her place in such a confederacy. Her chief disputes must ever be with France; and if England shows herself indifferent and unconcerned, when these powers are combined against the enterprises of France, she is to look with certainty for the same indifference on the part of these powers, when she may be at war with that nation. This will tend totally to disconnect this kingdom from the system of Europe, in which if she ought not rashly to meddle, she ought never wholly to withdraw herself from it.

If, then, England is put in motion, whether by a consideration of the general safety, or of the influence of France upon Spain, or by the probable operations of this new system on the Netherlands, it must embrace in its project the whole as much as possible, and the part it takes ought to be as much as possible a leading and presiding part.

I therefore beg leave to suggest,—

First, That a minister should forthwith be sent to Spain, to encourage that court to persevere in the measures they have adopted against France,—to make a close alliance and guaranty of possessions, as against France, with that power,—and, whilst the formality of the treaty is pending, to assure them of our protection, postponing any lesser disputes to another occasion.

Secondly, To assure the court of Vienna of our desire to enter into our ancient connections with her, and to support her effectually in the war which France has declared against her.

Thirdly, To animate the Swiss and the king of Sardinia to take a part, as the latter once did on the principles of the Grand Alliance.

Fourthly, To put an end to our disputes with Russia, and mutually to forget the past. I believe, if she is satisfied of this oblivion, she will return to her old sentiments with regard to this court, and will take a more forward part in this business than any other power.

Fifthly, If what has happened to the king of Prussia is only in consequence of a sort of panic or of levity, and an indisposition to persevere long in one design, the support and concurrence of Russia will tend to steady him, and to give him resolution. If he be ill-disposed, with that power on his back, and without one ally in Europe, I conceive he will not be easily led to derange the plan.

Sixthly, To use the joint influence of our court, and of our then allied powers, with Holland, to arm as fully as she can by sea, and to make some addition by land.

Seventhly, To acknowledge the king of France's next brother (assisted by such a council and such representatives of the kingdom of France as shall be thought proper) regent of France, and to send that prince a small supply of money, arms, clothing, and artillery.

Eighthly, To give force to these negotiations, an instant naval armament ought to be adopted,—one squadron for the Mediterranean, another for the Channel. The season is convenient,—most of our trade being, as I take it, at home.

After speaking of a plan formed upon the ancient policy and practice of Great Britain and of Europe, to which this is exactly conformable in every respect, with no deviation whatsoever, and which is, I conceive, much more strongly called for by the present circumstances than by any former, I must take notice of another, which I hear, but cannot persuade myself to believe, is in agitation. This plan is grounded upon the very same view of things which is here stated,—namely, the danger to all sovereigns, and old republics, from the prevalence of French power and influence.

It is, to form a congress of all the European powers for the purpose of a general defensive alliance, the objects of which should be,—

First, The recognition of this new republic, (which they well know is formed on the principles and for the declared purpose of the destruction of all kings,) and, whenever the heads of this new republic shall consent to release the royal captives, to make peace with them.

Secondly, To defend themselves with their joint forces against the open aggressions, or the secret practices, intrigues, and writings, which are used to propagate the French principles.

It is easy to discover from whose shop this commodity comes. It is so perfectly absurd, that, if that or anything like it meets with a serious entertainment in any cabinet, I should think it the effect of what is called a judicial blindness, the certain forerunner of the destruction of all crowns and kingdoms.

An offensive alliance, in which union is preserved by common efforts in common dangers against a common active enemy, may preserve its consistency, and may produce for a given time some considerable effect: though this is not easy, and for any very long period can hardly be expected. But a defensive alliance, formed of long discordant interests, with innumerable discussions existing, having no one pointed object to which it is directed, which is to be held together with an unremitted vigilance, as watchful in peace as in war, is so evidently impossible, is such a chimera, is so contrary to human nature and the course of human affairs, that I am persuaded no person in his senses, except those whose country, religion, and sovereign are deposited in the French funds, could dream of it. There is not the slightest petty boundary suit, no difference between a family arrangement, no sort of misunderstanding or cross purpose between the pride and etiquette of courts, that would not entirely disjoint this sort of alliance, and render it as futile in its effects as it is feeble in its principle. But when we consider that the main drift of that defensive alliance must be to prevent the operation of intrigue, mischievous doctrine, and evil example, in the success of unprovoked rebellion, regicide, and systematic assassination and massacre, the absurdity of such a scheme becomes quite lamentable. Open the communication with France, and the rest follows of course.

How far the interior circumstances of this country support what is said with regard to its foreign polities must be left to bettor judgments. I am sure the French faction here is infinitely strengthened by the success of the assassins on the other side of the water. This evil in the heart of Europe must be extirpated from that centre, or no part of the circumference can be free from the mischief which radiates from it, and which will spread, circle beyond circle, in spite of all the little defensive precautions which can be employed against it.

I do not put my name to these hints submitted to the consideration of reflecting men. It is of too little importance to suppose the name of the writer could add any weight to the state of things contained in this paper. That state of things presses irresistibly on my judgment, and it lies, and has long lain, with a heavy weight upon my mind. I cannot think that what is done in France is beneficial to the human race. If it were, the English Constitution ought no more to stand against it than the ancient Constitution of the kingdom in which the new system prevails. I thought it the duty of a man not unconcerned for the public, and who is a faithful subject to the king, respectfully to submit this state of facts, at this new step in the progress of the French arms and politics, to his Majesty, to his confidential servants, and to those persons who, though not in office, by their birth, their rank, their fortune, their character, and their reputation for wisdom, seem to me to have a large stake in the stability of the ancient order of things.

BATH, November 5, 1792.

As the proposed manifesto is, I understand, to promulgate to the world the general idea of a plan for the regulation of a great kingdom, and through the regulation of that kingdom probably to decide the fate of Europe forever, nothing requires a more serious deliberation with regard to the time of making it, the circumstances of those to whom it is addressed, and the matter it is to contain.

As to the time, (with the due diffidence in my own opinion,) I have some doubts whether it is not rather unfavorable to the issuing any manifesto with regard to the intended government of France, and for this reason: that it is (upon the principal point of our attack) a time of calamity and defeat. Manifestoes of this nature are commonly made when the army of some sovereign enters into the enemy's country in great force, and under the imposing authority of that force employs menaces towards those whom he desires to awe, and makes promises to those whom he wishes to engage in his favor.

As to a party, what has been done at Toulon leaves no doubt that the party for which we declare must be that which substantially declares for royalty as the basis of the government.

As to menaces, nothing, in my opinion, can contribute more effectually to lower any sovereign in the public estimation, and to turn his defeats into disgraces, than to threaten in a moment of impotence. The second manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick appeared, therefore, to the world to be extremely ill-timed. However, if his menaces in that manifesto had been seasonable, they were not without an object. Great crimes then apprehended, and great evils then impending, were to be prevented. At this time, every act which early menaces might possibly have prevented is done. Punishment and vengeance alone remain,—and God forbid that they should ever be forgotten! But the punishment of enormous offenders will not be the less severe, or the less exemplary, when it is not threatened at a moment when we have it not in our power to execute our threats. On the other side, to pass by proceedings of such a nefarious nature, in all kinds, as have been carried on in France, without any signification of resentment, would be in effect to ratify them, and thus to become accessaries after the fact in all those enormities which it is impossible to repeat or think of without horror. An absolute silence appears to me to be at this time the only safe course.

The second usual matter of manifestoes is composed of promises to those who cooperate with our designs. These promises depend in a great measure, if not wholly, on the apparent power of the person who makes them to fulfil his engagements. A time of disaster on the part of the promiser seems not to add much to the dignity of his person or to the effect of his offers. One would hardly wish to seduce any unhappy persons to give the last provocation to a merciless tyranny, without very effectual means of protecting them.

The time, therefore, seems (as I said) not favorable to a general manifesto, on account of the unpleasant situation of our affairs. However, I write in a changing scene, when a measure very imprudent to-day may be very proper to-morrow. Some great victory may alter the whole state of the question, so far as it regards our power of fulfilling any engagement we may think fit to make.

But there is another consideration of far greater importance for all the purposes of this manifesto. The public, and the parties concerned, will look somewhat to the disposition of the promiser indicated by his conduct, as well as to his power of fulfilling his engagements.

Speaking of this nation as part of a general combination of powers, are we quite sure that others can believe us to be sincere, or that we can be even fully assured of our own sincerity, in the protection of those who shall risk their lives for the restoration of monarchy in France, when the world sees that those who are the natural, legal, constitutional representatives of that monarchy, if it has any, have not had their names so much as mentioned in any one public act, that in no way whatever are their persons brought forward, that their rights have not been expressly or implicitly allowed, and that they have not been in the least consulted on the important interests they have at stake? On the contrary, they are kept in a state of obscurity and contempt, and in a degree of indigence at times bordering on beggary. They are, in fact, little less prisoners in the village of Hanau than the royal captives who are locked up in the tower of the Temple. What is this, according to the common indications which guide the judgment of mankind, but, under the pretext of protecting the crown of France, in reality to usurp it?

I am also very apprehensive that there are other circumstances which must tend to weaken the force of our declarations. No partiality to the allied powers can prevent great doubts on the fairness of our intentions as supporters of the crown of France, or of the true principles of legitimate government in opposition to Jacobinism, when it is visible that the two leading orders of the state of France, who are now the victims, and who must always be the true and sole supports of monarchy in that country, are, at best, in some of their descriptions, considered only as objects of charity, and others are, when employed, employed only as mercenary soldiers,—that they are thrown back out of all reputable service, are in a manner disowned, considered as nothing in their own cause, and never once consulted in the concerns of their king, their country, their laws, their religion, and their property. We even affect to be ashamed of them. In all our proceedings we carefully avoid the appearance of being of a party with them. In all our ideas of treaty we do not regard them as what they are, the two leading orders of the kingdom. If we do not consider them in that light, we must recognize the savages by whom they have been ruined, and who have declared war upon Europe, whilst they disgrace and persecute human nature, and openly defy the God that made them, as real proprietors of France.

I am much afraid, too, that we shall scarcely be believed fair supporters of lawful monarchy against Jacobinism, so long as we continue to make and to observe cartels with the Jacobins, and on fair terms exchange prisoners with them, whilst the Royalists, invited to our standard, and employed under our public faith against the Jacobins, if taken by that savage faction, are given up to the executioner without the least attempt whatsoever at reprisal. For this we are to look at the king of Prussia's conduct, compared with his manifestoes about a twelvemonth ago. For this we are to look at the capitulations of Mentz and Valenciennes, made in the course of the present campaign. By those two capitulations the Christian Royalists were excluded from any participation in the cause of the combined powers. They were considered as the outlaws of Europe. Two armies were in effect sent against them. One of those armies (that which surrendered Mentz) was very near overpowering the Christians of Poitou, and the other (that which surrendered at Valenciennes) has actually crushed the people whom oppression and despair had driven to resistance at Lyons, has massacred several thousands of them in cold blood, pillaged the whole substance of the place, and pursued their rage to the very houses, condemning that noble city to desolation, in the unheard-of manner we have seen it devoted.

It is, then, plain, by a conduct which overturns a thousand declarations, that we take the Royalists of France only as an instrument of some convenience in a temporary hostility with the Jacobins, but that we regard those atheistic and murderous barbarians as the bonâ fide possessors of the soil of France. It appears, at least, that we consider them as a fair government de facto, if not de jure, a resistance to which, in favor of the king of Prance, by any man who happened to be born within that country, might equitably be considered by other nations as the crime of treason.

For my part, I would sooner put my hand into the fire than sign an invitation to oppressed men to fight under my standard, and then, on every sinister event of war, cruelly give them up to be punished as the basest of traitors, as long as I had one of the common enemy in my hands to be put to death in order to secure those under my protection, and to vindicate the common honor of sovereigns. We hear nothing of this kind of security in favor of those whom we invite to the support of our cause. Without it, I am not a little apprehensive that the proclamations of the combined powers might (contrary to their intention, no doubt) be looked upon as frauds, and cruel traps laid for their lives.

So far as to the correspondence between our declarations and our conduct: let the declaration be worded as it will, the conduct is the practical comment by which, and which alone, it can be understood. This conduct, acting on the declaration, leaves a monarchy without a monarch, and without any representative or trustee for the monarch and the monarchy. It supposes a kingdom without states and orders, a territory without proprietors, and faithful subjects who are to be left to the fate of rebels and traitors.

The affair of the establishment of a government is a very difficult undertaking for foreign powers to act in as principals; though as auxiliaries and mediators it has been not at all unusual, and may be a measure full of policy and humanity and true dignity.

The first thing we ought to do, supposing us not giving the law as conquerors, but acting as friendly powers applied to for counsel and assistance in the settlement of a distracted country, is well to consider the composition, nature, and temper of its objects, and particularly of those who actually do or who ought to exercise power in that state. It is material to know who they are, and how constituted, whom we consider as the people of France.

The next consideration is, through whom our arrangements are to be made, and on what principles the government we propose is to be established.

The first question on the people is this: Whether we are to consider the individuals now actually in France, numerically taken and arranged into Jacobin clubs, as the body politic, constituting the nation of France,—or whether we consider the original individual proprietors of lands, expelled since the Revolution, and the states and the bodies politic, such as the colleges of justice called Parliaments, the corporations, noble and not noble, of bailliages and towns and cities, the bishops and the clergy, as the true constituent parts of the nation, and forming the legally organized parts of the people of France.

In this serious concern it is very necessary that we should have the most distinct ideas annexed to the terms we employ; because it is evident that an abuse of the term people has been the original, fundamental cause of those evils, the cure of which, by war and policy, is the present object of all the states of Europe.

If we consider the acting power in Prance, in any legal construction of public law, as the people, the question is decided in favor of the republic one and indivisible. But we have decided for monarchy. If so, we have a king and subjects; and that king and subjects have rights and privileges which ought to be supported at home: for I do not suppose that the government of that kingdom can or ought to be regulated by the arbitrary mandate of a foreign confederacy.

As to the faction exercising power, to suppose that monarchy can be supported by principled regicides, religion by professed atheists, order by clubs of Jacobins, property by committees of proscription, and jurisprudence by revolutionary tribunals, is to be sanguine in a degree of which I am incapable. On them I decide, for myself, that these persons are not the legal corporation of France, and that it is not with them we can (if we would) settle the government of France.

Since, then, we have decided for monarchy in that kingdom, we ought also to settle who is to be the monarch, who is to be the guardian of a minor, and how the monarch and monarchy is to be modified and supported; if the monarch is to be elected, who the electors are to be,—if hereditary, what order is established, corresponding with an hereditary monarchy, and fitted to maintain it; who are to modify it in its exercise; who are to restrain its powers, where they ought to be limited, to strengthen them, where they are to be supported, or, to enlarge them, where the object, the time, and the circumstances may demand their extension. These are things which, in the outline, ought to be made distinct and clear; for if they are not, (especially with regard to those great points, who are the proprietors of the soil, and what is the corporation of the kingdom,) there is nothing to hinder the complete establishment of a Jacobin republic, (such as that formed in 1790 and 1791,) under the name of a Démocratie Royale. Jacobinism does not consist in the having or not having a certain pageant under the name of a king, but "in taking the people as equal individuals, without any corporate name or description, without attention to property, without division of powers, and forming the government of delegates from a number of men so constituted,—in destroying or confiscating property, and bribing the public creditors, or the poor, with the spoils, now of one part of the community, now of another, without regard to prescription or possession."

I hope no one can be so very blind as to imagine that monarchy can be acknowledged and supported in France upon any other basis than that of its property, corporate and individual,—or that it can enjoy a moment's permanence or security upon any scheme of things which sets aside all the ancient corporate capacities and distinctions of the kingdom, and subverts the whole fabric of its ancient laws and usages, political, civil, and religious, to introduce a system founded on the supposed rights of man, and the absolute equality of the human race. Unless, therefore, we declare clearly and distinctly in favor of the restoration of property, and confide to the hereditary property of the kingdom the limitation and qualifications of its hereditary monarchy, the blood and treasure of Europe is wasted for the establishment of Jacobinism in France. There is no doubt that Danton and Robespierre, Chaumette and Barère, that Condorcet, that Thomas Paine, that La Fayette, and the ex-Bishop of Autun, the Abbé Grégoire, with all the gang of the Sieyèses, the Henriots, and the Santerres, if they could secure themselves in the fruits of their rebellion and robbery, would be perfectly indifferent, whether the most unhappy of all infants, whom by the lessons of the shoemaker, his governor and guardian, they are training up studiously and methodically to be an idiot, or, what is worse, the most wicked and base of mankind, continues to receive his civic education in the Temple or the Tuileries, whilst they, and such as they, really govern the kingdom.

It cannot be too often and too strongly inculcated, that monarchy and property must, in France, go together, or neither can exist. To think of the possibility of the existence of a permanent and hereditary royalty, where nothing else is hereditary or permanent in point either of personal or corporate dignity, is a ruinous chimera, worthy of the Abbé Sieyès, and those wicked fools, his associates, who usurped power by the murders of the 19th of July and the 6th of October, 1789, and who brought forth the monster which they called Démocratie Royale, or the Constitution.

I believe that most thinking men would prefer infinitely some sober and sensible form of a republic, in which there was no mention at all of a king, but which held out some reasonable security to property, life, and personal freedom, to a scheme of tilings like this Démocratie Royale, founded on impiety, immorality, fraudulent currencies, the confiscation of innocent individuals, and the pretended rights of man,—and which, in effect, excluding the whole body of the nobility, clergy, and landed property of a great nation, threw everything into the hands of a desperate set of obscure adventurers, who led to every mischief a blind and bloody band of sans-culottes. At the head, or rather at the tail, of this system was a miserable pageant, as its ostensible instrument, who was to be treated with every species of indignity, till the moment when he was conveyed from the palace of contempt to the dungeon of horror, and thence led by a brewer of his capital, through the applauses of an hired, frantic, drunken multitude, to lose his head upon a scaffold.

This is the Constitution, or Démocratie Royale; and this is what infallibly would be again set up in France, to run exactly the same round, if the predominant power should so far be forced to submit as to receive the name of a king, leaving it to the Jacobins (that is, to those who have subverted royalty and destroyed property) to modify the one and to distribute the other as spoil. By the Jacobins I mean indiscriminately the Brissotins and the Maratists, knowing no sort of difference between them. As to any other party, none exists in that unhappy country. The Royalists (those in Poitou excepted) are banished and extinguished; and as to what they call the Constitutionalists, or Democrates Royaux, they never had an existence of the smallest degree of power, consideration, or authority, nor, if they differ at all from the rest of the atheistic banditti, (which from their actions and principles I have no reason to think,) were they ever any other than the temporary tools and instruments of the more determined, able, and systematic regicides. Several attempts have been made to support this chimerical Démocratie Royale: the first was by La Fayette, the last by Dumouriez: they tended only to show that this absurd project had no party to support it. The Girondists under Wimpfen, and at Bordeaux, have made some struggle. The Constitutionalists never could make any, and for a very plain reason: they were leaders in rebellion. All their principles and their whole scheme of government being republican, they could never excite the smallest degree of enthusiasm in favor of the unhappy monarch, whom they had rendered contemptible, to make him the executive officer in their new commonwealth. They only appeared as traitors to their own Jacobin cause, not as faithful adherents to the king.

In an address to France, in an attempt to treat with it, or in considering any scheme at all relative to it, it is impossible we should mean the geographical, we must always mean the moral and political country. I believe we shall be in a great error, if we act upon an idea that there exists in that country any organized body of men who might be willing to treat on equitable terms for the restoration of their monarchy, but who are nice in balancing those terms, and who would accept such as to them appeared reasonable, but who would quietly submit to the predominant power, if they were not gratified in the fashion of some constitution which suited with their fancies.

No individual influence, civil or military.I take the state of France to be totally different. I know of no such body, and of no such party. So far from a combination of twenty men, (always excepting Poitou,) I never yet heard that a single man could be named of sufficient force or influence to answer for another man, much less for the smallest district in the country, or for the most incomplete company of soldiers in the army. We see every man that the Jacobins choose to apprehend taken up in his village or in his house, and conveyed to prison without the least shadow of resistance,—and this indifferently, whether he is suspected of Royalism, or Federalism, Moderantism, Democracy Royal, or any other of the names of faction which they start by the hour. What is much more astonishing, (and, if we did not carefully attend to the genius and circumstances of this Revolution, must indeed appear incredible,) all their most accredited military men, from a generalissimo to a corporal, may be arrested, (each in the midst of his camp, and covered with the laurels of accumulated victories,) tied neck and heels, thrown into a cart, and sent to Paris to be disposed of at the pleasure of the Revolutionary tribunals.

No corporations of justice, commerce, or police.As no individuals have power and influence, so there are no corporations, whether of lawyers or burghers, existing. The Assembly called Constituent, destroyed all such institutions very early. The primary and secondary assemblies, by their original constitution, were to be dissolved when they answered the purpose of electing the magistrates, and were expressly disqualified from performing any corporate act whatsoever. The transient magistrates have been almost all removed before the expiration of their terms, and new have been lately imposed upon the people without the form or ceremony of an election. These magistrates during their existence are put under, as all the executive authorities are from first to last, the popular societies (called Jacobin clubs) of the several countries, and this by an express order of the National Convention: it is even made a case of death to oppose or attack those clubs. They, too, have been lately subjected to an expurgatory scrutiny, to drive out from them everything savoring of what they call the crime of moderantism, of which offence, however, few were guilty. But as people began to take refuge from their persecutions amongst themselves, they have driven them from that last asylum.

The state of France is perfectly simple. It consists of but two descriptions,—the oppressors and the oppressed.

The first has the whole authority of the state in their hands,—all the arms, all the revenues of the public, all the confiscations of individuals and corporations. They have taken the lower sort from their occupations and have put them into pay, that they may form them into a body of janizaries to overrule and awe property. The heads of these wretches they never suffer to cool. They supply them with a food for fury varied by the day,—besides the sensual state of intoxication, from which they are rarely free. They have made the priests and people formally abjure the Divinity; they have estranged them from every civil, moral, and social, or even natural and instinctive sentiment, habit, and practice, and have rendered them systematically savages, to make it impossible for them to be the instruments of any sober and virtuous arrangement, or to be reconciled to any state of order, under any name whatsoever.

The other description—the oppressed—are people of some property: they are the small relics of the persecuted landed interest; they are the burghers and the farmers. By the very circumstance of their being of some property, though numerous in some points of view, they cannot be very considerable as a number. In cities the nature of their occupations renders them domestic and feeble; in the country it confines them to their farm for subsistence. The national guards are all changed and reformed. Everything suspicious in the description of which they were composed is rigorously disarmed. Committees, called of vigilance and safety, are everywhere formed: a most severe and scrutinizing inquisition, far more rigid than anything ever known or imagined. Two persons cannot meet and confer without hazard to their liberty, and even to their lives. Numbers scarcely credible have been executed, and their property confiscated. At Paris, and in most other towns, the bread they buy is a daily dole,—which they cannot obtain without a daily ticket delivered to them by their masters. Multitudes of all ages and sexes are actually imprisoned. I have reason to believe that in France there are not, for various state crimes, so few as twenty thousand[33] actually in jail,—a large proportion of people of property in any state. If a father of a family should show any disposition to resist or to withdraw himself from their power, his wife and children are cruelly to answer for it. It is by means of these hostages that they keep the troops, which they force by masses (as they call it) into the field, true to their colors.

Another of their resources is not to be forgotten. They have lately found a way of giving a sort of ubiquity to the supreme sovereign authority, which no monarch has been able yet to give to any representation of his.

The commissioners of the National Convention, who are the members of the Convention itself, and really exercise all its powers, make continual circuits through every province, and visits to every army. There they supersede all the ordinary authorities, civil and military, and change and alter everything at their pleasure. So that, in effect, no deliberative capacity exists in any portion of the inhabitants.

Toulon, republican in principle, having taken its decision in a moment under the guillotine, and before the arrival of these commissioners,—Toulon, being a place regularly fortified, and having in its bosom a navy in part highly discontented, has escaped, though by a sort of miracle: and it would not have escaped, if two powerful fleets had not been at the door, to give them not only strong, but prompt and immediate succor, especially as neither this nor any other seaport town in France can be depended on, from the peculiarly savage dispositions, manners, and connections among the lower sort of people in those places. This I take to be the true state of things in France, so far as it regards any existing bodies, whether of legal or voluntary association, capable of acting or of treating in corps.

As to the oppressed individuals, they are many, and as discontented as men must be under the monstrous and complicated tyranny of all sorts with which they are crushed. They want no stimulus to throw off this dreadful yoke; but they do want, not manifestoes, which they have had even to surfeit, but real protection, force, and succor.

The disputes and questions of men at their ease do not at all affect their minds, or ever can occupy the minds of men in their situation. These theories are long since gone by; they have had their day, and have done their mischief. The question is not between the rabble of systems, Fayettism, Condorcetism, Monarchism, or Democratism, or Federalism, on the one side, and the fundamental laws of France on the other,—or between all these systems amongst themselves. It is a controversy (weak, indeed, and unequal, on the one part) between the proprietor and the robber, between the prisoner and the jailer, between the neck and the guillotine. Four fifths of the French inhabitants would thankfully take protection from the emperor of Morocco, and would never trouble their heads about the abstract principles of the power by which they were snatched from imprisonment, robbery, and murder. But then these men can do little or nothing for themselves. They have no arms, nor magazines, nor chiefs, nor union, nor the possibility of these things within themselves. On the whole, therefore, I lay it down as a certainty, that in the Jacobins no change of mind is to be expected, and that no others in the territory of France have an independent and deliberative existence.

The truth is, that France is out of itself,—the moral France is separated from the geographical. The master of the house is expelled, and the robbers are in possession. If we look for the corporate people of France, existing as corporate in the eye and intention of public law, (that corporate people, I mean, who are free to deliberate and to decide, and who have a capacity to treat and conclude,) they are in Flanders, and Germany, in Switzerland, Spain, Italy, and England. There are all the princes of the blood, there are all the orders of the state, there are all the parliaments of the kingdom.

This being, as I conceive, the true state of France, as it exists territorially, and as it exists morally, the question will be, with whom we are to concert our arrangements, and whom we are to use as our instruments in the reduction, in the pacification, and in the settlement of France. The work to be done must indicate the workmen. Supposing us to have national objects, we have two principal and one secondary. The first two are so intimately connected as not to be separated even in thought: the reëstablishment of royalty, and the reëstablishment of property. One would think it requires not a great deal of argument to prove that the most serious endeavors to restore royalty will be made by Royalists. Property will be most energetically restored by the ancient proprietors of that kingdom.

When I speak of Royalists, I wish to be understood of those who were always such from principle. Every arm lifted up for royalty from the beginning was the arm of a man so principled. I do not think there are ten exceptions.

The principled Royalists are certainly not of force to effect these objects by themselves. If they were, the operations of the present great combination would be wholly unnecessary. What I contend for is, that they should be consulted with, treated with, and employed; and that no foreigners whatsoever are either in interest so engaged, or in judgment and local knowledge so competent to answer all these purposes, as the natural proprietors of the country.

Their number, for an exiled party, is also considerable. Almost the whole body of the landed proprietors of France, ecclesiastical and civil, have been steadily devoted to the monarchy. This body does not amount to less than seventy thousand,—a very great number in the composition of the respectable classes in any society. I am sure, that, if half that number of the same description were taken out of this country, it would leave hardly anything that I should call the people of England. On the faith of the Emperor and the king of Prussia, a body of ten thousand nobility on horseback, with the king's two brothers at their head, served with the king of Prussia in the campaign of 1792, and equipped themselves with the last shilling of their ruined fortunes and exhausted credit.[34] It is not now the question, how that great force came to be rendered useless and totally dissipated. I state it now, only to remark that a great part of the same force exists, and would act, if it were enabled. I am sure everything has shown us that in this war with France one Frenchman is worth twenty foreigners. La Vendée is a proof of this.

If we wish to make an impression on the minds of any persons in France, or to persuade them to join our standard, it is impossible that they should not be more easily led, and more readily formed and disciplined, (civilly and martially disciplined,) by those who speak their language, who are acquainted with their manners, who are conversant with their usages and habits of thinking, and who have a local knowledge of their country, and some remains of ancient credit and consideration, than with a body congregated from all tongues and tribes. Where none of the respectable native interests are seen in the transaction, it is impossible that any declarations can convince those that are within, or those that are without, that anything else than some sort of hostility in the style of a conqueror is meant. At best, it will appear to such wavering persons, (if such there are,) whom we mean to fix with us, a choice whether they are to continue a prey to domestic banditti, or to be fought for as a carrion carcass and picked to the bone by all the crows and vultures of the sky. They may take protection, (and they would, I doubt not,) but they can have neither alacrity nor zeal in such a cause. When they see nothing but bands of English, Spaniards, Neapolitans, Sardinians, Prussians, Austrians, Hungarians, Bohemians, Slavonians, Croatians, acting as principals, it is impossible they should think we come with a beneficent design. Many of those fierce and barbarous people have already given proofs how little they regard any French party whatsoever. Some of these nations the people of France are jealous of: such are the English and the Spaniards;—others they despise: such are the Italians;—others they hate and dread: such are the German and Danubian powers. At best, such interposition of ancient enemies excites apprehension; but in this case, how can they suppose that we come to maintain their legitimate monarchy in a truly paternal French government, to protect their privileges, their laws, their religion, and their property, when they see us make use of no one person who has any interest in them, any knowledge of them, or any the least zeal for them? On the contrary, they see that we do not suffer any of those who have shown a zeal in that cause which we seem to make our own to come freely into any place in which the allies obtain any footing.

If we wish to gain upon any people, it is right to see what it is they expect. We have had a proposal from the Royalists of Poitou. They are well entitled, after a bloody war maintained for eight months against all the powers of anarchy, to speak the sentiments of the Royalists of France. Do they desire us to exclude their princes, their clergy, their nobility? The direct contrary. They earnestly solicit that men of every one of these descriptions should be sent to them. They do not call for English, Austrian, or Prussian officers. They call for French emigrant officers. They call for the exiled priests. They have demanded the Comte d'Artois to appear at their head. These are the demands (quite natural demands) of those who are ready to follow the standard of monarchy.