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Great Britain had gone on increasing in the direct ratio of her interference in the politics of the continent. With much stronger reason ought the politics of France to take the same direction; as well for pursuing objects which her situation would dictate to her, though England had no existence, as for counteracting the politics of that nation; to France continental politics are primary; they looked on them only of secondary consideration to England, and, however necessary, but as means necessary to an end.-Letters on a Regicide Peace.

POSITION OF ENGLAND WITH REGARD TO FRANCE DURING THE PERIOD OF A CONTINENTAL WAR. -When Louis XIV. had made himself master of one of the largest and most important provinces of Spain; when he had in a manner overrun Lombardy, and was thundering at the gates of Turin; when he had mastered almost all Germany on this side of the Rhine; when he was on the point of ruining the august fabric of the empire; when, with the elector of Bavaria in his alliance, hardly anything interposed between him and Vienna; when the Turk hung with a mighty force over the empire on the other side; I do not know, that in the beginning of 1704 (that is, in the third year of the renovated war with Louis XIV.) the state of Europe was so truly alarming. To England it certainly was not. Holland (and Holland is a matter to England of value inestimable) was then powerful, was then independent, and, though greatly endangered, was then full of energy and spirit. But the great resource of Europe was in England: not in a sort of England detached from the rest of the world, and amusing herself with the puppet-show of a naval power, (it

can be no better, whilst all the sources of that power, and of every sort of power, are precarious,) but in that sort of England, who considered herself as embodied with Europe; but in that sort of England, who, sympathetic with the adversity or the happiness of mankind, felt that nothing in human affairs was foreign to her. We may consider it as a sure axiom, that, as on the one hand no confederacy of the least effect or duration can exist against France, of which England is not only a part, but the head, so neither can England pretend to cope with France but as connected with the body of Christendom.-Letters on a Regicide Peace.

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, isnot 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.Heads for the Consideration of the Present State of Affairs. 1792.

TONE TO BE ADOPTED BY GOVERNMENT IN MAKING WAR AGAINST FRANCE.-After such an elaborate display had been made of the injustice and insolence of an enemy, who seems to have been irritated by every one of the means, which had been commonly used with effect to soothe the rage of intemperate power, the natural result would be, that the scabbard, in which we in vain attempted to plunge our sword, should have been thrown away with scorn. It would have been natural, that, rising in the fullness of their might, insulted majesty, despised dignity, vio

lated justice, rejected supplication, patience goaded into fury, would have poured out all the length of the reins upon all the wrath which they had so long restrained. It might have been expected, that, emulous of the glory of the youthful hero* in alliance with him, touched by the example of what one man, well formed, and well placed, may do in the most desperate state of affairs, convinced there is a courage of the cabinet full as powerful, and far less vulgar than that of the field, our minister would have changed the whole line of that useless, prosperous prudence, which had hitherto produced all the effects of the blindest temerity. If he found his situation full of danger, (and I do not deny that it is perilous in the extreme,) he must feel that it is also full of glory; and that he is placed on a stage, than which no muse of fire, that had ascended the highest heaven of invention, could imagine anything more awful and august. It was hoped, that, in this swelling scene in which he moved with some of the first potentates of Europe for his fellow-actors, and with so many of the rest for the anxious spectators of a part, which, as he plays it, determines for ever their destiny and his own, like Ulysses in the unravelling point of the epic story, he would have thrown off his patience and his rags together; and, stripped of unworthy disguises, he would have stood forth in the form, and in the attitude, of an hero. On that day, it was thought he would have assumed the port of Mars; that he would bid to be brought forth from their hideous kennel (where his scrupulous tenderness had too long immured them) those impatient dogs of war, whose fierce regards affright

*The Archduke Charles of Austria.

even the minister of vengeance that feeds them; that he would let them loose, in famine, fever, plagues, and death, upon a guilty race, to whose frame, and to all whose habit, order, peace, religion, and virtue, are alien and abhorrent. It was expected that he would at last have thought of active and effectual war; that he would no longer amuse the British lion in the chase of mice and rats; that he would no longer employ the whole naval power of Great Britain, once the terror of the world, to prey upon the miserable remains of a peddling commerce, which the enemy did not regard, and from which none could profit. It was expected, that he would have re-asserted the justice of his cause; that he would have re-animated whatever remained to him of his allies, and endeavoured to recover those whom their fears had led astray; that he would have rekindled the martial ardour of his citizens; that he would have held out to them the example of their ancestry, the assertor of Europe, and the scourge of French ambition; that he would have reminded them of a posterity, which if this nefarious robbery, under the fraudulent name and false colour of a government, should in full power be seated in the heart of Europe, must for ever be consigned to vice, impiety, barbarism, and the most ignominious slavery of body and mind. In so holy a cause it was presumed, that he would (as in the beginning of the war he did) have opened all the temples; and with prayer, with fasting, and with supplication, (better directed than to the grim Moloch of regicide in France,) have called upon us to raise that united cry, which has so often stormed heaven, and with a pious violence forced down blessings upon a repentant

people. It was hoped that when he had invoked upon his endeavours the favourable regard of the Protector of the human race, it would be seen that his menaces to the enemy, and his prayers to the Almighty, were not followed, but accompanied, with correspondent action. It was hoped that his shrilling trumpet should be heard, not to announce a show, but to sound a charge.

Such a tone, as I guessed the minister would have taken, I am very sure, is the true, unsuborned, unsophisticated language of genuine, natural feeling, under the smart of patience exhausted and abused. -Letters on a Regicide Peace.

ENERGY REQUIRED TO ENABLE ENGLAND TO CARRY ON THE WAR. For one (if they be properly treated), I despair neither of the public fortune, nor of the public mind. There is much to be done undoubtedly, and much to be retrieved. We must walk in new ways, or we can never encounter our enemy in his devious march. We are not at an end of our struggle, nor near it. Let us not deceive ourselves : we are at the beginning of great troubles. I readily acknowledge that the state of public affairs is infinitely more unpromising, than at the period I have just now alluded to; and the position of all the powers of Europe, in relation to us, and in relation to each other, is more intricate and critical beyond all comparison. Difficult indeed is our situation. In all situations of difficulty men will be influenced in the part they take, not only by the reason of the case, but by the peculiar turn of their own character. The same ways to safety do not present themselves to all men, nor to the same men in different tempers. There is a courageous wisdom: there is also

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