“Thus, on deceitful Aetna’s Flow’ry side
          Unfading verdure glads the roving eye,
          While secret flames with unextinguish’d rage
          Insatiate on her wafted entrails prey,
          And melt her treach’rous beauties into ruin.”

Those efforts which the partizans of republicanism admire, and which even well-disposed persons regard as prodigies, are the simple and natural result of an unprincipled despotism, acting upon, and disposing of, all the resources of a rich, populous, and enslaved nation. "Il devient aise d’etre habile lorsqu’on s’est delivre des scrupules et des loix, de tout honneur et de toute justice, des droits de ses semblables, et des devoirs de l’autorite—­a ce degre d’independence la plupart des obstacles qui modifient l’activite humaine disparaissent; l’on parait avoir du talent lorsqu’on n’a que de l’impudence, et l’abus de la force passe pour energie.*”

* “Exertions of ability become easy, when men have released themselves from the scruples of conscience, the restraints of law, the ties of honour, the bonds of justice, the claims of their fellow creatures, and obedience to their superiors:—­at this point of independence, most of the obstacles which modify human activity disappear; impudence is mistaken for talents; and the abuse of power passes for energy.”

The operations of all other governments must, in a great measure, be restrained by the will of the people, and by established laws; with them, physical and political force are necessarily separate considerations:  they have not only to calculate what can be borne, but what will be submitted to; and perhaps France is the first country that has been compelled to an exertion of its whole strength, without regard to any obstacle, natural, moral, or divine.  It is for want of sufficiently investigating and allowing for this moral and political latitudinarianism of our enemies, that we are apt to be too precipitate in censuring the conduct of the war; and, in our estimation of what has been done, we pay too little regard to the principles by which we have been directed.  An honest man could scarcely imagine the means we have had to oppose, and an Englishman still less conceive that they would have been submitted to:  for the same reason that the Romans had no law against parricide, till experience had evinced the possibility of the crime.

In a war like the present, advantage is not altogether to be appreciated by military superiority.  If, as there is just ground for believing, our external hostilities have averted an internal revolution, what we have escaped is of infinitely more importance to us than what we could acquire.  Commerce and conquest, compared to this, are secondary objects; and the preservation of our liberties and our constitution is a more solid blessing than the commerce of both the Indies, or the conquest of nations.

Should the following pages contribute to impress this salutary truth on my countrymen, my utmost ambition will be gratified; persuaded, that a sense of the miseries they have avoided, and of the happiness they enjoy, will be their best incentive, whether they may have to oppose the arms of the enemy in a continuance of the war, or their more dangerous machinations on the restoration of peace.