be required than their refusal to repeal those obnoxious decrees (passed in the months of November and December, 1792,) which created so general and so just an alarm throughout Europe, and which excited the reprobation even of that party in England, which was willing to admit the equivocal interpretation given to them by the Executive Council of the day.  I proved, in the Letter to a Noble Earl before alluded to, from the very testimony of the members of that Council themselves, as exhibited in their official instructions to one of their confidential agents, that the interpretation which they had assigned to those decrees, in their communications with the British Ministry, was a base interpretation, and that they really intended to enforce the decrees, to the utmost extent of their possible operation, and, by a literal construction thereof, to encourage rebellion in every state, within the reach of their arms or their principles.  Nor have the present government merely forborne to repeal those destructive laws—­they have imitated the conduct of their predecessors, have actually put them in execution wherever they had the ability to do so, and have, in all respects, as far as related to those decrees, adopted the precise spirit and principles of the faction which declared war against England.  Let any man read the instructions of the Executive Council to PUBLICOLA CHAUSSARD, their Commissary in the Netherlands, in 1792 and 1793, and an account of the proceedings in the Low Countries consequent thereon, and then examine the conduct of the republican General, BOUNAPARTE, in Italy—­who must necessarily act from the instructions of the Executive Directory——­and he will be compelled to acknowledge the justice of my remark, and to admit that the latter actuated by the same pernicious desire to overturn the settled order of society, which invariably marked the conduct of the former.

“It is an acknowledged fact, that every revolution requires a provisional power to regulate its disorganizing movements, and to direct the methodical demolition of every part of the ancient social constitution.—­ Such ought to be the revolutionary power.

“To whom can such power belong, but to the French, in those countries into which they may carry their arms?  Can they with safety suffer it to be exercised by any other persons?  It becomes the French republic, then, to assume this kind of guardianship over the people whom she awakens to Liberty!*”

     * Considerations Generales fur l’Esprit et les Principes du Decret
     du 15 Decembre.

Such were the Lacedaemonian principles avowed by the French government in 1792, and such is the Lacedaimonian policy* pursued by the French government in 1796!  It cannot then, I conceive, be contended, that a treaty with a government still professing principles which have been repeatedly proved to be subversive of all social order, which have been acknowledged by their parents to have for their object the methodical demolition of existing constitutions, can be concluded without danger or risk.  That danger, I admit, is greatly diminished, because the power which was destined to carry into execution those gigantic projects which constituted its object, has, by the operations of the war, been considerably curtailed.  They well may exist in equal force, but the ability is no longer the same.