As long as these powers flattered themselves that the menace of force would produce the effect of force, they acted on those declarations:  but when their menaces failed of success, their efforts took a new direction.  It did not appear to them that virtue and heroism ought to be purchased by millions of rix-dollars.  It is a dreadful truth, but it is a truth that cannot be concealed; in ability, in dexterity, in the distinctness of their views, the Jacobins are our superiors.  They saw the thing right from the very beginning.  Whatever were the first motives to the war among politicians, they saw that in its spirit, and for its objects, it was a civil war; and as such they pursued it.  It is a war between the partisans of the ancient, civil, moral, and political order of Europe, against a sect of fanatical and ambitious atheists which means to change them all.  It is not France extending a foreign empire over other nations; it is a sect aiming at universal empire, and beginning with the conquest of France.  The leaders of that sect secured the centre of Europe; and that secured, they knew, that whatever might be the event of battles and sieges, their cause was victorious.  Whether its territory had a little more or a little less peeled from its surface, or whether an island or two was detached from its commerce, to them was of little moment.  The conquest of France was a glorious acquisition.  That once well laid as a basis of empire, opportunities never could be wanting to regain or to replace what had been lost, and dreadfully to avenge themselves on the faction of their adversaries.

They saw it was a civil war.  It was their business to persuade their adversaries that it ought to be a foreign war.  The Jacobins everywhere set up a cry against the new crusade; and they intrigued with effect in the cabinet, in the field, and in every private society in Europe.  Their task was not difficult.  The condition of princes, and sometimes of first ministers too, is to be pitied.  The creatures of the desk, and the creatures of favour, had no relish for the principles of the manifestoes.  They promised no governments, no regiments, no revenues from whence emoluments might arise by perquisite or by grant.  In truth, the tribe of vulgar politicians are the lowest of our species.  There is no trade so vile and mechanical as government in their hands.  Virtue is not their habit.  They are out of themselves in any course of conduct recommended only by conscience and glory.  A large, liberal, and prospective view of the interests of states passes with them for romance; and the principles that recommend it, for the wanderings of a disordered imagination.  The calculators compute them out of their senses.  The jesters and buffoons shame them out of everything grand and elevated.  Littleness in object and in means, to them appears soundness and sobriety.  They think there is nothing worth pursuit but that which they can handle; which they can measure with a two-foot rule; which they can tell upon ten fingers.