very much in earnest about the conservation of the old patrimony of the house of Savoy; and Sardinia, who owed to an Italian force all her means of shutting out France from Italy, of which she has been supposed to hold the key, would not purchase the means of strength upon one side by yielding it on the other.  She would not readily give the possession of Novara for the hope of Savoy.  No continental power was willing to lose any of its continental objects for the increase of the naval power of Great Britain; and Great Britain would not give up any of the objects she sought for as the means of an increase to her naval power, to further their aggrandisement.

The moment this war came to be considered as a war merely of profit, the actual circumstances are such that it never could become really a war of alliance.  Nor can the peace be a peace of alliance, until things are put upon their right bottom.

I do not find it denied that when a treaty is entered into for peace, a demand will be made on the regicides to surrender a great part of their conquests on the continent.  Will they, in the present state of the war, make that surrender without an equivalent?  This continental cession must of course be made in favour of that party in the alliance that has suffered losses.  That party has nothing to furnish towards an equivalent.  What equivalent, for instance, has Holland to offer, who has lost her all?  What equivalent can come from the Emperor, every part of whose territories contiguous to France is already within the pale of the regicide dominions?  What equivalent has Sardinia to offer for Savoy and for Nice, I may say for her whole being?  What has she taken from the faction of France? she has lost very near her all; and she has gained nothing.  What equivalent has Spain to give?  Alas! she has already paid for her own ransom the fund of equivalent, and a dreadful equivalent it is, to England and to herself.  But I put Spain out of the question; she is a province of the Jacobin empire, and she must make peace or war according to the orders she receives from the directory of assassins.  In effect and substance, her crown is a fief of regicide.

Whence then can the compensation be demanded?  Undoubtedly from that power which alone has made some conquests.  That power is England.  Will the allies then give away their ancient patrimony, that England may keep islands in the West Indies?  They never can protract the war in good earnest for that object; nor can they act in concert with us, in our refusal to grant anything towards their redemption.  In that case we are thus situated.  Either we must give Europe, bound hand and foot, to France; or we must quit the West Indies without any one object, great or small, towards indemnity and security.  I repeat it, without any advantage whatever:  because, supposing that our conquest could comprise all that France ever possessed in the tropical America, it never can amount in any fair estimation to a fair