On that system of aggrandisement there was but one mind:  but two violent factions arose about the means.  The first wished France, diverted from the politics of the continent, to attend solely to her marine, to feed it by an increase of commerce, and thereby to overpower England on her own element.  They contended, that if England were disabled, the powers on the continent would fall into their proper subordination; that it was England which deranged the whole continental system of Europe.  The others, who were by far the more numerous, though not the most outwardly prevalent at court, considered this plan for France as contrary to her genius, her situation, and her natural means.  They agree as to the ultimate object, the reduction of the British power, and, if possible, its naval power; but they considered an ascendency on the continent as a necessary preliminary to that undertaking.  They argued, that the proceedings of England herself had proved the soundness of this policy.  That her greatest and ablest statesmen had not considered the support of a continental balance against France as a deviation from the principle of her naval power, but as one of the most effectual modes of carrying it into effect.  That such had been her policy ever since the Revolution, during which period the naval strength of 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.

What is truly astonishing, the partisans of those two opposite systems were at once prevalent, and at once employed, and in the very same transactions—­the one ostensibly, the other secretly, during the latter part of the reign of Louis XV.  Nor was there one court in which an ambassador resided on the part of the ministers, in which another, as a spy on him, did not also reside on the part of the king.  They who pursued the scheme for keeping peace on the continent, and particularly with Austria, acting officially and publicly, the other faction counteracting and opposing them.  These private agents were continually going from their function to the Bastile, and from the Bastile to employment, and favour again.  An inextricable cabal was formed, some of persons of rank, others of subordinates.  But by this means the corps of politicians was augmented in number, and the whole formed a body of active, adventuring, ambitious, discontented people, despising the regular ministry, despising the courts at which they were employed, despising the court which employed them.

The unfortunate Louis the Sixteenth was not the first cause of the evil by which he suffered.  He came to it, as to a sort of inheritance, by the false politics of his immediate predecessor.  This system of dark and perplexed intrigue had come to its perfection before he came to the throne:  and even then the Revolution strongly operated in all its causes.