The interior ministry are sensible, that war is a situation which sets in its full light the value of the hearts of a people; and they well know, that the beginning of the importance of the people must be the end of theirs.  For this reason they discover upon all occasions the utmost fear of everything, which by possibility may lead to such an event.  I do not mean that they manifest any of that pious fear which is backward to commit the safety of the country to the dubious experiment of war.  Such a fear, being the tender sensation of virtue, excited, as it is regulated, by reason, frequently shows itself in a seasonable boldness, which keeps danger at a distance, by seeming to despise it.  Their fear betrays to the first glance of the eye, its true cause, and its real object.  Foreign powers, confident in the knowledge of their character, have not scrupled to violate the most solemn treaties; and, in defiance of them, to make conquests in the midst of a general peace, and in the heart of Europe.  Such was the conquest of Corsica, by the professed enemies of the freedom of mankind, in defiance of those who were formerly its professed defenders.  We have had just claims upon the same powers:  rights which ought to have been sacred to them as well as to us, as they had their origin in our lenity and generosity towards France and Spain in the day of their great humiliation.  Such I call the ransom of Manilla, and the demand on France for the East India prisoners.  But these powers put a just confidence in their resource of the double cabinet.  These demands (one of them at least) are hastening fast towards an acquittal by prescription.  Oblivion begins to spread her cobwebs over all our spirited remonstrances.  Some of the most valuable branches of our trade are also on the point of perishing from the same cause.  I do not mean those branches which bear without the hand of the vine-dresser; I mean those which the policy of treaties had formerly secured to us; I mean to mark and distinguish the trade of Portugal, the loss of which, and the power of the cabal, have one and the same era.

If by any chance, the ministers who stand before the curtain possess or affect any spirit, it makes little or no impression.  Foreign courts and ministers, who were among the first to discover and to profit by this invention of the double cabinet, attend very little to their remonstrances.  They know that those shadows of ministers have nothing to do in the ultimate disposal of things.  Jealousies and animosities are sedulously nourished in the outward administration, and have been even considered as a causa sine qua non in its constitution:  thence foreign courts have a certainty, that nothing can be done by common counsel in this nation.  If one of those ministers officially takes up a business with spirit, it serves only the better to signalize the meanness of the rest, and the discord of them all.  His colleagues in office are in haste to