It seems to be a defect, connected with ingenuity, that it often employs itself more in matters of curiosity than usefulness.  Man must be the privy councillor of fate, or something is not right.  He must know the springs, the whys, and wherefores of every thing, or he sits down unsatisfied.  Whether this be a crime, or only a caprice of humanity, I am not enquiring into.  I shall take the passage as I find it, and place my objections against it.

It is not so properly the motives which produced the alliance, as the consequences which are to be produced from it, that mark out the field of philosophical reflection.  In the one we only penetrate into the barren cave of secrecy, where little can be known, and every thing may be misconceived; in the other, the mind is presented with a wide extended prospect, of vegetative good, and sees a thousand blessings budding into existence.

But the expression, even within the compass of the Abbe’s meaning, sets out with an error, because it is made to declare that, which no man has authority to declare.  Who can say that the happiness of mankind made no part of the motives which produced the alliance?  To be able to declare this, a man must be possessed of the mind of all the parties concerned, and know that their motives were something else.

In proportion as the independence of America became contemplated and understood, the local advantages of it to the immediate actors, and the numerous benefits it promised to mankind, appear to be every day encreasing, and we saw not a temporary good for the present race only, but a continued good to all posterity; these motives, therefore, added to those which preceded them, became the motives, on the part of America, which led her to propose and agree to the treaty of alliance, as the best effectual method of extending and securing happiness; and therefore, with respect to us, the Abbe is wrong.

France, on the other hand, was situated very differently to America.  She was not acted upon by necessity to seek a friend, and therefore her motive in becoming one, has the strongest evidence of being good, and that which is so, must have some happiness for its object.  With regard to herself she saw a train of conveniencies worthy her attention.  By lessening the power of an enemy, whom, at the same time, she sought neither to destroy nor distress, she gained an advantage without doing an evil, and created to herself a new friend by associating with a country in misfortune.  The springs of thought that lead to actions of this kind, however political they may be, are nevertheless naturally beneficent; for in all causes, good or bad, it is necessary there should be a fitness in the mind, to enable it to act in character with the object:  Therefore, as a bad cause cannot be prosecuted with a good motive, so neither can a good cause be long supported by a bad one, as no man acts without a motive; therefore, in the present instance, as they cannot be bad, they must be admitted to be good.  But the Abbe sets out upon such an extended scale, that he overlooks the degrees by which it is measured, and rejects the beginning of good, because the end comes not at once.