But the position of Germany is not like that of Poland, with regard to France, either for good or for evil.  If a conjunction between Prussia and the Emperor should be formed for the purpose of secularizing and rendering hereditary the Ecclesiastical Electorates and the Bishopric of Muenster, for settling two of them on the children of the Emperor, and uniting Cologne and Muenster to the dominions of the king of Prussia on the Rhine, or if any other project of mutual aggrandizement should be in prospect, and that, to facilitate such a scheme, the modern French should be permitted and encouraged to shake the internal and external security of these Ecclesiastical Electorates, Great Britain is so situated that she could not with any effect set herself in opposition to such a design.  Her principal arm, her marine, could here be of no sort of use.

[Sidenote:  To be resisted only by France.]

France, the author of the Treaty of Westphalia, is the natural guardian of the independence and balance of Germany.  Great Britain (to say nothing of the king’s concern as one of that august body) has a serious interest in preserving it; but, except through the power of France, acting upon the common old principles of state policy, in the case we have supposed, she has no sort of means of supporting that interest.  It is always the interest of Great Britain that the power of France should be kept within the bounds of moderation.  It is not her interest that that power should be wholly annihilated in the system of Europe.  Though at one time through France the independence of Europe was endangered, it is, and ever was, through her alone that the common liberty of Germany can be secured against the single or the combined ambition of any other power.  In truth, within this century the aggrandizement of other sovereign houses has been such that there has been a great change in the whole state of Europe; and other nations as well as France may become objects of jealousy and apprehension.

[Sidenote:  New principles of alliance.]

In this state of things, a new principle of alliances and wars is opened.  The Treaty of Westphalia is, with France, an antiquated fable.  The rights and liberties she was bound to maintain are now a system of wrong and tyranny which she is bound to destroy.  Her good and ill dispositions are shown by the same means. To communicate peaceably the rights of men is the true mode of her showing her friendship; to force sovereigns to submit to those rights is her mode of hostility.  So that, either as friend or foe, her whole scheme has been, and is, to throw the Empire into confusion; and those statesmen who follow the old routine of politics may see in this general confusion, and in the danger of the lesser princes, an occasion, as protectors or enemies, of connecting their territories to one or the other of the two great German powers.  They do not