I suspect that the authors of this opinion are mere soldiers of fortune, who, though men of integrity and honor, would as gladly receive military rank from Russia, or Austria, or Prussia, as from the regent of France.  Perhaps their not having as much importance at his court as they could wish may incline them to this strange imagination.  Perhaps, having no property in old France, they are more indifferent about its restoration.  Their language is certainly flattering to all ministers in all courts.  We all are men; we all love to be told of the extent of our own power and our own faculties.  If we love glory, we are jealous of partners, and afraid even of our own instruments.  It is of all modes of flattery the most effectual, to be told that you can regulate the affairs of another kingdom better than its hereditary proprietors.  It is formed to flatter the principle of conquest so natural to all men.  It is this principle which is now making the partition of Poland.  The powers concerned have been told by some perfidious Poles, and perhaps they believe, that their usurpation is a great benefit to the people, especially to the common people.  However this may turn out with regard to Poland, I am quite sure that France could not be so well under a foreign direction as under that of the representatives of its own king and its own ancient estates.

I think I have myself studied France as much as most of those whom the allied courts are likely to employ in such a work.  I have likewise of myself as partial and as vain an opinion as men commonly have of themselves.  But if I could command the whole military arm of Europe, I am sure that a bribe of the best province in that kingdom would not tempt me to intermeddle in their affairs, except in perfect concurrence and concert with the natural, legal interests of the country, composed of the ecclesiastical, the military, the several corporate bodies of justice and of burghership, making under a monarch (I repeat it again and again) the French nation according to its fundamental Constitution.  No considerate statesman would undertake to meddle with it upon any other condition.

The government of that kingdom is fundamentally monarchical.  The public law of Europe has never recognized in it any other form of government.  The potentates of Europe have, by that law, a right, an interest, and a duty to know with what government they are to treat, and what they are to admit into the federative society,—­or, in other words, into the diplomatic republic of Europe.  This right is clear and indisputable.

What other and further interference they have a right to in the interior of the concerns of another people is a matter on which, as on every political subject, no very definite or positive rule can well be laid down.  Our neighbors are men; and who will attempt to dictate the laws under which it is allowable or forbidden to take a part in the concerns of men, whether they are considered individually or in a collective