For depend upon it, that, if we once give way to a sinister dealing, we shall teach others the game, and we shall be outwitted and overborne; the Spaniards, the Prussians, God knows who, will put us under contribution at their pleasure; and instead of being at the head of a great confederacy, and the arbiters of Europe, we shall, by our mistakes, break up a great design into a thousand little selfish quarrels, the enemy will triumph, and we shall sit down under the terms of unsafe and dependent peace, weakened, mortified, and disgraced, whilst all Europe, England included, is left open and defenceless on every part, to Jacobin principles, intrigues, and arms.  In the case of the king of France, declared to be our friend and ally, we will still be considering ourselves in the contradictory character of an enemy.  This contradiction, I am afraid, will, in spite of us, give a color of fraud to all our transactions, or at least will so complicate our politics that we shall ourselves be inextricably entangled in them.

I have Toulon in my eye.  It was with infinite sorrow I heard, that, in taking the king of France’s fleet in trust, we instantly unrigged and dismasted the ships, instead of keeping them in a condition to escape in case of disaster, and in order to fulfil our trust,—­that is, to hold them for the use of the owner, and in the mean time to employ them for our common service.  These ships are now so circumstanced, that, if we are forced to evacuate Toulon, they must fall into the hands of the enemy or be burnt by ourselves.  I know this is by some considered as a fine thing for us.  But the Athenians ought not to be better than the English, or Mr. Pitt less virtuous than Aristides.

Are we, then, so poor in resources that we can do no better with eighteen or twenty ships of the line than to burn them?  Had we sent for French Royalist naval officers, of which some hundreds are to be had, and made them select such seamen as they could trust, and filled the rest with our own and Mediterranean seamen, which are all over Italy to be had by thousands, and put them under judicious English commanders-in-chief, and with a judicious mixture of our own subordinates, the West Indies would at this day have been ours.  It may be said that these French officers would take them for the king of France, and that they would not be in our power.  Be it so.  The islands would not be ours, but they would not be Jacobinized.  This is, however, a thing impossible.  They must in effect and substance be ours.  But all is upon that false principle of distrust, which, not confiding in strength, can never have the full use of it.  They that pay, and feed, and equip, must direct.  But I must speak plain upon this subject.  The French islands, if they were all our own, ought not to be all kept.  A fair partition only ought to be made of those territories.  This is a subject of policy very serious, which has many relations and aspects.  Just here I only hint at it as answering an objection, whilst I state the mischievous consequences which suffer us to be surprised into a virtual breach of faith by confounding our ally with our enemy, because they both belong to the same geographical territory.