The Allies, and Great Britain amongst the rest, (and perhaps amongst the foremost,) have been miserably deluded by this great, fundamental error:  that it was in our power to make peace with this monster of a state, whenever we chose to forget the crimes that made it great and the designs that made it formidable.  People imagined that their ceasing to resist was the sure way to be secure.  This “pale cast of thought” sicklied over all their enterprises, and turned all their politics awry.  They could not, or rather they would not, read, in the most unequivocal declarations of the enemy, and in his uniform conduct, that more safety was to be found in the most arduous war than in the friendship of that kind of being.  Its hostile amity can be obtained on no terms that do not imply an inability hereafter to resist its designs.  This great, prolific error (I mean that peace was always in our power) has been the cause that rendered the Allies indifferent about the direction of the war, and persuaded them that they might always risk a choice and even a change in its objects.  They seldom improved any advantage,—­hoping that the enemy, affected by it, would make a proffer of peace.  Hence it was that all their early victories have been followed almost immediately with the usual effects of a defeat, whilst all the advantages obtained by the Regicides have been followed by the consequences that were natural.  The discomfitures which the Republic of Assassins has suffered have uniformly called forth new exertions, which not only repaired old losses, but prepared new conquests.  The losses of the Allies, on the contrary, (no provision having been made on the speculation of such an event,) have been followed by desertion, by dismay, by disunion, by a dereliction of their policy, by a flight from their principles, by an admiration of the enemy, by mutual accusations, by a distrust in every member of the Alliance of its fellow, of its cause, its power, and its courage.

Great difficulties in consequence of our erroneous policy, as I have said, press upon every side of us.  Far from desiring to conceal or even to palliate the evil in the representation, I wish to lay it down as my foundation, that never greater existed.  In a moment when sudden panic is apprehended, it may be wise for a while to conceal some great public disaster, or to reveal it by degrees, until the minds of the people have time to be re-collected, that their understanding may have leisure to rally, and that more steady councils may prevent their doing something desperate under the first impressions of rage or terror.  But with regard to a general state of things, growing out of events and causes already known in the gross, there is no piety in the fraud that covers its true nature; because nothing but erroneous resolutions can be the result of false representations.  Those measures, which in common distress might be available, in greater are no better than playing with the evil.