the name of peace may be made.  On that supposition, let us examine our own proceeding.  Let us compute the profit it has brought, and the advantage that it is likely to bring hereafter.  A peace too eagerly sought is not always the sooner obtained.  The discovery of vehement wishes generally frustrates their attainment, and your adversary has gained a great advantage over you when he finds you impatient to conclude a treaty.  There is in reserve not only something of dignity, but a great deal of prudence too.  A sort of courage belongs to negotiation, as well as to operations of the field.  A negotiator must often seem willing to hazard the whole issue of his treaty, if he wishes to secure any one material point.

The Regicides were the first to declare war.  We are the first to sue for peace.  In proportion to the humility and perseverance we have shown in our addresses has been the obstinacy of their arrogance in rejecting our suit.  The patience of their pride seems to have been worn out with the importunity of our courtship.  Disgusted as they are with a conduct so different from all the sentiments by which they are themselves filled, they think to put an end to our vexatious solicitation by redoubling their insults.

It happens frequently that pride may reject a public advance, while interest listens to a secret suggestion of advantage.  The opportunity has been afforded.  At a very early period in the diplomacy of humiliation, a gentleman was sent on an errand,[23] of which, from the motive of it, whatever the event might be, we can never be ashamed.  Humanity cannot be degraded by humiliation.  It is its very character to submit to such things.  There is a consanguinity between benevolence and humility.  They are virtues of the same stock.  Dignity is of as good a race; but it belongs to the family of fortitude.  In the spirit of that benevolence, we sent a gentleman to beseech the Directory of Regicide not to be quite so prodigal as their republic had been of judicial murder.  We solicited them to spare the lives of some unhappy persons of the first distinction, whose safety at other times could not have been an object of solicitation.  They had quitted France on the faith of the declaration of the rights of citizens.  They never had been in the service of the Regicides, nor at their hands had received any stipend.  The very system and constitution of government that now prevails was settled subsequent to their emigration.  They were under the protection of Great Britain, and in his Majesty’s pay and service.  Not an hostile invasion, but the disasters of the sea, had thrown them upon a shore more barbarous and inhospitable than the inclement ocean under the most pitiless of its storms.  Here was an opportunity to express a feeling for the miseries of war, and to open some sort of conversation, which, (after our public overtures had glutted their pride,) at a cautious and jealous distance, might lead to something like an accommodation.—­What