Here, therefore, they and we were fixed.  Nothing was left to the British ministry but “to prosecute a war just and necessary,”—­a war equally just as at the time of our engaging in it,—­a war become ten times more necessary by everything which happened afterwards.  This resolution was soon, however, forgot.  It felt the heat of the season and melted away.  New hopes were entertained from supplication.  No expectations, indeed, were then formed from renewing a direct application to the French Regicides through the agent-general for the humiliation of sovereigns.  At length a step was taken in degradation which even went lower than all the rest.  Deficient in merits of our own, a mediator was to be sought,—­and we looked for that mediator at Berlin!  The King of Prussia’s merits in abandoning the general cause might have obtained for him some sort of influence in favor of those whom he had deserted; but I have never heard that his Prussian Majesty had lately discovered so marked an affection for the Court of St. James’s, or for the Court of Vienna, as to excite much hope of his interposing a very powerful mediation to deliver them from the distresses into which he had brought them.

If humiliation is the element in which we live, if it is become not only our occasional policy, but our habit, no great objection can be made to the modes in which it may be diversified,—­though I confess I cannot be charmed with the idea of our exposing our lazar sores at the door of every proud servitor of the French Republic, where the court dogs will not deign to lick them.  We had, if I am not mistaken, a minister at that court, who might try its temper, and recede and advance as he found backwardness or encouragement.  But to send a gentleman there on no other errand than this, and with no assurance whatever that he should not find, what he did find, a repulse, seems to me to go far beyond all the demands of a humiliation merely politic.  I hope it did not arise from a predilection for that mode of conduct.

The cup of bitterness was not, however, drained to the dregs.  Basle and Berlin were not sufficient.  After so many and so diversified repulses, we were resolved to make another experiment, and to try another mediator.  Among the unhappy gentlemen in whose persons royalty is insulted and degraded at the seat of plebeian pride and upstart insolence, there is a minister from Denmark at Paris.  Without any previous encouragement to that, any more than the other steps, we sent through, this turnpike to demand a passport for a person who on our part was to solicit peace in the metropolis, at the footstool of Regicide itself.  It was not to be expected that any one of those degraded beings could have influence enough to settle any part of the terms in favor of the candidates for further degradation; besides, such intervention would be a direct breach in their system, which did not permit one sovereign power to utter a word in the concerns of his equal.—­Another repulse.  We were desired to apply directly in our persons.  We submitted, and made the application.