they act under the impression of terrors of another sort, which have frightened them out of their first apprehensions.  But let their fears, or their hopes, or their desires, be what they will, they should recollect that they who would make peace without a previous knowledge of the terms make a surrender.  They are conquered.  They do not treat; they receive the law.  Is this the disposition of the people of England?  Then the people of England are contented to seek in the kindness of a foreign, systematic enemy, combined with a dangerous faction at home, a security which they cannot find in their own patriotism and their own courage.  They are willing to trust to the sympathy of regicides the guaranty of the British monarchy.  They are content to rest their religion on the piety of atheists by establishment.  They are satisfied to seek in the clemency of practised murderers the security of their lives.  They are pleased to confide their property to the safeguard of those who are robbers by inclination, interest, habit, and system.  If this be our deliberate mind, truly we deserve to lose, what it is impossible we should long retain, the name of a nation.

In matters of state, a constitutional competence to act is in many cases the smallest part of the question.  Without disputing (God forbid I should dispute!) the sole competence of the king and the Parliament, each in its province, to decide on war and peace, I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.  This war, in particular, cannot be carried on, unless they are enthusiastically in favor of it.  Acquiescence will not do.  There must be zeal.  Universal zeal in such a cause, and at such a time as this is, cannot be looked for; neither is it necessary.  Zeal in the larger part carries the force of the whole.  Without this, no government, certainly not our government, is capable of a great war.  None of the ancient, regular governments have wherewithal to fight abroad with a foreign foe, and at home to overcome repining, reluctance, and chicane.  It must be some portentous thing, like Regicide France, that can exhibit such a prodigy.  Yet even she, the mother of monsters, more prolific than the country of old called ferax monstrorum, shows symptoms of being almost effete already; and she will be so, unless the fallow of a peace comes to recruit her fertility.  But whatever may be represented concerning the meanness of the popular spirit, I, for one, do not think so desperately of the British nation.  Our minds, as I said, are light, but they are not depraved.  We are dreadfully open to delusion and to dejection; but we are capable of being animated and undeceived.