The majority, the other four fifths, is perfectly sound, and of the best possible disposition to religion, to government, to the true and undivided interest of their country.  Such men are naturally disposed to peace.  They who are in possession of all they wish are languid and improvident.  With this fault, (and I admit its existence in all its extent,) they would not endure to hear of a peace that led to the ruin of everything for which peace is dear to them.  However, the desire of peace is essentially the weak side of that kind of men.  All men that are ruined are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.  There they are unguarded.  Above all, good men do not suspect that their destruction is attempted through their virtues.  This their enemies are perfectly aware of; and accordingly they, the most turbulent of mankind, who never made a scruple to shake the tranquillity of their country to its centre, raise a continual cry for peace with France.  “Peace with Regicide, and war with the rest of the world,” is their motto.  From the beginning, and even whilst the French gave the blows, and we hardly opposed the vis inertiae to their efforts, from that day to this hour, like importunate Guinea-fowls, crying one note day and night, they have called for peace.

In this they are, as I confess in all things they are, perfectly consistent.  They who wish to unite themselves to your enemies naturally desire that you should disarm yourself by a peace with these enemies.  But it passes my conception how they who wish well to their country on its ancient system of laws and manners come not to be doubly alarmed, when they find nothing but a clamor for peace in the mouths of the men on earth the least disposed to it in their natural or in their habitual character.

I have a good opinion of the general abilities of the Jacobins:  not that I suppose them better born than others; but strong passions awaken the faculties; they suffer not a particle of the man to be lost.  The spirit of enterprise gives to this description the full use of all their native energies.  If I have reason to conceive that my enemy, who, as such, must have an interest in my destruction, is also a person of discernment and sagacity, then I must be quite sure, that, in a contest, the object he violently pursues is the very thing by which my ruin is likely to be the most perfectly accomplished.  Why do the Jacobins cry for peace?  Because they know, that, this point gained, the rest will follow of course.  On our part, why are all the rules of prudence, as sure as the laws of material Nature, to be, at this time reversed?  How comes it, that now, for the first time, men think it right to be governed by the counsels of their enemies?  Ought they not rather to tremble, when they are persuaded to travel on the same road and to tend to the same place of rest?