[29] See the Declaration.

[30] See Declaration, Whitehall, October 29, 1793.

[31] Nothing could be more solemn than their promulgation of this principle, as a preamble to the destructive code of their famous articles for the decomposition of society, into whatever country they should enter.  “La Convention Nationale, apres avoir entendu le rapport de ses comites de finances, de la guerre, et diplomatiques reunis, fidele au principe de souverainete de peuples, qui ne lui permet pas de reconnaitre aucune institution qui y porte atteinte” &c., &c.—­Decree sur le Rapport de Cambon, Dec. 18, 1702.  And see the subsequent proclamation.

[32] “This state of things cannot exist in France, without involving all the surrounding powers in one common danger,—­without giving them the right, without imposing it upon them as a duty, to stop the progress of an evil which ... attacks the fundamental principles by which mankind is united in the bonds of civil society.”—­Declaration 29th Oct., 1793.

[33] Declaration, Whitehall, Oct. 29, 1793.

LETTER II.

ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AS IT REGARDS OTHER NATIONS.

My dear Sir,—­I closed my first letter with serious matter, and I hope it has employed your thoughts.  The system of peace must have a reference to the system of the war.  On that ground, I must therefore again recall your mind to our original opinions, which time and events have not taught me to vary.

My ideas and my principles led me, in this contest, to encounter France, not as a state, but as a faction.  The vast territorial extent of that country, its immense population, its riches of production, its riches of commerce and convention, the whole aggregate mass of what in ordinary cases constitutes the force of a state, to me were but objects of secondary consideration.  They might be balanced; and they have been often more than balanced.  Great as these things are, they are not what make the faction formidable.  It is the faction that makes them truly dreadful.  That faction is the evil spirit that possesses the body of France,—­that informs it as a soul,—­that stamps upon its ambition, and upon all its pursuits, a characteristic mark, which strongly distinguishes them from the same general passions and the same general views in other men and in other communities.  It is that spirit which inspires into them a new, a pernicious, a desolating activity.  Constituted as France was ten years ago, it was not in that France to shake, to shatter, and to overwhelm Europe in the manner that we behold.  A sure destruction impends over those infatuated princes who, in the conflict with this new and unheard-of power, proceed as if they were engaged in a war that bore a resemblance to their former contests, or that they can make peace in the spirit of their former arrangements of pacification.  Here the beaten path is the very reverse of the safe road.