As to me, I was always steadily of opinion that this disorder was not in its nature intermittent.  I conceived that the contest, once begun, could not be laid down again, to be resumed at our discretion, but that our first struggle with this evil would also be our last.  I never thought we could make peace with the system; because it was not for the sake of an object we pursued in rivalry with each other, but with the system itself that we were at war.  As I understood the matter, we were at war, not with its conduct, but with its existence,—­convinced that its existence and its hostility were the same.

The faction is not local or territorial.  It is a general evil.  Where it least appears in action, it is still full of life.  In its sleep it recruits its strength and prepares its exertion.  Its spirit lies deep in the corruptions of our common nature.  The social order which restrains it feeds it.  It exists in every country in Europe, and among all orders of men in every country, who look up to France as to a common head.  The centre is there.  The circumference is the world of Europe, wherever the race of Europe may be settled.  Everywhere else the faction is militant; in France it is triumphant.  In France is the bank of deposit and the bank of circulation of all the pernicious principles that are forming in every state.  It will be a folly scarcely deserving of pity, and too mischievous for contempt, to think of restraining it in any other country whilst it is predominant there.  War, instead of being the cause of its force, has suspended its operation.  It has given a reprieve, at least, to the Christian world.

The true nature of a Jacobin war, in the beginning, was by most of the Christian powers felt, acknowledged, and even in the most precise manner declared.  In the joint manifesto published by the Emperor and the King of Prussia, on the 4th of August, 1792, it is expressed in the clearest terms, and on principles which could not fail, if they had adhered to them, of classing those monarchs with the first benefactors of mankind.  This manifesto was published, as they themselves express it, “to lay open to the present generation, as well as to posterity, their motives, their intentions, and the disinterestedness of their personal views:  taking up arms for the purpose of preserving social and political order amongst all civilized nations, and to secure to each state its religion, happiness, independence, territories, and real constitution.”—­“On this ground they hoped that all empires and all states would be unanimous, and, becoming the firm guardians of the happiness of mankind, that they could not fail to unite their efforts to rescue a numerous nation from its own fury, to preserve Europe from the return of barbarism, and the universe from the subversion and anarchy with which it was threatened.”  The whole of that noble performance ought to be read at the first meeting of any congress which may assemble