for the purpose of pacification.  In that piece “these powers expressly renounce all views of personal aggrandizement,” and confine themselves to objects worthy of so generous, so heroic, and so perfectly wise and politic an enterprise.  It was to the principles of this confederation, and to no other, that we wished our sovereign and our country to accede, as a part of the commonwealth of Europe.  To these principles, with some trifling exceptions and limitations, they did fully accede.[34] And all our friends who took office acceded to the ministry, (whether wisely or not,) as I always understood the matter, on the faith and on the principles of that declaration.

As long as these powers flattered themselves that the menace of force would produce the effect of force, they acted on those declarations; but when their menaces failed of success, their efforts took a new direction.  It did not appear to them that virtue and heroism ought to be purchased by millions of rix-dollars.  It is a dreadful truth, but it is a truth that cannot be concealed:  in ability, in dexterity, in the distinctness of their views, the Jacobins are our superiors.  They saw the thing right from the very beginning.  Whatever were the first motives to the war among politicians, they saw that in its spirit, and for its objects, it was a civil war; and as such they pursued it.  It is a war between the partisans of the ancient civil, moral, and political order of Europe against a sect of fanatical and ambitious atheists which means to change them all.  It is not France extending a foreign empire over other nations:  it is a sect aiming at universal empire, and beginning with the conquest of France.  The leaders of that sect secured the centre of Europe; and that secured, they knew, that, whatever might be the event of battles and sieges, their cause was victorious.  Whether its territory had a little more or a little less peeled from its surface, or whether an island or two was detached from its commerce, to them was of little moment.  The conquest of France was a glorious acquisition.  That once well laid as a basis of empire, opportunities never could be wanting to regain or to replace what had been lost, and dreadfully to avenge themselves on the faction of their adversaries.

They saw it was a civil war.  It was their business to persuade their adversaries that it ought to be a foreign war.  The Jacobins everywhere set up a cry against the new crusade; and they intrigued with effect in the cabinet, in the field, and in every private society in Europe.  Their task was not difficult.  The condition of princes, and sometimes of first ministers too, is to be pitied.  The creatures of the desk and the creatures of favor had no relish for the principles of the manifestoes.  They promised no governments, no regiments, no revenues from whence emoluments might arise by perquisite or by grant.  In truth, the tribe of vulgar politicians