all treaty was broken off, and broken off in the manner we have seen, the field of future conduct ought to be reserved free and unincumbered to our future discretion.  As to the sort of condition prefixed to the pledge, namely, “that the enemy should be disposed to enter into the work of general pacification with the spirit of reconciliation and equity,” this phraseology cannot possibly be considered otherwise than as so many words thrown in to fill the sentence and to round it to the ear.  We prefixed the same plausible conditions to any renewal of the negotiation, in our manifesto on the rejection of our proposals at Basle.  We did not consider those conditions as binding.  We opened a much more serious negotiation without any sort of regard to them; and there is no new negotiation which we can possibly open upon fewer indications of conciliation and equity than were to be discovered when we entered into our last at Paris.  Any of the slightest pretences, any of the most loose, formal, equivocating expressions, would justify us, under the peroration of this piece, in again sending the last or some other Lord Malmesbury to Paris.

I hope I misunderstand this pledge,—­or that we shall show no more regard to it than we have done to all the faith that we have plighted to vigor and resolution in our former Declaration.  If I am to understand the conclusion of the Declaration to be what unfortunately it seems to me, we make an engagement with the enemy, without any correspondent engagement on his side.  We seem to have cut ourselves off from any benefit which an intermediate state of things might furnish to enable us totally to overturn that power, so little connected with moderation and justice.  By holding out no hope, either to the justly discontented in France, or to any foreign power, and leaving the recommencement of all treaty to this identical junto of assassins, we do in effect assure and guaranty to them the full possession of the rich fruits of their confiscations, of their murders of men, women, and children, and of all the multiplied, endless, nameless iniquities by which they have obtained their power.  We guaranty to them the possession of a country, such and so situated as France, round, entire, immensely perhaps augmented.

“Well,” some will say, “in this case we have only submitted to the nature of things.”  The nature of things is, I admit, a sturdy adversary.  This might be alleged as a plea for our attempt at a treaty.  But what plea of that kind can be alleged, after the treaty was dead and gone, in favor of this posthumous Declaration?  No necessity has driven us to that pledge.  It is without a counterpart even in expectation.  And what can be stated to obviate the evil which that solitary engagement must produce on the understandings or the fears of men?  I ask, what have the Regicides promised you in return, in case you should show what they would call dispositions to conciliation and equity, whilst