It is said, in vindication of this system, which demands the stability of the Regicide power as a ground for peace with them, that, when they have obtained, as now it is said (though not by this noble author) they have, a permanent government, they will be able to preserve amity with this kingdom, and with others who have the misfortune to be in their neighborhood.  Granted.  They will be able to do so, without question; but are they willing to do so?  Produce the act; produce the declaration.  Have they made any single step towards it?  Have they ever once proposed to treat?

The assurance of a stable peace, grounded on the stability of their system, proceeds on this hypothesis,—­that their hostility to other nations has proceeded from their anarchy at home, and from the prevalence of a populace which their government had not strength enough to master.  This I utterly deny.  I insist upon it as a fact, that, in the daring commencement of all their hostilities, and their astonishing perseverance in them, so as never once, in any fortune, high or low, to propose a treaty of peace to any power in Europe, they have never been actuated by the people:  on the contrary, the people, I will not say have been moved, but impelled by them, and have generally acted under a compulsion, of which most of us are as yet, thank God, unable to form an adequate idea.  The war against Austria was formally declared by the unhappy Louis the Sixteenth; but who has ever considered Louis the Sixteenth, since the Revolution, to have been the government?  The second Regicide Assembly, then the only government, was the author of that war; and neither the nominal king nor the nominal people had anything to do with it, further than in a reluctant obedience.  It is to delude ourselves, to consider the state of France, since their Revolution, as a state of anarchy:  it is something far worse.  Anarchy it is, undoubtedly, if compared with government pursuing the peace, order, morals, and prosperity of the people; but regarding only the power that has really guided from the day of the Revolution to this time, it has been of all governments the most absolute, despotic, and effective that has hitherto appeared on earth.  Never were the views and politics of any government pursued with half the regularity, system, and method that a diligent observer must have contemplated with amazement and terror in theirs.  Their state is not an anarchy, but a series of short-lived tyrannies.  We do not call a republic with annual magistrates an anarchy:  theirs is that kind of republic; but the succession is not effected by the expiration of the term of the magistrate’s service, but by his murder.  Every new magistracy, succeeding by homicide, is auspicated by accusing its predecessors in the office of tyranny, and it continues by the exercise of what they charged upon others.