They differ nothing from all the preceding usurpations, but that to the same odium a good deal more of contempt is added.  In this situation, notwithstanding all their military force, strengthened with the undisciplined power of the Terrorists, and the nearly general disarming of Paris, there would almost certainly have been before this an insurrection against them, but for one cause.  The people of France languish for peace.  They all despaired of obtaining it from the coalesced powers, whilst they had a gang of professed regicides at their head; and several of the least desperate republicans would have joined with better men to shake them wholly off, and to produce something more ostensible, if they had not been reiteratedly told that their sole hope of peace was the very contrary to what they naturally imagined:  that they must leave off their cabals and insurrections, which could serve no purpose but to bring in that royalty which was wholly rejected by the coalesced kings; that, to satisfy them, they must tranquilly, if they could not cordially, submit themselves to the tyranny and the tyrants they despised and abhorred.  Peace was held out by the allied monarchies to the people of France, as a bounty for supporting the Republic of Regicides.  In fact, a coalition, begun for the avowed purpose of destroying that den of robbers, now exists only for their support.  If evil happens to the princes of Europe from the success and stability of this infernal business, it is their own absolute crime.

We are to understand, however, (for sometimes so the author hints,) that something stable in the Constitution of Regicide was required for our amity with it; but the noble Remarker is no more solicitous about this point than he is for the permanence of the whole body of his October speculations.  “If,” says he, speaking of the Regicide, “they can obtain a practicable constitution, even for a limited period of time, they will be in a condition to reestablish the accustomed relations of peace and amity.”  Pray let us leave this bush-fighting.  What is meant by a limited period of time?  Does it mean the direct contrary to the terms, an unlimited period?  If it is a limited period, what limitation does he fix as a ground for his opinion?  Otherwise, his limitation is unlimited.  If he only requires a constitution that will last while the treaty goes on, ten days’ existence will satisfy his demands.  He knows that France never did want a practicable constitution, nor a government, which endured for a limited period of time.  Her constitutions were but too practicable; and short as was their duration, it was but too long.  They endured time enough for treaties which benefited themselves and have done infinite mischief to our cause.  But, granting him his strange thesis, that hitherto the mere form or the mere term of their constitutions, and not their indisposition, but their instability, has been the cause of their not preserving the relations of amity,—­how