could a constitution which might not last half an hour after the noble lord’s signature of the treaty, in the company in which he must sign it, insure its observance?  If you trouble yourself at all with their constitutions, you are certainly more concerned with them after the treaty than before it, as the observance of conventions is of infinitely more consequence than the making them.  Can anything be more palpably absurd and senseless than to object to a treaty of peace for want of durability in constitutions which had an actual duration, and to trust a constitution that at the time of the writing had not so much as a practical existence?  There is no way of accounting for such discourse in the mouths of men of sense, but by supposing that they secretly entertain a hope that the very act of having made a peace with the Regicides will give a stability to the Regicide system.  This will not clear the discourse from the absurdity, but it will account for the conduct, which such reasoning so ill defends.  What a roundabout way is this to peace,—­to make war for the destruction of regicides, and then to give them peace in order to insure a stability that will enable them to observe it!  I say nothing of the honor displayed in such a system.  It is plain it militates with itself almost in all the parts of it.  In one part, it supposes stability in their Constitution, as a ground of a stable peace; in another part, we are to hope for peace in a different way,—­that is, by splitting this brilliant orb into little stars, and this would make the face of heaven so fine!  No, there is no system upon which the peace which in humility we are to supplicate can possibly stand.

I believe, before this time, that the more form of a constitution, in any country, never was fixed as the sole ground of objecting to a treaty with it.  With other circumstances it may be of great moment.  What is incumbent on the assertors of the Fourth Week of October system to prove is not whether their then expected Constitution was likely to be stable or transitory, but whether it promised to this country and its allies, and to the peace and settlement of all Europe, more good-will or more good faith than any of the experiments which have gone before it.  On these points I would willingly join issue.

Observe first the manner in which the Remarker describes (very truly, as I conceive) the people of France under that auspicious government, and then observe the conduct of that government to other nations.  “The people without any established constitution; distracted by popular convulsions; in a state of inevitable bankruptcy; without any commerce; with their principal ports blockaded; and without a fleet that could venture to face one of our detached squadrons.”  Admitting, as fully as he has stated it, this condition of France, I would fain know how he reconciles this condition with his ideas of any kind of a practicable constitution, or duration for a limited period,