sentiments of benignity and justice.  Then they had recourse to history, and found out all the recorded cruelties that deform the annals of the world, in order that the massacres of the Regicides might pass for a common event, and even that the most merciful of princes, who suffered by their hands, should bear the iniquity of all the tyrants who have at any time infested the earth.  In order to reconcile us the better to this republican tyranny, they confounded the bloodshed of war with the murders of peace; and they computed how much greater prodigality of blood was exhibited in battles and in the storm of cities than in the frugal, well-ordered massacres of the revolutionary tribunals of France.

As to foreign powers, so long as they were conjoined with Great Britain in this contest, so long they were treated as the most abandoned tyrants, and, indeed, the basest of the human race.  The moment any of them quits the cause of this government, and of all governments, he is rehabilitated, his honor is restored, all attainders are purged.  The friends of Jacobins are no longer despots; the betrayers of the common cause are no longer traitors.

That you may not doubt that they look on this war as a civil war, and the Jacobins of France as of their party, and that they look upon us, though locally their countrymen, in reality as enemies, they have never failed to run a parallel between our late civil war and this war with the Jacobins of France.  They justify their partiality to those Jacobins by the partiality which was shown by several here to the Colonies, and they sanction their cry for peace with the Regicides of France by some of our propositions for peace with the English in America.

This I do not mention as entering into the controversy how far they are right or wrong in this parallel, but to show that they do make it, and that they do consider themselves as of a party with the Jacobins of France.  You cannot forget their constant correspondence with the Jacobins, whilst it was in their power to carry it on.  When the communication is again opened, the interrupted correspondence will commence.  We cannot be blind to the advantage which such a party affords to Regicide France in all her views,—­and, on the other hand, what an advantage Regicide France holds out to the views of the republican party in England.  Slightly as they have considered their subject, I think this can hardly have escaped the writers of political ephemerides for any month or year.  They have told us much of the amendment of the Regicides of France, and of their returning honor and generosity.  Have they told anything of the reformation and of the returning loyalty of the Jacobins of England?  Have they told us of their gradual softening towards royalty?  Have they told us what measures they are taking for “putting the crown in commission,” and what approximations of any kind they are making towards the old Constitution of their country?