*****

They may produce a temporary confusion, and even a temporary civil war, supported, as they will be, by the money of England; but they cannot have success ultimately.  The King, the mass of the substantial people of the whole country, the army, and the influential part of the clergy, form a firm phalanx which must prevail.  Should those delays which necessarily attend the deliberations of a body of one thousand two hundred men, give time to this plot to ripen and burst, so as to break up the Assembly before any thing definitive is done, a constitution, the principles of which are pretty well settled in the minds of the Assembly, will be proposed by the national militia, (*****) urged by the individual members of the Assembly, signed by the King and supported by the nation, to prevail till circumstances shall permit its revision and more regular sanction.  This I suppose the pis aller of their affairs, while their probable event is a peaceable settlement of them.  They fear a war from England, Holland, and Prussia.  I think England will give money, but not make war.  Holland would soon be afire, internally, were she to be embroiled in external difficulties.  Prussia must know this, and act accordingly.

It is impossible to desire better dispositions towards us, than prevail in this Assembly.  Our proceedings have been viewed as a model for them on every occasion; and though in the heat of debate men are generally disposed to contradict every authority urged by their opponents, ours has been treated like that of the Bible, open to explanation, but not to question.  I am sorry that in the moment of such a disposition, any thing should come from us to check it.  The placing them on a mere footing with the English, will have this effect.  When of two nations, the one has engaged herself in a ruinous war for us, has spent her blood and money to save us, has opened her bosom to us in peace, and received us almost on the footing of her own citizens, while the other has moved heaven, earth, and hell to exterminate us in war, has insulted us in all her councils in peace, shut her doors to us in every part where her interests would admit it, libelled us in foreign nations, endeavored to poison them against the reception of our most precious commodities; to place these two nations on a footing, is to give a great deal more to one than to the other, if the maxim be true, that to make unequal quantities equal, you must add more to one than the other.  To say, in excuse, that gratitude is never to enter into the motives of national conduct, is to revive a principle which has been buried for centuries with its kindred principles of the lawfulness of assassination, poison, perjury, &c.  All of these were legitimate principles in the dark ages which intervened between ancient and modern civilization, but exploded and held in just horror in the eighteenth century.  I know but one code of morality for men, whether acting singly