We may consider it as a sure axiom, that, as, on the one
hand, no confederacy of the least effect or duration can exist against
France, of which England is not only a part, but the head, so neither
can England pretend to cope with France but as connected with the body
of Christendom.
Our account of the war, _as a war of communion_, to the very point in
which we began to throw out lures, oglings, and glances for peace, was a
war of disaster, and of little else. The independent advantages obtained
by us at the beginning of the war, and which were made at the expense of
that common cause, if they deceive us about our largest and our surest
interest, are to be reckoned amongst our heaviest losses.
The Allies, and Great Britain amongst the rest, (and perhaps amongst the
foremost,) have been miserably deluded by this great, fundamental error:
that it was in our power to make peace with this monster of a state,
whenever we chose to forget the crimes that made it great and the
designs that made it formidable. People imagined that their ceasing to
resist was the sure way to be secure. This "pale cast of thought"
sicklied over all their enterprises, and turned all their politics awry.
They could not, or rather they would not, read, in the most unequivocal
declarations of the enemy, and in his uniform conduct, that more safety
was to be found in the most arduous war than in the friendship of that
kind of being. Its hostile amity can be obtained on no terms that do not
imply an inability hereafter to resist its designs.
Pages:
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256