Their provident fears were changed into avaricious
hopes. They carried on their new designs without seeming to abandon the
principles of their old policy. They pretended to seek, or they
flattered themselves that they sought, in the accession of new
fortresses and new territories a _defensive_ security. But the security
wanted was against a kind of power which was not so truly dangerous in
its fortresses nor in its territories as in its spirit and its
principles. They aimed, or pretended to aim, at _defending_ themselves
against a danger from which there can be no security in any _defensive_
plan. If armies and fortresses were a defence against Jacobinism, Louis
the Sixteenth would this day reign a powerful monarch over an happy
people.
This error obliged them, even in their offensive operations, to adopt a
plan of war against the success of which there was something little
short of mathematical demonstration. They refused to take any step which
might strike at the heart of affairs. They seemed unwilling to wound the
enemy in any vital part. They acted through the whole as if they really
wished the conservation of the Jacobin power, as what might be more
favorable than the lawful government to the attainment of the petty
objects they looked for. They always kept on the circumference; and the
wider and remoter the circle was, the more eagerly they chose it as
their sphere of action in this centrifugal war.
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