I look on the taking of the Cape of Good
Hope as the securing of a post of great moment; it does honor to those
who planned and to those who executed that enterprise; but I speak of it
always as comparatively good,--as good as anything can be in a scheme
of war that repels us from a centre, and employs all our forces where
nothing can be finally decisive. But giving, as I freely give, every
possible credit to these Eastern conquests, I ask one question:--On whom
are they made? It is evident, that, if we can keep our Eastern
conquests, we keep them not at the expense of France, but at the expense
of Holland, our _ally_,--of Holland, the immediate cause of the war, the
nation whom we had undertaken to protect, and not of the Republic which
it was our business to destroy. If we return the African and the Asiatic
conquests, we put them into the hands of a nominal state (to that
Holland is reduced) unable to retain them, and which will virtually
leave them under the direction of France. If we withhold them, Holland
declines still more as a state. She loses so much carrying trade, and
that means of keeping up the small degree of naval power she holds: for
which policy alone, and not for any commercial gain, she maintains the
Cape, or any settlement beyond it. In that case, resentment, faction,
and even necessity, will throw her more and more into the power of the
new, mischievous Republic. But on the probable state of Holland I shall
say more, when in this correspondence I come to talk over with you the
state in which any sort of Jacobin peace will leave all Europe.
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