In these
treasures are to be found the _usual_ relations of peace and amity in
civilized Europe; and there the relations of ancient France were to be
found amongst the rest.
The present system in France is not the ancient France. It is not the
ancient France with ordinary ambition and ordinary means. It is not a
new power of an old kind. It is a new power of a new species. When such
a questionable shape is to be admitted for the first time into the
brotherhood of Christendom, it is not a mere matter of idle curiosity to
consider how far it is in its nature alliable with the rest, or whether
"the relations of peace and amity" with this new state are likely to be
of the same nature with the _usual_ relations of the states of Europe.
The Revolution in France had the relation of France to other nations as
one of its principal objects. The changes made by that Revolution were
not the better to accommodate her to the old and usual relations, but to
produce new ones. The Revolution was made, not to make France free, but
to make her formidable,--not to make her a neighbor, but a
mistress,--not to make her more observant of laws, but to put her in a
condition to impose them. To make France truly formidable, it was
necessary that France should be new-modelled. They who have not
followed the train of the late proceedings have been led by deceitful
representations (which deceit made a part in the plan) to conceive that
this totally new model of a state, in which nothing escaped a change,
was made with a view to its internal relations only.
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