It says that "His Majesty, who
had entered into the negotiation with _good faith_, who had suffered
_no_ impediment to prevent his prosecuting it with _earnestness and
sincerity_, has now _only to lament_ its abrupt termination, and to
renew _in the face of all Europe the solemn declaration_, that, whenever
his enemies shall be _disposed_ to enter on the work of general
pacification in a spirit of conciliation and equity, nothing shall be
wanting on his part to contribute to the accomplishment of that great
object."
If the disgusting detail of the accumulated insults we have received, in
what we have very properly called our "solicitation" to a gang of felons
and murderers, had been produced as a proof of the utter inefficacy of
that mode of proceeding with that description of persons, I should have
nothing at all to object to it. It might furnish matter conclusive in
argument and instructive in policy; but, with all due submission to high
authority, and with all decent deference to superior lights, it does not
seem quite clear to a discernment no better than mine that the premises
in that piece conduct irresistibly to the conclusion. A labored display
of the ill consequences which have attended an uniform course of
submission to every mode of contumelious insult, with which the
despotism of a proud, capricious, insulting, and implacable foe has
chosen to buffet our patience, does not appear to my poor thoughts to be
properly brought forth as a preliminary to justify a resolution of
persevering in the very same kind of conduct, towards the very same sort
of person, and on the very same principles.
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