They charged them with a concealed resolution to
persevere in what these gentlemen have (in perfect consistency, indeed,
with themselves, but most irreconcilably with fact and reason) called an
unjust and impolitic war.
That day was, I fear, the fatal term of _local_ patriotism. On that day,
I fear, there was an end of that narrow scheme of relations called our
country, with all its pride, its prejudices, and its partial affections.
All the little quiet rivulets, that watered an humble, a contracted, but
not an unfruitful field, are to be lost in the waste expanse, and
boundless, barren ocean of the homicide philanthropy of France. It is no
longer an object of terror, the aggrandizement of a new power which
teaches as a professor that philanthropy in the chair, whilst it
propagates by arms and establishes by conquest the comprehensive system
of universal fraternity. In what light is all this viewed in a great
assembly? The party which takes the lead there has no longer any
apprehensions, except those that arise from not being admitted to the
closest and most confidential connections with the metropolis of that
fraternity. That reigning party no longer touches on its favorite
subject, the display of those horrors that must attend the existence of
a power with such dispositions and principles, seated in the heart of
Europe. It is satisfied to find some loose, ambiguous expressions in
its former declarations, which may set it free from its professions and
engagements.
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