The whole
college of the states of Europe is no better than a gang of tyrants.
With them all our connections were broken off at once. We ought to have
cultivated France, and France alone, from the moment of her Revolution.
On that happy change, all our dread of that nation as a power was to
cease. She became in an instant dear to our affections and one with our
interests. All other nations we ought to have commanded not to trouble
her sacred throes, whilst in labor to bring into an happy birth her
abundant litter of constitutions. We ought to have acted under her
auspices, in extending her salutary influence upon every side. From that
moment England and France were become natural allies, and all the other
states natural enemies. The whole face of the world was changed. What
was it to us, if she acquired Holland and the Austrian Netherlands? By
her conquests she only enlarged the sphere of her beneficence, she only
extended the blessings of liberty to so many more foolishly reluctant
nations. What was it to England, if, by adding these, among the richest
and most peopled countries of the world, to her territories, she thereby
left no possible link of communication between us and any other power
with whom we could act against her? On this new system of optimism, it
is so much the better: so much the further are we removed from the
contact with infectious despotism. No longer a thought of a barrier in
the Netherlands to Holland against France.
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