But for my part, I have never heard the gross facts on which
I ground my idea of their marked partiality to the reigning tyranny in
France in any part denied. I am not surprised at all this. Opinions, as
they sometimes follow, so they frequently guide and direct the
affections; and men may become more attached to the country of their
principles than to the country of their birth. What I have stated here
is only to mark the spirit which seems to me, though in somewhat
different ways, to actuate our great party-leaders, and to trace this
first pattern of a negotiation to its true source.
Such is the present state of our public councils. Well might I be
ashamed of what seems to be a censure of two great factions, with the
two most eloquent men which this country ever saw at the head of them,
if I had found that either of them could support their conduct by any
example in the history of their country. I should very much prefer their
judgment to my own, if I were not obliged, by an infinitely
overbalancing weight of authority, to prefer the collected wisdom, of
ages to the abilities of any two men living.--I return to the
Declaration, with which the history of the abortion of a treaty with the
Regicides is closed.
After such an elaborate display had been made of the injustice and
insolence of an enemy who seems to have been irritated by every one of
the means which had been commonly used with effect to soothe the rage of
intemperate power, the natural result would be, that the scabbard in
which we in vain attempted to plunge our sword should have been thrown
away with scorn.
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