For whose use, entertainment, or instruction are all those overstrained
and overlabored proceedings in council, in negotiation, and in speeches
in Parliament intended? What royal cabinet is to be enriched with these
high-finished pictures of the arrogance of the sworn enemies of kings
and the meek patience of a British administration? In what heart is it
intended to kindle pity towards our multiplied mortifications and
disgraces? At best it is superfluous. What nation is unacquainted with
the haughty disposition of the common enemy of all nations? It has been
more than seen, it has been felt,--not only by those who have been the
victims of their imperious rapacity, but, in a degree, by those very
powers who have consented to establish this robbery, that they might be
able to copy it, and with impunity to make new usurpations of their own.
The King of Prussia has hypothecated in trust to the Regicides his rich
and fertile territories on the Rhine, as a pledge of his zeal and
affection to the cause of liberty and equality. He has seen them robbed
with unbounded liberty and with the most levelling equality. The woods
are wasted, the country is ravaged, property is confiscated, and the
people are put to bear a double yoke, in the exactions of a tyrannical
government and in the contributions of an hostile irruption. Is it to
satisfy the Court of Berlin that the Court of London is to give the same
sort of pledge of its sincerity and good faith to the French Directory?
It is not that heart full of sensibility, it is not Lucchesini, the
minister of his Prussian Majesty, the late ally of England, and the
present ally of its enemy, who has demanded this pledge of our
sincerity, as the price of the renewal of the long lease of his sincere
friendship to this kingdom.
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