But when the king had been advised to recognize not only the
monstrous composition as a sovereign power, but, in conduct, to admit
something in it like a superiority,--when the bench of Regicide was made
at least coordinate with his throne, and raised upon a platform full as
elevated, this treatment could not be passed by under the appearance of
despising it. It would not, indeed, have been proper to keep up a war of
the same kind; but an immediate, manly, and decided resentment ought to
have been the consequence. We ought not to have waited for the
disgraceful dismissal of our ambassador. There are cases in which we may
pretend to sleep; but the wittol rule has some sense in it, _Non omnibus
dormio_. We might, however, have seemed ignorant of the affront; but
what was the fact? Did we dissemble or pass it by in silence? When
dignity is talked of, a language which I did not expect to hear in such
a transaction, I must say, what all the world must feel, that it was not
for the king's dignity to notice this insult and not to resent it. This
mode of proceeding is formed on new ideas of the correspondence between
sovereign powers.
This was far from the only ill effect of the policy of degradation. The
state of inferiority in which we were placed, in this vain attempt at
treaty, drove us headlong from error into error, and led us to wander
far away, not only from all the paths which have been beaten in the old
course of political communication between mankind, but out of the ways
even of the most common prudence.
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