There are some few French gentlemen indeed who talk a language not wholly different from this jargon. Those whom I have in my eye, I respect as gallant soldiers, as much as any one can do, but on their political judgment and prudence I have not the slightest reliance, nor on their knowledge of their own country, or of its laws and constitution. They are, if not enemies, at least not friends, to the orders of their own state; not to the princes, the clergy, or the nobility; they possess only an attachment to the monarchy, or rather to the persons of the late king and queen. In all other respects their conversation is jacobin. I am afraid they, or some of them, go into the closets of ministers, and tell them that the affairs of France will be better arranged by the allied powers than by the landed proprietors of the kingdom, or by the princes who have a right to govern; and that if any French are at all to be employed in the settlement of their country, it ought to be only those who have never declared any decided opinion, or taken any active part in the Revolution*. I suspect that the authors of this opinion are mere soldiers of fortune, who, though men of integrity and honour, would as gladly receive military rank from Russia, or Austria, or Prussia, as from the regent of France. Perhaps their not * This was the language of the ministerialists. having as much importance at his court as they could wish may incline them to this strange imagination. Perhaps having no property in old France, they are more indifferent about its restoration. Their language is certainly flattering to all ministers in all courts. love to be told of the and our own faculties. We all are men; we all extent of our own power If we love glory, we are jealous of partners, and afraid even of our own instruments. It is of all modes of flattery the most effectual to be told, that you can regulate the affairs of another kingdom better than its hereditary proprietors. It is formed to flatter the principle of conquest so natural to all men. It is this principle which is now making the partition of Poland. The powers concerned have been told by some perfidious Poles, and perhaps they believe, that their usurpation is a great benefit to the people, especially to the common people. However this may turn out with regard to Poland, I am quite sure that France could not be so well under a foreign direction as under that of the representatives of its own king, and its own ancient estates. I think I have myself studied France as much as most of those whom the allied courts are likely to employ in such a work. I have likewise of myself as partial and as vain an opinion as men commonly have of themselves. But if I could command the whole military arm of Europe, I am sure, sure, that a bribe of the best province in that kingdom would not tempt me to intermeddle in their affairs, except in perfect concurrence and concert with the natural, legal interests of the country, composed of the ecclesiastical, the military, the several corporate bodies of justice, and of burghership, making under a monarch (I repeat it again and again) the French nation according to its fundamental constitution. No considerate statesman would undertake to meddle with it upon any other condition. The government of that kingdom is fundamentally monarchical. The publick law of Europe has never recognised it in any other form of government. The potentates of Europe have, by that law, a right, an interest, and a duty, to know with what government they are to treat, and what they are to admit into the federative society, or, in other words, into the diplomatick republick of Europe. This right is clear and indisputable. What other and further interference they have a right to the interiour of the concerns of another people, is a matter on which, as on every political subject, no very definite or positive rule can well be laid down. Our neighbours are men; and who will attempt to dictate the laws, under which it is allowable or forbidden to take a part in the concerns of men, whether they are considered individually or in a collective capacity, whenever whenever charity to them, or a care of my own safety, calls forth my activity? Circumstances perpetually variable, directing a moral prudence and discretion, the general principles of which never vary, must alone prescribe a conduct fitting on such occasions. The latest casuists of publick law are rather of a republican cast, and, in my mind, by no means so averse as they ought to be to a right in the people (a word, which, ill defined, is of the most dangerous use) to make changes at their pleasure in the fundamental laws of their country. These writers, however, when a country is divided, leave abundant liberty for a neighbour to support any of the parties according to his choice *. This interference must indeed always be a right, whilst the privilege of doing good to others, and of averting from them every sort of evil, is a right: circumstances may render that right a duty. It depends wholly on this, whether it be a boná fide charity to a party, and a prudent precaution with regard to yourself, or whether under the pretence of aiding one of the parties in a nation, you act in such a manner as to aggravate its calamities, and accomplish its final destruction. In truth it is not the interfering or keeping aloof, but iniquitous intermeddling, or treacherous inaction, which is praised or blamed by the decision of an equitable judge. * Vattel. It It will be a just and irresistible presumption against the fairness of the interposing power, that he takes with him no party or description of men in the divided state. It is not probable, that these parties should all, and all alike, be more adverse to the true interests of their country, and less capable of forming a judgment upon them, than those who are absolute strangers to their affairs, and to the character of the actors in them, and have but a remote, feeble, and secondary sympathy with their interest. Sometimes a calm and healing arbiter may be necessary; but he is to compose differences, not to give laws. It is impossible that any one should not feel the full force of that presumption. Even people, whose politicks for the supposed good of their own country, lead them to take advantage of the dissensions of a neighbouring nation in order to ruin it, will not directly propose to exclude the natives, but they will take that mode of consulting and employing them, which most nearly approaches to an exclusion. In some particulars they propose what amounts to that exclusion, in others they do much worse. They recommend to ministry, "that no French man who has given a decided opinion, or acted 66 a decided part in this great Revolution, for or "against it, should be countenanced, brought for"ward, trusted, or employed, even in the strictest "subordination to the ministers of the allied |