France we hold nothing. We are to break in upon a power in possession; we are to carry every thing by storm, or by surprise, or by intelligence, or by all. Adventure therefore, and not caution, is our policy. Here to be too presuming is the better errour.

The world will judge of the spirit of our proceeding in those places of France which may fall into our power, by our conduct in those that are already in our hands. Our wisdom should not be vulgar. Other times, perhaps other measures: but in this awful hour our politicks ought to be made up of nothing but courage, decision, manliness, and rectitude. We should have all the magnanimity of good faith. This is a royal and commanding policy; and as long as we are true to it we may give the law. Never can we assume this command if we will not risk the consequences. For which reason we ought to be bottomed enough. in principle not to be carried away upon the first prospect of any sinister advantage. For depend upon it, that, if we once give way to a sinister dealing, we shall teach others the game, and we shall be outwitted and overborne: the Spaniards, the Prussians, God knows who, will put us under contribution at their pleasure; and, instead of being at the head of a great confederacy, and the arbiters of Europe, we shall, by our mistakes, break up a great design into a thousand little selfish quarrels ;

M. 4

quarrels; the enemy will triumph, and we shall sit down under the terms of unsafe and dependent peace, weakened, mortified, and disgraced, whilst all Europe, England included, is left open and defenceless on every part, to jacobin principles, intrigues, and arms. In the case of the king of France, declared to be our friend and ally, we will still be considering ourselves in the contradictory character of an enemy. This contradiction, I am afraid, will, in spite of us, give a colour of fraud to all our transactions, or at least will so complicate our politicks, that we shall ourselves be inextricably entangled in them.

I have Toulon in my eye. It was with infinite sorrow I heard that in taking the king of France's fleet in trust, we instantly unrigged and dismasted the ships, instead of keeping them in a condition to escape in case of disaster, and in order to fulfil our trust, that is, to hold them for the use of the owner, and, in the mean time, to employ them for our common service. These ships are now so circumstanced, that if we are forced to evacuate Toulon, they must fall into the hands of the enemy, or be burnt by ourselves. I know this is by some considered as a fine thing for us. But the Athenians ought not to be better than the English, or Mr. Pitt less virtuous than Aristides.

Are we then so poor in resources that we can do no better with eighteen or twenty ships of the

line than to burn them? Had we sent for French royalist naval officers, of which some hundreds are to be had, and made them select such seamen as they could trust, and filled the rest with our own and Mediterranean seamen, who are all over Italy to be had by thousands, and put them under judicious English commanders-in-chief, and with a judicious mixture of our own subordinates, the West Indies would at this day have been ours. It may be said that these French officers would take them for the king of France, and that they would not be in our power. Be it so. The islands would not be ours, but they would not be jacobinized. This is however a thing impossible. They must in effect and substance be ours. But all is upon that false principle of distrust, which, not confiding in strength, can never have the full use of it. They that pay, and feed, and equip, must direct. But I must speak plainly upon this subject. The French islands, if they were all our own, ought not to be all kept. A fair partition only ought to be made of those territories. This is a subject of policy very serious, which has many relations and aspects. Just here I only hint at it as answering an objection, whilst I state the mischievous consequences which suffer us to be surprised into a virtual breach of faith, by confounding our ally with our enemy, because they both belong to the same geographical territory.

My

My clear opinion is, that Toulon ought to be made, what we set out with, a royal French city. By the necessity of the case, it must be under the influence, civil and military, of the allies. But the only way of keeping that jealous and discordant mass from tearing its component parts to pieces, and hazarding the loss of the whole, is to put the place into the nominal government of the regent, his officers being approved by us. This, I say, is absolutely necessary for a poise amongst ourselves. Otherwise is it to be believed that the Spaniards, who hold that place with us in a sort of partnership contrary to our mutual interest, will see us absolute masters of the Mediterranean, with Gibraltar on one side, and Toulon on the other, with a quiet and composed mind, whilst we do little less than declare that we are to take the whole West Indies into our hands, leaving the vast, unwieldy, and feeble body of the Spanish dominions, in that part of the world, absolutely at our mercy, without any power to balance us in the smallest degree? Nothing is so fatal to a nation as an extreme of self-partiality, and the total want of consideration of what others will naturally hope or fear. Spain must think she sees, that we are taking advantage of the confusions which reign in France to disable that country, and of course every country from affording her protection, and in the end to turn the Spanish monarchy into a province. If she

saw

saw things in a proper point of light, to be sure, she would not consider any other plan of politicks as of the least moment in comparison of the extinction of jacobinism. But her ministers (to say the best of them) are vulgar politicians. It is no wonder that they should postpone this great point, or balance it, by considerations of the common politicks, that is, the questions of power between state and state. If we manifestly endeavour to destroy the balance, especially the maritime and commercial balance, both in Europe and the West Indies, (the latter their sore and vulnerable part) from fear of what France may do for Spain, hereafter, is it to be wondered, that Spain, infinitely weaker than we are (weaker indeed than such a mass of empire ever was,) should feel the same fears from our uncontrolled power, that we give way to ourselves from a supposed resurrection of the ancient power of France under a monarchy? It signifies nothing whether we are wrong or right in the abstract; but in respect to our relation to Spain, with such principles followed up in practice, it is absolutely impossible that any cordial alliance can subsist between the two nations. If Spain goes, Naples will speedily follow. Prussia is quite certain, and thinks of nothing but making a market of the present confusions. Italy is broken and divided; Switzerland is jacobinized, I am afraid, completely. I have long seen with pain the

progress