My lord:—­In some of the ancient Republics, all citizens who, in time of danger and trouble, remained neutral, were punished as traitors or treated as enemies.  When, by our Revolution, civilized society and the European Commonwealth were menaced with a total overthrow, had each member of it been considered in the same light, and subjected to the same laws, some individual States might, perhaps, have been less wealthy, but the whole community would have been more happy and more tranquil, which would have been much better.  It was a great error in the powerful league of 1793 to admit any neutrality at all; every Government that did not combat rebellion should have been considered and treated as its ally.  The man who continues neutral, though only a passenger, when hands are wanted to preserve the vessel from sinking, deserves to be thrown overboard, to be swallowed up by the waves and to perish the first.  Had all other nations been united and unanimous, during 1793 and 1794, against the monster, Jacobinism, we should not have heard of either Jacobin directors, Jacobin consuls, or a Jacobin Emperor.  But then, from a petty regard to a temporary profit, they entered into a truce with a revolutionary volcano, which, sooner or later, will consume them all; for I am afraid it is now too late for all human power, with all human means, to preserve any State, any Government, or any people, from suffering by the threatening conflagration.  Switzerland, Venice, Geneva, Genoa, and Tuscany have already gathered the poisoned fruits of their neutrality.  Let but Bonaparte establish himself undisturbed in Hanover some years longer, and you will see the neutral Hanse Towns, neutral Prussia, and neutral Denmark visited with all the evils of invasion, pillage, and destruction, and the independence of the nations in the North will be buried in the rubbish of the liberties of the people of the South of Europe.

These ideas have frequently occurred to me, on hearing our agents pronounce, and their dupes repeat:  “Oh! the wise Government of Denmark!  Oh, what a wise statesman the Danish Minister, Count von Bernstorff!” I do not deny that the late Count von Bernstorff was a great politician; but I assert, also, that his was a greatness more calculated for regular times than for periods of unusual political convulsion.  Like your Pitt, the Russian Woronzow, and the Austrian Colloredo, he was too honest to judge soundly and to act rightly, according to the present situation of affairs.  He adhered too much to the old routine, and did not perceive the immense difference between the Government of a revolutionary ruler and the Government of a Louis XIII. or a Louis XIV.  I am certain, had he still been alive, he would have repented of his errors, and tried to have repaired them.