At the preceding Treaty of Paris, I mean that of 1763, there was nothing at all on which to fix a basis of compensation from reciprocal cession of conquests.  They were all on one side.  The question with us was not what we were to receive, and on what consideration, but what we were to keep for indemnity or to cede for peace.  Accordingly, no place being left for barter, sacrifices were made on our side to peace; and we surrendered to the French their most valuable possessions in the West Indies without any equivalent.  The rest of Europe fell soon after into its ancient order; and the German war ended exactly where it had begun.

The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was built upon a similar basis.  All the conquests in Europe had been made by France.  She had subdued the Austrian Netherlands, and broken open the gates of Holland.  We had taken nothing in the West Indies; and Cape Breton was a trifling business indeed.  France gave up all for peace.  The Allies had given up all that was ceded at Utrecht.  Louis the Fourteenth made all, or nearly all, the cessions at Ryswick, and at Nimeguen.  In all those treaties, and in all the preceding, as well as in the others which intervened, the question never had been that of barter.  The balance of power had been ever assumed as the known common law of Europe at all times and by all powers:  the question had only been (as it must happen) on the more or less inclination of that balance.

This general balance was regarded in four principal points of view:  the GREAT MIDDLE BALANCE, which comprehended Great Britain, France, and Spain; the BALANCE OF THE NORTH; the BALANCE, external and internal, of GERMANY; and the BALANCE OF ITALY.  In all those systems of balance, England was the power to whose custody it was thought it might be most safely committed.

France, as she happened to stand, secured the balance or endangered it.  Without question, she had been long the security for the balance of Germany, and, under her auspices, the system, if not formed, had been at least perfected.  She was so in some measure with regard to Italy, more than occasionally.  She had a clear interest in the balance of the North, and had endeavored to preserve it.  But when we began to treat with the present France, or, more properly, to prostrate ourselves to her, and to try if we should be admitted to ransom our allies, upon a system of mutual concession and compensation, we had not one of the usual facilities.  For, first, we had not the smallest indication of a desire for peace on the part of the enemy, but rather the direct contrary.  Men do not make sacrifices to obtain what they do not desire:  and as for the balance of power, it was so far from being admitted by France, either on the general system, or with regard to the particular systems that I have mentioned, that, in the whole body of their authorized or encouraged reports and discussions upon the theory of the diplomatic system, they constantly rejected the very idea of the balance