of power, and treated it as the true cause of all the wars and calamities that had afflicted Europe; and their practice was correspondent to the dogmatic positions they had laid down.  The Empire and the Papacy it was their great object to destroy; and this, now openly avowed and steadfastly acted upon, might have been discerned with very little acuteness of sight, from the very first dawnings of the Revolution, to be the main drift of their policy:  for they professed a resolution to destroy everything which can hold states together by the tie of opinion.

Exploding, therefore, all sorts of balances, they avow their design to erect themselves into a new description of empire, which is not grounded on any balance, but forms a sort of impious hierarchy, of which France is to be the head and the guardian.  The law of this their empire is anything rather than the public law of Europe, the ancient conventions of its several states, or the ancient opinions which assign to them superiority or preeminence of any sort, or any other kind of connection in virtue of ancient relations.  They permit, and that is all, the temporary existence of some of the old communities:  but whilst they give to these tolerated states this temporary respite, in order to secure them in a condition of real dependence on themselves, they invest them on every side by a body of republics, formed on the model, and dependent ostensibly, as well as substantially, on the will of the mother republic to which they owe their origin.  These are to be so many garrisons to check and control the states which are to be permitted to remain on the old model until they are ripe for a change.  It is in this manner that France, on her new system, means to form an universal empire, by producing an universal revolution.  By this means, forming a new code of communities according to what she calls the natural rights of man and of states, she pretends to secure eternal peace to the world, guarantied by her generosity and justice, which are to grow with the extent of her power.  To talk of the balance of power to the governors of such a country was a jargon which they could not understand even through an interpreter.  Before men can transact any affair, they must have a common language to speak, and some common, recognized principles on which they can argue; otherwise all is cross purpose and confusion.  It was, therefore, an essential preliminary to the whole proceeding, to fix whether the balance of power, the liberties and laws of the Empire, and the treaties of different belligerent powers in past times, when they put an end to hostilities, were to be considered as the basis of the present negotiation.