This is what his Majesty does not hesitate to declare relative to the political safety and peace of his kingdom and of Europe, and with regard to France under her ancient hereditary monarchy in the course and order of legal succession.  But in comes a gentleman, in the fag end of October, dripping with the fogs of that humid and uncertain season, and does not hesitate in diameter to contradict this wise and just royal declaration, and stoutly, on his part, to make a counter declaration,—­that France, so far as the political interests of England are concerned, will not remain, under the despotism of Regicide, and with the better part of Europe in her hands, so much an object of jealousy and alarm as she was under the reign of a monarch.  When I hear the master and reason on one side, and the servant and his single and unsupported assertion on the other, my part is taken.

This is what the Octobrist says of the political interests of England, which it looks as if he completely disconnected with those of all other nations.  But not quite so:  he just allows it possible (with an “at least”) that the other powers may not find it quite their interest that their territories should be conquered and their subjects tyrannized over by the Regicides.  No fewer than ten sovereign princes had, some the whole, all a very considerable part of their dominions under the yoke of that dreadful faction.  Amongst these was to be reckoned the first republic in the world, and the closest ally of this kingdom, which, under the insulting name of an independency, is under her iron yoke, and, as long as a faction averse to the old government is suffered there to domineer, cannot be otherwise.  I say nothing of the Austrian Netherlands, countries of a vast extent, and amongst the most fertile and populous of Europe, and, with regard to us, most critically situated.  The rest will readily occur to you.

But if there are yet existing any people, like me, old-fashioned enough to consider that we have an important part of our very existence beyond our limits, and who therefore stretch their thoughts beyond the pomoerium of England, for them, too, he has a comfort which will remove all their jealousies and alarms about the extent of the empire of Regicide. “These conquests eventually will be the cause of her destruction.”  So that they who hate the cause of usurpation, and dread the power of France under any form, are to wish her to be a conqueror, in order to accelerate her ruin.  A little more conquest would be still better.  Will he tell us what dose of dominion is to be the quantum sufficit for her destruction?—­for she seems very voracious of the food of her distemper.  To be sure, she is ready to perish with repletion; she has a boulimia, and hardly has bolted down one state than she calls for two or three more.  There is a good deal of wit in all this; but it seems to me (with all respect to the author) to be carrying the joke a great deal too far.  I cannot yet think