It is true, that, in a course of ages, empires have fallen, and, in the opinion of some, not in mine, by their own weight.  Sometimes they have been unquestionably embarrassed in their movements by the dissociated situation of their dominions.  Such was the case of the empire of Charles the Fifth and of his successor.  It might be so of others.  But so compact a body of empire, so fitted in all the parts for mutual support, with a frontier by Nature and Art so impenetrable, with such facility of breaking out with irresistible force from every quarter, was never seen in such an extent of territory, from the beginning of time, as in that empire which the Jacobins possessed in October, 1795, and which Boissy d’Anglas, in his report, settled as the law for Europe, and the dominion assigned by Nature for the Republic of Regicide.  But this empire is to be her ruin, and to take away all alarm and jealousy on the part of England, and to destroy her preponderance over the miserable remains of Europe.

These are choice speculations with which the author amuses himself, and tries to divert us, in the blackest hours of the dismay, defeat, and calamity of all civilized nations.  They have but one fault,—­that they are directly contrary to the common sense and common feeling of mankind.  If I had but one hour to live, I would employ it in decrying this wretched system, and die with my pen in my hand to mark out the dreadful consequences of receiving an arrangement of empire dictated by the despotism of Regicide to my own country, and to the lawful sovereigns of the Christian world.

I trust I shall hardly be told, in palliation of this shameful system of politics, that the author expresses his sentiments only as doubts.  In such things, it may be truly said, that “once to doubt is once to be resolved.”  It would be a strange reason for wasting the treasures and shedding the blood of our country, to prevent arrangements on the part of another power, of which we were doubtful whether they might not be even to our advantage, and render our neighbor less than before the object of our jealousy and alarm.  In this doubt there is much decision.  No nation would consent to carry on a war of skepticism.  But the fact is, this expression of doubt is only a mode of putting an opinion, when it is not the drift of the author to overturn the doubt.  Otherwise, the doubt is never stated as the author’s own, nor left, as here it is, unanswered.  Indeed, the mode of stating the most decided opinions in the form of questions is so little uncommon, particularly since the excellent queries of the excellent Berkeley, that it became for a good while a fashionable mode of composition.

Here, then, the author of the Fourth Week of October is ready for the worst, and would strike the bargain of peace on these conditions.  I must leave it to you and to every considerate man to reflect upon the effect of this on any Continental alliances, present or future, and whether it would be possible (if this book was thought of the least authority) that its maxims with regard to our political interest must not naturally push them to be beforehand with us in the fraternity with Regicide, and thus not only strip us of any steady alliance at present, but leave us without any of that communion of interest which could produce alliances in future.  Indeed, with these maxims, we should be well divided from the world.