I say that, in refusing such a preliminary, we were only resisting the
claim of France to arrogate to itself the power of controlling, by its
own separate and municipal acts, the rights and interests of other
countries, and moulding, at its discretion, a new and general code of
the law of nations.

In reviewing the issue of this negotiation, it is important to observe
that France, who began by abjuring a love of conquest, was desired
to give up nothing of her own, not even to give up all that she had
conquered; that it was offered to her to receive back all that had
been conquered from her; and when she rejected the negotiation for
peace upon these grounds, are we then to be told of the unrelenting
hostility of the combined Powers, for which France was to revenge
itself upon other countries, and which is to justify the subversion
of every established government, and the destruction of property,
religion, and domestic comfort, from one end of Italy to the other?
Such was the effect of the war against Modena, against Genoa, against
Tuscany, against Venice, against Rome, and against Naples; all of
which she engaged in, or prosecuted, subsequent to this very period.

After this, in the year 1797, Austria had made peace, England and its
ally, Portugal (from whom we could expect little active assistance,
but whom we felt it our duty to defend), alone remained in the war.
In that situation, under the pressure of necessity, which I shall not
disguise, we made another attempt to negotiate. In 1797, Prussia,
Spain, Austria, and Naples having successively made peace, the princes
of Italy having been destroyed, France having surrounded itself, in
almost every part in which it is not surrounded by the sea, with
revolutionary republics, England made another offer of a different
nature. It was not now a demand that France should restore anything.