understood, the local advantages of it to the immediate actors, and
the numerous benefits it promised to mankind, appear to be every day
encreasing, and we saw not a temporary good for the present race only,
but a continued good to all posterity; these motives, therefore, added
to those which preceded them, became the motives, on the part of
America, which led her to propose and agree to the treaty of alliance,
as the best effectual method of extending and securing happiness; and
therefore, with respect to us, the Abbe is wrong.

France, on the other hand, was situated very differently to America.
She was not acted upon by necessity to seek a friend, and therefore
her motive in becoming one, has the strongest evidence of being good,
and that which is so, must have some happiness for its object. With
regard to herself she saw a train of conveniencies worthy her
attention. By lessening the power of an enemy, whom, at the same
time, she sought neither to destroy nor distress, she gained an
advantage without doing an evil, and created to herself a new friend
by associating with a country in misfortune. The springs of thought
that lead to actions of this kind, however political they may be, are
nevertheless naturally beneficent; for in all causes, good or bad, it
is necessary there should be a fitness in the mind, to enable it to
act in character with the object: Therefore, as a bad cause cannot be
prosecuted with a good motive, so neither can a good cause be long
supported by a bad one, as no man acts without a motive; therefore, in
the present instance, as they cannot be bad, they must be admitted to
be good. But the Abbe sets out upon such an extended scale, that he
overlooks the degrees by which it is measured, and rejects the
beginning of good, because the end comes not at once.

It is true that bad motives may in some degree be brought to support a