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 that the armies of the Allies
were of this way of thinking, and that, when they evacuated all these
countries, it was a stratagem of war to decoy France into ruin,--or
that, if in a treaty we should surrender them forever into the hands of
the usurpation, (the lease the author supposes,) it is a master-stroke
of policy to effect the destruction of a formidable rival, and to render
her no longer an object of jealousy and alarm. This, I assure the
author, will infinitely facilitate the treaty. The usurpers will catch
at this bait, without minding the hook which this crafty angler for the