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.

Notwithstanding this new kind of barrier and security that is found
against her ambition in her conquests, yet in the very same paragraph he