must make peace or war according to the orders she receives from the
directory of assassins. In effect and substance, her crown is a fief
of regicide.

Whence then can the compensation be demanded? Undoubtedly from that
power which alone has made some conquests. That power is England. Will
the allies then give away their ancient patrimony, that England may
keep islands in the West Indies? They never can protract the war in
good earnest for that object; nor can they act in concert with us, in
our refusal to grant anything towards their redemption. In that case
we are thus situated. Either we must give Europe, bound hand and foot,
to France; or we must quit the West Indies without any one object,
great or small, towards indemnity and security. I repeat it, without
any advantage whatever: because, supposing that our conquest could
comprise all that France ever possessed in the tropical America, it
never can amount in any fair estimation to a fair equivalent for
Holland, for the Austrian Netherlands, for the lower Germany, that is,
for the whole ancient kingdom or circle of Burgundy, now under the
yoke of regicide, to say nothing of almost all Italy under the same
barbarous domination. If we treat in the present situation of things,
we have nothing in our hands that can redeem Europe. Nor is the
Emperor, as I have observed, more rich in the fund of equivalents.

If we look to our stock in the eastern world, our most valuable and
systematic acquisitions are made in that quarter. Is it from France
they are made? France has but one or two contemptible factories,
subsisting by the offal of the private fortunes of English individuals
to support them, in any part of India. I look on the taking of the
Cape of Good Hope as the securing of a post of great moment. It does
honour to those who planned, and to those who executed, that
enterprise: but I speak of it always as comparatively good; as good as
anything can be in a scheme of war that repels us from a centre, and
employs all our forces where nothing can be finally decisive. But
giving, as I freely give, every possible credit to these eastern
conquests, I ask one question,--on whom are they made? It is evident,
that if we can keep our eastern conquests we keep them not at the
expense of France, but at the expense of Holland our _ally_; of
Holland, the immediate cause of the war, the nation whom we had
undertaken to protect, and not of the republic which it was our
business to