lly
visible. What cure for the radical weakness of the French monarchy, to
which all the means which wit could devise, or nature and fortune
could bestow, towards universal empire, was not of force to give life,
or vigour, or consistency,--but in a Republic? Out the word came; and
it never went back.

Whether they reasoned, right or wrong, or that there was some mixture
of right and wrong in their reasoning, I am sure, that in this manner
they felt and reasoned. The different effects of a great military and
ambitious republic, and of a monarchy of the same description, were
constantly in their mouths. The principle was ready to operate when
opportunities should offer, which few of them indeed foresaw in the
extent in which they were afterwards presented; but these
opportunities, in some degree or other, they all ardently wished for.

When I was in Paris in 1773, the treaty of 1756 between Austria and
France was deplored as a national calamity; because it united France
in friendship with a power at whose expense alone they could hope any
continental aggrandisement. When the first partition of Poland was
made, in which France had no share, and which had further aggrandised
every one of the three powers of which they were most jealous, I found
them in a perfect phrensy of rage and indignation: not that they were
hurt at the shocking and uncoloured violence and injustice of that
partition, but at the debility, improvidence, and want of activity, in
their government, in not preventing it as a means of aggrandisement to
their rivals, or in not contriving, by exchanges of some kind or
other, to obtain their share of advantage from that robbery.

In that or nearly in that state of things and of opinions, came the
Austrian match; which promised to draw the knot, as afterwards in
effect it did, still more closely between the old rival houses. This
added exceedingly to their hatred and contempt of their monarchy. It
was for this reason that the late glorious queen, who on all accounts
was formed to produce general love and admiration, and whose life was
as mild and beneficent as her death was beyond example great and
heroic, became so very soon and so very much the object of an
implacable rancour, never to be extinguished but in her blood. When I
wrote my letter in answer to M. de Menonville, in the beginning of
January, 1791, I had good reason for thinking that this description of
revolutionists did not so early nor so steadil