bound to destroy. Her good and ill
dispositions are shown by the same means. _To communicate peaceably_ the
rights of men is the true mode of her showing her _friendship_; to force
sovereigns to _submit_ to those rights is her mode of _hostility_. So
that, either as friend or foe, her whole scheme has been, and is, to
throw the Empire into confusion; and those statesmen who follow the old
routine of politics may see in this general confusion, and in the danger
of the _lesser_ princes, an occasion, as protectors or enemies, of
connecting their territories to one or the other of the _two great_
German powers. They do not take into consideration that the means which
they encourage, as leading to the event they desire, will with certainty
not only ravage and destroy the Empire, but, if they should for a moment
seem to aggrandize the two great houses, will also establish principles
and confirm tempers amongst the people which will preclude the two
sovereigns from the possibility of holding what they acquire, or even
the dominions which they have inherited. It is on the side of the
Ecclesiastical Electorates that the dikes raised to support the German
liberty first will give way.

[Sidenote: Geneva.]

[Sidenote: Savoy.]

The French have begun their general operations by seizing upon those
territories of the Pope the situation of which was the most inviting to
the enterprise. Their method of doing it was by exciting sedition and
spreading massacre and desolation through these unfortunate places, and
then, under an idea of kindness and protection, bringing forward an
antiquated title of the crown of France, and annexing Avignon and the
two cities of the Comtat, with their territory, to the French republic.
They have made an attempt on Geneva, in which they very narrowly failed
of success. It is known that they hold out from time to time the idea of
uniting all the other provinces of which Gaul was anciently composed,
including Savoy on the other side, and on this side bounding themselves
by the Rhine.

[Sidenote: Switzerland.]

[Sidenote: Old French maxims the security of its independence.]

As to Switzerland, it is a country whose long union, rather than its
possible division, is the matter of wonder. Here I know they entertain
very sanguine hopes. The aggregation to France of the democratic Swiss
republics appears to them to be a work half done by their very form; and
it might seem to them rather an increase of import