. Perhaps, having no
property in old France, they are more indifferent about its restoration.
Their language is certainly flattering to all ministers in all courts.
We all are men; we all love to be told of the extent of our own power
and our own faculties. If we love glory, we are jealous of partners, and
afraid even of our own instruments. It is of all modes of flattery the
most effectual, to be told that you can regulate the affairs of another
kingdom better than its hereditary proprietors. It is formed to flatter
the principle of conquest so natural to all men. It is this principle
which is now making the partition of Poland. The powers concerned have
been told by some perfidious Poles, and perhaps they believe, that their
usurpation is a great benefit to the people, especially to the common
people. However this may turn out with regard to Poland, I am quite sure
that France could not be so well under a foreign direction as under that
of the representatives of its own king and its own ancient estates.

I think I have myself studied France as much as most of those whom the
allied courts are likely to employ in such a work. I have likewise of
myself as partial and as vain an opinion as men commonly have of
themselves. But if I could command the whole military arm of Europe, I
am sure that a bribe of the best province in that kingdom would not
tempt me to intermeddle in their affairs, except in perfect concurrence
and concert with the natural, legal interests of the country, composed
of the ecclesiastical, the military, the several corporate bodies of
justice and of burghership, making under a monarch (I repeat it again
and again) _the French nation according to its fundamental
Constitution_. No considerate statesman would undertake to meddle with
it upon any other condition.

The government of that kingdom is fundamentally monarchical. The public
law of Europe has never recognized in it any other form of government.
The potentates of Europe have, by that law, a right, an interest, and a
duty to know with what government they are to treat, and what they are
to admit into the federative society,--or, in other words, into the
diplomatic republic of Europe. This right is clear and indisputable.

What other and further interference they have a right to in the interior
of the concerns of another people is a matter on which, as on every
political subject, no very definite or positive rule can well be laid
down. Our neighbo