rinces of Europe from the success and stability of
this infernal business, it is their own absolute crime.

We are to understand, however, (for sometimes so the author hints,) that
something stable in the Constitution of Regicide was required for our
amity with it; but the noble Remarker is no more solicitous about this
point than he is for the permanence of the whole body of his October
speculations. "If," says he, speaking of the Regicide, "they can obtain
a practicable constitution, even for a limited period of time, they will
be in a condition to reestablish the accustomed relations of peace and
amity." Pray let us leave this bush-fighting. What is meant by a
_limited period of time_? Does it mean the direct contrary to the
terms, _an unlimited period_? If it is a limited period, what limitation
does he fix as a ground for his opinion? Otherwise, his limitation is
unlimited. If he only requires a constitution that will last while the
treaty goes on, ten days' existence will satisfy his demands. He knows
that France never did want a practicable constitution, nor a government,
which endured for a limited period of time. Her constitutions were but
too practicable; and short as was their duration, it was but too long.
They endured time enough for treaties which benefited themselves and
have done infinite mischief to our cause. But, granting him his strange
thesis, that hitherto the mere form or the mere term of their
constitutions, and not their indisposition, but their instability, has
been the cause of their not preserving the relations of amity,--how
could a constitution which might not last half an hour after the noble
lord's signature of the treaty, in the company in which he must sign it,
insure its observance? If you trouble yourself at all with their
constitutions, you are certainly more concerned with them after the
treaty than before it, as the observance of conventions is of infinitely
more consequence than the making them. Can anything be more palpably
absurd and senseless than to object to a treaty of peace for want of
durability in constitutions which had an actual duration, and to trust a
constitution that at the time of the writing had not so much as a
practical existence? There is no way of accounting for such discourse in
the mouths of men of sense, but by supposing that they secretly
entertain a hope that the very act of having made a peace with the
Regicides will give a stability to the Regicide syste