ustody his territories on this side of the Rhine, manifest any tokens
of his opinion of her loss of preponderance? Look on Sweden and on
Denmark: is her preponderance less visible there?

It is true, that, in a course of ages, empires have fallen, and, in the
opinion of some, not in mine, by their own weight. Sometimes they have
been unquestionably embarrassed in their movements by the dissociated
situation of their dominions. Such was the case of the empire of Charles
the Fifth and of his successor. It might be so of others. But so compact
a body of empire, so fitted in all the parts for mutual support, with a
frontier by Nature and Art so impenetrable, with such facility of
breaking out with irresistible force from every quarter, was never seen
in such an extent of territory, from the beginning of time, as in that
empire which the Jacobins possessed in October, 1795, and which Boissy
d'Anglas, in his report, settled as the law for Europe, and the dominion
assigned by Nature for the Republic of Regicide. But this empire is to
be her ruin, and to take away all alarm and jealousy on the part of
England, and to destroy her preponderance over the miserable remains of
Europe.

These are choice speculations with which the author amuses himself, and
tries to divert us, in the blackest hours of the dismay, defeat, and
calamity of all civilized nations. They have but one fault,--that they
are directly contrary to the common sense and common feeling of
mankind. If I had but one hour to live, I would employ it in decrying
this wretched system, and die with my pen in my hand to mark out the
dreadful consequences of receiving an arrangement of empire dictated by
the despotism of Regicide to my own country, and to the lawful
sovereigns of the Christian world.

I trust I shall hardly be told, in palliation of this shameful system of
politics, that the author expresses his sentiments only as doubts. In
such things, it may be truly said, that "once to doubt is once to be
resolved." It would be a strange reason for wasting the treasures and
shedding the blood of our country, to prevent arrangements on the part
of another power, of which we were doubtful whether they might not be
even to our advantage, and render our neighbor less than before the
object of our jealousy and alarm. In this doubt there is much decision.
No nation would consent to carry on a war of skepticism. But the fact
is, this expression of doubt is only a mode of put