ETTER XIX.

PARIS, September, 1805.

MY LORD:--In some of the ancient Republics, all citizens who, in time of
danger and trouble, remained neutral, were punished as traitors or
treated as enemies. When, by our Revolution, civilized society and the
European Commonwealth were menaced with a total overthrow, had each
member of it been considered in the same light, and subjected to the same
laws, some individual States might, perhaps, have been less wealthy, but
the whole community would have been more happy and more tranquil, which
would have been much better. It was a great error in the powerful league
of 1793 to admit any neutrality at all; every Government that did not
combat rebellion should have been considered and treated as its ally. The
man who continues neutral, though only a passenger, when hands are wanted
to preserve the vessel from sinking, deserves to be thrown overboard, to
be swallowed up by the waves and to perish the first. Had all other
nations been united and unanimous, during 1793 and 1794, against the
monster, Jacobinism, we should not have heard of either Jacobin
directors, Jacobin consuls, or a Jacobin Emperor. But then, from a petty
regard to a temporary profit, they entered into a truce with a
revolutionary volcano, which, sooner or later, will consume them all; for
I am afraid it is now too late for all human power, with all human means,
to preserve any State, any Government, or any people, from suffering by
the threatening conflagration. Switzerland, Venice, Geneva, Genoa, and
Tuscany have already gathered the poisoned fruits of their neutrality.
Let but Bonaparte establish himself undisturbed in Hanover some years
longer, and you will see the neutral Hanse Towns, neutral Prussia, and
neutral Denmark visited with all the evils of invasion, pillage, and
destruction, and the independence of the nations in the North will be
buried in the rubbish of the liberties of the people of the South of
Europe.

These ideas have frequently occurred to me, on hearing our agents
pronounce, and their dupes repeat: "Oh! the wise Government of Denmark!
Oh, what a wise statesman the Danish Minister, Count von Bernstorff!" I
do not deny that the late Count von Bernstorff was a great politician;
but I assert, also, that his was a greatness more calculated for regular
times than for periods of unusual political convulsion. Like your Pitt,
the Russian Woronzow, and the Austrian Colloredo, he was too honest to
judge s