mility, certainly the character of fraud and perfidy is ftill lefs to be washed away by indications of meanness. Fraud and prevarication are fervile vices. They fometimes grow out of the neceffities, always out of the habits of flavifh and degenerate spirits: and on the theatre of the world, it is not by affuming the mask of a Davus or a Geta that an actor will obtain credit for manly fimplicity and a liberal openness of proceeding. It is an erect countenance; it is a firm adherence to principle; it is a power of refifting falfe fhame and frivolous fear, that affert our good faith and honour, and affure to us the confidence of mankind. Therefore all thefe Negotiations, and all the Declarations with which they were preceded and followed, can only ferve to raise prefumptions against that good faith and publick integrity, the fame of which to preferve inviolate is fo much the intereft and duty of every nation.

The pledge is an engagement "to all Europe." This is the more extraordinary, because it is a pledge, which no power in Europe, whom I have yet heard of, has thought proper to require at our hands. I am not in the fecrets of office; and therefore I may be excufed for proceeding upon probabilities and exteriour indications. I have furveyed all Europe from the eaft to the weft, from the north to the fouth, in fearch of this call upon

us

us to purge ourselves of "fubtle duplicity and a punick ftyle" in our proceedings. I have not heard that his Excellency the Ottoman Ambaffador has exprcffed his doubts of the British fincerity in our Negotiation with the most unchriftian Republick lately fet up at our door. What fympathy, in that quarter, may have introduced a remonftrance upon the want of faith in this nation, I cannot pofitively fay. If it exifts, it is in Turkish or Arabick, and poffibly is not yet tranflated. But none of the nations which compofe the old Chriftian world have I yet heard as calling upon us for thofe judicial purgations and ordeals, by fire and water, which we have chofen to go through ;-for the other great proof, by battle, we feem to decline.

For whofe ufe, entertainment, or inftruction, are all thofe over-ftrained and over-laboured proceedings in Council, in Negotiation, and in Speeches in Parliament, intended? What Royal Cabinet is to be enriched with thefe highfinished pictures of the arrogance of the fworn enemies of Kings, and the meek patience of a British Adminiftration? In what heart is it intended to kindle pity towards our multiplied mortifications and difgraces? At beft it is fuperfluous. What nation is unacquainted with the haughty difpofition of the common enemy of all nations?

nations? It has been more than feen, it has been felt; not only by those who have been the victims of their imperious rapacity, but, in a degree, by thofe very powers who have confented to establish this robbery, that they might be able to copy it, and with impunity to make new ufurpations of their own. The King of Pruffia has hypothecated in truft to the Regicides his rich and fertile territories on the Rhine, as a pledge of his zeal and affection to the caufe of liberty and equality. He has seen them robbed with unbounded liberty, and with the most levelling equality. The woods are wafted; the country is ravaged; property is confifcated; and the people are put to bear a double yoke, in the exactions of a tyrannical Government and in the contributions of an hoftile irruption. Is it to fatisfy the Court of Berlin, that the Court of London is to give the fame fort of pledge of it's fincerity and good faith to the French Directory? It is not that heart full of fenfibility, it is not Luchefini, the Minister of his Pruffian Majefty, the late ally of England, and the prefent ally of it's enemy, who has demanded this pledge of our fincerity, as the price of the renewal of the long lease of his fincere friendship to this kingdom.

It is not to our enemy, the now faithful ally of Regicide, late the faithful ally of Great Britain, the Catholick King, that we addrefs our doleful lamentation:

lamentation: It is not to the Prince of Peace, whofe declaration of war was one of the first aufpicious omens of general tranquillity, which our dove-like Ambaffador, with the olive branch in his beak, was faluted with at his entrance into the ark of clean birds at Paris.

Surely it is not to the Tetrarch of Sardinia, now the faithful ally of a power who has feized upon all his fortreffes, and confifcated the oldest dominions of his houfe; it is not to this once powerful, once respected, and once cherished ally of Great Britain, that we mean to prove the fincerity of the peace which we offered to make at his expence. Or is it to him we are to prove the arrogance of the power who, under the name of friend, oppreffes him, and the poor remains of his fubjects, with all the ferocity of the most cruel enemy?

It is not to Holland, under the name of an ally, laid under a permanent military contribution, filled with their double garrifon of barbarous Jacobin troops, and ten times more barbarous Jacobin clubs and affemblies, that we find ourfelves obliged to give this pledge.

Is it to Genoa, that we make this kind promise; a ftate which the Regicides were to defend in a favourable neutrality, but whofe neutrality has G 2

been,

been, by the gentle influence of Jacobin authority, forced into the trammels of an alliance; whofe alliance has been fecured by the admiffion of French garrifons; and whofe peace has been for ever ratified by a forced declaration of war againft ourfelves?

It is not the Grand Duke of Tufcany who claims. this Declaration; not the Grand Duke, who for his early fincerity, for his love of peace, and for his entire confidence in the amity of the affaffins of his Houfe, has been complimented in the British Parliament with the name of "the wifeft Sovereign in Europe:"-It is not this pacifick Solomon, or his philofophick cudgelled Ministry, cudgelled by English and by French, whofe wifdom and philofophy between them, have placed Leghorn in the hands of the enemy of the Auftrian family, and driven the only profitable commerce of Tufcany from it's only port. It is not this Sovereign, a far more able Statesman than any of the Medici in whofe chair he fits; it is not the philofopher Carletti, more ably fpeculative than Galileo, more profoundly politick than Machiavel, that call upon us fo loudly to give the fame happy proofs of the fame good faith to the Republick, always the fame, always one and indivifible.