Has this author had in his view the transactions
between the Regicide Republic and the yet nominally subsisting monarchy
of Spain?
I bring this matter under your Lordship's consideration, that you may
have a more complete view than this author chooses to give of the _true
France_ you have to deal with, as to its nature, and to its force and
its disposition. Mark it, my Lord, France, in giving her law to Spain,
stipulated for none of her indemnities in Europe, no enlargement
whatever of her frontier. Whilst we are looking for indemnities from
France, betraying our own safety in a sacrifice of the independence of
Europe, France secures hers by the most important acquisition of
territory ever made in the West Indies since their first settlement. She
appears (it is only in appearance) to give up the frontier of Spain; and
she is compensated, not in appearance, but in reality, by a territory
that makes a dreadful frontier to the colonies of Great Britain.
It is sufficiently alarming that she is to have the possession of this
great island. But all the Spanish colonies, virtually, are hers. Is
there so puny a whipster in the _petty form_ of the school of politics
who can be at a loss for the fate of the British colonies, when he
combines the French and Spanish consolidation with the known critical
and dubious dispositions of the United States of America, as they are at
present, but which, when a peace is made, when the basis of a Regicide
ascendency in Spain is laid, will no longer be so good as dubious and
critical? But I go a great deal further; and on much consideration of
the condition and circumstances of the West Indies, and of the genius of
this new republic, as it has operated and is likely to operate on them,
I say, that, if a single rock in the West Indies is in the hands of this
_transatlantic Morocco_, we have not an hour's safety there.
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