The relation in which we may stand to the other States of Europe, or they to each other, is comparatively of little moment. They may reciprocate Missions, and propose Treaties,—the Ligurian Republic may make Peace or War with the Cisalpine; the Cisalpine with the Roman;—either of them with the King of Sardinia, with Tuscany, or with Naples; and the greater Powers may mediate, or embroil the quarrel, may offer their protection, and talk of their Dignity:—But the question does not lie there.—France has the power and the will to controul, to oppress them altogether; to limit or extend their Boundaries, as she sees good; to approve or annul their Internal Regulations, as well as their stipulations with each other: And while she has that power, whether it be by strength in herself, or by the sufferance of others; whether she may choose to vex and harass them in mass, or detail; to keep peace between them, or to set them at variance; to work their revolutions by her own arms, or to delegate that sacred office to their neighbours; or, finally, to insist upon their performing it each for themselves;—the result to us is the same. The People of Europe are equally enslaved;—it matters not whether they are manacled separately, or bolted to the links of a long chain which connects and coerces them in a fellowship of misery.
Mortalia corda
Per gentes humilis stravit pavor.
To Us, the relation of these unhappy Powers, is either that of Friends forced into a Foreign Army to fight against us, or placed, hand-cuffed, on the Deck of a Line of Battle Ship to receive our fire—or it is that of a Captive languishing in a Dungeon against which We are making an attack, and who does not dare to acknowledge his Friend, till he can hail him as his Deliverer.
The Contest between Great Britain and France, then, is not for the existence of the former only, but for the Freedom of the World. To look to partial Interests, to talk of partial Successes, as bearing upon the main object and general issue of the War, is to take a narrow and pitiful view of the most momentous and most tremendous subject that ever was brought under the consideration of mankind.
If Great Britain, insensible of what she owes to herself and to the World, flinches (for she cannot fall), in the Contest;—she throws away not herself alone, but the peace and happiness of Nations. If she maintain herself stoutly;—to speculate on the mode, the time, the means by which success adequate to the immensity of the object at stake is to be attained, were, indeed, presumptuous;—but We risk, without apprehension of being thought sanguine in our hopes and expectations, or of being contradicted by the event, the sentiment of the greatest Orator of ancient times—“It is not, it cannot be possible, that an Empire founded on injustice, on rapacity, on perfidy, on the contempt and disregard of everything sacred towards God, or among Men;—it is not possible that such an Empire should endure.”
NOTES TO “NEW MORALITY”.
Joseph Priestley, LL.D. (page [278]).
“I have read a communication from George III. to one of his ministers, on the subject of the riots in which Priestley’s house was burned. His Majesty says, in his short emphatic way, that the riots must be stopped immediately; that no man’s house must be left in peril; and then he orders the march of certain troops, &c., to restore peace; and concludes with saying that, as the mischief did occur, it was impossible not to be pleased at its having fallen on Priestley rather than another, that he might feel the wickedness of the doctrines of democracy which he was propagating.”—J. W. Croker (MS.).—[Ed.]