personification. "Make your peace with France." That word _France_
sounds quite as well as any other; and it conveys no idea but that of a
very pleasant country and very hospitable inhabitants. Nothing absurd
and shocking in amity and good correspondence with _France_. Permit me
to say, that I am not yet well acquainted with this new-coined France,
and without a careful assay I am not willing to receive it in currency
in place of the old Louis-d'or.

Having, therefore, slipped the persons with whom we are to treat out of
view, we are next to be satisfied that the French Revolution, which this
peace is to fix and consolidate, ought to give us no just cause of
apprehension. Though the author labors this point, yet he confesses a
fact (indeed, he could not conceal it) which renders all his labors
utterly fruitless. He confesses that the Regicide means to _dictate_ a
pacification, and that this pacification, according to their decree
passed but a very few days before his publication appeared, is to "unite
to their empire, either in possession or dependence, new barriers, many
frontier places of strength, a large sea-coast, and many sea-ports." He
ought to have stated it, that they would annex to their territory a
country about a third as large as France, and much more than half as
rich, and in a situation the most important for command that it would be
possible for her anywhere to possess.

To remove this terror, (even if the Regicides should carry their
point,) and to give us perfect repose with regard to their empire,
whatever they may acquire, or whomsoever they might destroy, he raises a
doubt "whether France will not be ruined by _retaining_ these conquests,
and whether she will not wholly lose that preponderance which she has
held in the scale of European powers, and will not eventually be
destroyed by the effect of her present successes, or, at least, whether,