during the remainder of his life, the same unprofitable course that he had formerly taken.

William Pitt answered Burke and Fox in severe terms; said that their great talents ought to be considered at this time as public property, and that to withhold their assistance from the public at a time when it stood so much in need of them was a species of treachery. To him, he said, the dispute between the Ministers appeared to be only a contest for power.

The new promotions are as follows:- Lord Shelburne, First Lord of the Treasury; William Pitt, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Thomas Townshend, and Lord Grantham, who was lately ambassador at Madrid, Secretaries of State; Sir George Young, Secretary at War.

The Americans have refused to enter into any separate negotiation, so that peace seems much more distant than we hoped. To this bad news must be added the loss of the Bahama Islands. But let us quit this ungrateful subject. Adieu. Love to our dear Kitty.

S. R.

LETTER XXIV.

Gray's Inn, July 26. 1782.

I am not to expect, then, my dear Roget, any more letters from you on the melancholy subject of Geneva. The few words which my dear sister inclosed for me in her last letter, too fully confirm all the fatal intelligence we had before received. The warm interest which you know I took in the

cause of your fellow-citizens will have enabled you to conceive the concern I feel at the issue of their affairs. I lament it, too, from a more general consideration; for I do not doubt that the conduct of the pretended patriots of Geneva will be remembered hereafter by the advocates for arbitrary power; who, when they find the arguments by which the people's cause is defended unanswerable, betake themselves to an attack upon its defenders, and triumph in showing the insincerity and selfishness of seditious demagogues. Thus are the people alike the victims of the treachery of their pretended friends and of the tyranny, of their open enemies. I am less astonished at the want of public virtue and patriotism, which has appeared in the chiefs of the Representants, than at their folly and inattention to their private interests. For, admitting that they were careless about the honour and freedom of their country, surely prudential and interested considerations alone might have induced them to risk their lives in defence of their own fortunes, their character and consideration in their country, rather than to preserve, at any rate, a miserable existence, embittered by the reproaches of their own consciences, and the contempt of mankind,

"Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.” 1

My dear sister gives me room to hope that she will write me a detailed account of this melancholy catastrophe. I am the more desirous of this, as I think of continuing my account of the

1 Juvenal. Sat viii. 84

affairs of Geneva, not (undoubtedly) with a view to its appearing in any publication, but merely as an exercise and a matter of instruction and improvement to myself.

What do you think of the Abbé St. Pierre's project of perpetual peace, and Rousseau's observations on it?1 A much stronger objection might, I think, be made to the proposal than either of those writers have foreseen and answered, which is, that the ultimate consequence of instituting, as supreme arbitrator of all the affairs of Europe, a Diet, of which the majority would be the representatives of arbitrary princes, must be the total extirpation of liberty. For the internal political dis-. putes of every country must be submitted to the decision of the Diet, there being no other alternative but an appeal to war; and the project supposes war never to be made but by the whole confederacy. To explain my meaning better- -Suppose the project to be adopted, and a general European confederacy to be formed; a dispute arises in England between the Crown and the Commons about the extent of the royal prerogative; and the King and the people are both alike inflexible in their pretensions. The confederates, who are the guarantees of each national constitution, must be recurred to, to decide the contest; and no doubt the weight of royal influence, the necessary ignorance of the judges with respect to our constitution, and the despotic principles of government prevalent in their own states, will render their decision favour

1 Entitled, Jugement sur la Paix perpétuelle, and published with Rousseau's political works.

able to the King. Nor is it any answer to this objection to say, that the confederates are guarantees of every distinct constitution of government, such as it exists at the time the confederacy was formed; because, in disputes between different members of a government, the question always is, what is the constitution? and every ambitious prince has prudence enough to cover his encroachments, and the stretches of his power, with the name of the exercise of his constitutional prerogative.

Besides it may often happen, from a change in the character and manners of a nation, that to maintain its present constitution is to destroy its liberties; witness England at this moment; or granting that the confederacy should violate the first principle on which it was formed, who shall take advantage of the violation and refuse obedience to its decrees? Shall a populace, unused to arms, and ignorant of discipline, array themselves for war against a league of all the powers of Europe? There would be nothing then to restrain the general diet from deciding every contest for the prince, and against his subjects. One victory of this kind would encourage the prince to excite fresh troubles, which must be brought before the same partial tribunal, and the example would soon become general. It is absurd, as Rousseau says, to imagine that, if the project took place, many of the confederate princes would unite their forces for the purpose of making conquests; but it is not absurd to suppose that they would unite their counsels in order to extend their authority over their subjects and it would be to be dreaded that

not only princes, but even aristocratical governments, would join in this cruel policy, by turns assisting each other to become the tyrants of their country. The evil would be without the possibility of a remedy; for what would it avail a country that she had many Brutuses among her sons, if their virtue was overawed and rendered useless by a mighty league of all Europe, firmly resolved "ut e conspectu libertas tolleretur."1 Whether Europe would not be compensated for the loss of liberty in the very few states that still retain any shadow of it, by having war banished from all its quarters, is a question which I should not hesitate to decide by saying, "Mihi potior

visa est periculosa libertas quieto servitio."2 But it is time to put an end to this long dissertation. Adieu! believe me, &c.,

SAML. ROMILLY.

LETTER XXV.

Gray's Inn, Oct. 25. 1782.

I was obliged to send my last letter to you, my dear Roget, in so great a hurry, that I had not time to read over what I had written. I hope, however, you were able to make it out. From that time till the present moment I have never had leisure to write to you, and the hour which I now devote to you is stolen from occupations which, compared to any thing that I had less at heart than

1 Tac. Agric. 24.

2 Sallust. Hist. Fragm. lib. i.