These are the 'ifs' and the 'buts', which I shall continue to introduce, not the insidious and confounding subtleties of special pleading, but the just and necessary distinctions of intelligible prudence; I am conscious of sincere and honest intentions in the use of them, and I desire to be tried by no other than God and my country. But are we not weakening ourselves? Let any man calmly, and with the mind of an Englishman, look round on the state of our manufactures, our commerce, on all that forms and feeds the sources of national wealth, and to that man I can confidently leave the following questions to be answered. From the negotiations at Lisle to the present moment has England or France weakened itself in the greater degree? Whether, at the end of this campaign, France is not more likely to suffer the feebleness ensuing on exhausted finance than England?
If Jacobinism, enthroned in Buonaparte, should resist both the pressure of foreign attack, and its own inherent tendencies to self-destruction, whether it must not derive such power of resistance from the use of such revolutionary and convulsive efforts, as involve, and almost imply a consequent state of feebleness? And whether therefore, if any unexpected reverse of fortune should make it expedient or necessary for us to compromise with Jacobinism, it would not be better for us to compromise with it at the end of the campaign, than at present? And by parity of reasoning, whether it be not true (even on the supposition that Jacobinism is not to be routed, disarmed, and fettered); yet, that even on this supposition, the longer we defer a peace, the safer that peace will be!