Is it, then, necessary to examine what were the terms of that ultimatum with which we refused to comply? Acts of hostility had been openly threatened against our allies; a hostility founded upon the assumption of a right which would at once supersede the whole law of nations. The pretended right to open the Scheldt we discussed at the time, not so much on account of its immediate importance (though it was important both in a maritime and commercial view) as on account of the general principle on which it was founded.[2] On the same arbitrary notion they soon afterward discovered that sacred law of nature which made the Rhine and the Alps the legitimate boundaries of France, and assumed the power, which they have affected to exercise through the whole of the Revolution, of superseding, by a new code of their own, all the recognized principles of the law of nations. They were, in fact, actually advancing toward the republic of Holland, by rapid strides, after the victory of Jemappes and they had ordered their generals to pursue the Austrian troops into any neutral country, thereby explicitly avowing an intention of invading Holland. They had already shown their moderation and self-denial by incorporating Belgium with the French Republic. These lovers of peace, who set out with a sworn aversion to conquest, and professions of respect for the independence of other nations; who pretend that they departed from this system only in consequence of your aggression, themselves, in time of peace, while you were still confessedly neutral, without the pretence or shadow of provocation, wrested Savoy from the King of Sardinia, and had proceeded to incorporate it likewise with France.[3] These were their aggressions at this period, and more than these. They had issued a universal declaration of war against all the thrones of Europe, and they had, by their conduct, applied it particularly and specifically to you. They had passed the decree of the 19th of November, 1792, proclaiming the promise of French succor to all nations who should manifest a wish to become free; they had, by all their language as well as their example, shown what they understood to be freedom; they had sealed their principles by the deposition of their sovereign; they had applied them to England by inviting and encouraging the addresses of those seditious and traitorous societies, who, from the beginning, favored their views, and who, encouraged by your forbearance, were even then publicly avowing French doctrines, and anticipating their success in this country—who were hailing the progress of those proceedings in France which led to the murder of its king; they were even then looking to the day when they should behold a National Convention in England formed upon similar principles.[4]