We agree with the sentiment with which he commences his last Letter, that it is ‘particularly desirable to follow up the question of peace’ at the present crisis, but not with the reason which he assigns for his extreme anxiety to enter upon the question, ‘because this is just the moment to dread the entertainment of a pacific overture.’ We can readily believe that at no other moment than when he dreads its approach, would Vetus ever breathe a syllable on the subject of peace, and then only to avert it. Whenever ‘a spurious and mawkish beneficence’ gives an alarm of peace, the dogs of war stand ready on the slip to hunt it down. ‘I have stated to you’ (_To the Editor of the Times_) ‘as the only legitimate basis of a treaty, if not on the part of the continental Allies, at least for England herself, that _she should conquer all she can, and keep all she conquers_. This is not by way of retaliation, _however just_, upon so obdurate and rapacious an enemy—but as an indispensable condition of her own safety and existence.’ That which is here said to be the _only_ legitimate basis of a treaty is one, which if admitted and acted upon, would make it impossible that any treaty should ever be formed. It is a basis, not of lasting peace, but of endless war. To call that the basis of a treaty which precludes the possibility of any concession or compensation, of every consideration either of the right or power of each party to retain its actual acquisitions, is one of those misnomers which the gravity of Vetus’s manner makes his readers overlook. After the imposing and guarded exordium which ushers in the definition of our only legitimate basis of a treaty, we are not prepared to expect Vetus’s burlesque solution of the difficulty—‘that we are not to treat at all.’ The human mind is naturally credulous of sounding professions, and reluctantly admits the existence of what is very common, and common for that reason—_pompous nonsense_. It seems, however, that this basis of a treaty is to apply only to one of the contracting powers, namely, England, it is equivocal as to the Allies, and with respect to France, it is, we suppose, meant to be altogether null. For in a former letter, after asking, ‘Who are to be the judges of his (Bonaparte’s) rights?’ he answers emphatically, ‘We and our Allies!’ Bobadil did not come up to this exquisite pacificator of the world! To make common sense of Vetus’s axiom with reference to any state whatever, ‘that it should keep all it conquers,’ it seems necessary to add this trifling condition, ‘if it can.’ And with respect to Great Britain in particular, if from her peculiar situation she has the power to keep all she conquers without being amenable to any other tribunal than her own will, this very circumstance proves that the exercise of that power is not _necessary to her safety and existence_. Again, if England has an interest of her own, quite independent on and