It is neither the actual possession, nor _the will_ to keep certain acquisitions, but the _power_ to keep them, and, _at the same time_, to extort other concessions from an enemy, that must determine the basis of all negociations, that are not founded on verbal chimeras. ‘We are taught, indeed, to take for granted, that a peace, whose conditions bear hard on either party, will be the sooner broken by that party; and, therefore, that we have an indirect interest in sacrificing a portion of our conquests.’ The general principle here stated is self-evident, and one would think indisputable. For the very ground of war is a peace whose conditions are thought to _bear hard_ on one of the parties, and yet, according to Vetus, the only way to make peace durable, to prevent the recurrence of an appeal to force, is to impose such hard conditions on an enemy, as it is his interest, and must be his inclination, to break _by force_. An opinion of the disproportion between our general strength, and our actual advantages, seems to be the necessary ground of war, but it is here converted into the permanent source of peace. The origin of the common prejudice is, however, very satisfactorily illustrated in the remainder of the paragraph. ‘This language is in favour with the two extremes of English faction. The blind opponents of every minister _who happens to be engaged in conducting a war_’ [_Is war then a mere affair of accident?_] ‘can see no danger in national dishonour; and cry out for peace with double vehemence, whenever it is least likely to be concluded well. The dependents, on the other hand, of any feeble government, will strive to lower the expectations of the country—to exclaim against _immoderate_ exertion—to depreciate her powers in war, and her pretensions at a peace:—thus preparing an oblique defence for their employers, and undermining the honest disappointment’ [_Quere expectations_] ‘of the people when they reflect how little has been done by war, and how much’ [of that little] ‘undone by negociation. But besides being a factious expedient, it is a principle of action equally false and absurd. I deny that we affect any thing more by granting an enemy what are _called favourable terms_, than convince him that he may go to war with England, gratis. The conditions he obtains will encourage him to try the chance of another war, in the hope of a still more advantageous treaty.’ Here Vetus entirely shifts the state of the question. The terms of a peace, if _not hard_, must be immediately _favourable_! Because we grant an enemy such terms as he has a right to expect, it is made a conclusion that we are also to grant him such as he has no right to expect, and which will be so decidedly advantageous as to induce him to try his fortune still farther against so generous an adversary. That is, Vetus has no idea of the possibility of a just, fair, or honourable peace; his mind refuses to dwell for a moment on any arrangement of terms, which,