The new face, which the affairs of Europe are about to take from the alliance formed between the powers of the North for the maintenance of an exact neutrality, and to which people here are fully persuaded that the Republic of the United Provinces will agree, gives occasion to conjectures, either, that the war will be pushed this year with more vivacity than ever, both by land and sea, or that peace may be made without delay. They say, even that there may have been already negotiations commenced on this subject; that it is by the intervention of the King of Sardinia, who would manage the accommodation between the belligerent powers, and that his present Ambassador in France is so much the better able to labor usefully towards this great work, that having resided in England in the same quality he has the advantage to know perfectly the Ministers and their system. However this may be, if there are sometimes occasions in which one may judge of future events by an examination of the present, and reflection upon the past, might one be taxed with partiality or temerity, if one ventured to lay it down as a fact, that, from the beginning of the contest in which Great Britain is at present engaged, her situation has never appeared so critical and so dangerous? In fact, as if it was not enough, that she had quarrelled with her Colonies, as if it was not enough, that she is at war with two powers so formidable as France and Spain in consequence of the quarrel with the Colonies, as if her intestine troubles were not enough, which, by dividing the nation, contribute not a little to weaken it; and at the end of the perspective, to see Ireland, at the first moment, make as much of it as the Americans, in declaring herself also independent. In spite of so many alarming considerations, England still seems to seek new enemies, by attacking without distinction the vessels of all the neutral nations, and even of her allies. Thus she has forced them by this proceeding, not less arbitrary than inconceivable, especially in her present circumstances, to make a league with each other for the maintenance of the safety of the navigation of their respective subjects, as well as of the honor of their flags, for which they plainly acknowledge at this day, that they never could have hoped for any safety, if the English, who, embarrassed as they are, treat them nevertheless with so little ceremony, could ever recover that superiority, whereof we cannot deny that they found means to put themselves in possession at the end of the last war.