It was of course that we should wait until the enemy showed some sort of disposition on his part to fulfil this condition. It was hoped, indeed, that our suppliant strains might be suffered to steal into the august ear in a more propitious season. That season, however, invoked by so many vows, conjurations, and prayers, did not come. Every declaration of hostility renovated, and every act pursued with double animosity,--the overrunning of Lombardy,--the subjugation of Piedmont,--the possession of its impregnable fortresses,--the seizing on all the neutral states of Italy,--our expulsion from Leghorn,--instances forever renewed for our expulsion from Genoa,--Spain rendered subject to them and hostile to us,--Portugal bent under the yoke,--half the Empire overrun and ravaged,--were the only signs which this mild Republic thought proper to manifest of her pacific sentiments. Every demonstration of an implacable rancor and an untamable pride were the only encouragements we received to the renewal of our supplications. Here, therefore, they and we were fixed. Nothing was left to the British ministry but "to prosecute a war just and necessary,"--a war equally just as at the time of our engaging in it,--a war become ten times more necessary by everything which happened afterwards. This resolution was soon, however, forgot. It felt the heat of the season and melted away. New hopes were entertained from supplication. No expectations, indeed, were then formed from renewing a direct application to the French Regicides through the agent-general for the humiliation of sovereigns. At length a step was taken in degradation which even went lower than all the rest. Deficient in merits of our own, a mediator was to be sought,--and we looked for that mediator at Berlin! The King of Prussia's merits in abandoning the general cause might have obtained for him some sort of influence in favor of those whom he had deserted; but I have never heard that his Prussian Majesty had lately discovered so marked an affection for the Court of St. James's, or for the Court of Vienna, as to excite much hope of his interposing a very powerful mediation to deliver them from the distresses into which he had brought them.