England herself has given examples of interference in matters of this kind, and that in cases where injury was only apprehended. She engaged in a long and expensive war against France (called the succession war) to prevent a grandson of Louis the Fourteenth being king of Spain; because, said she, _it will be injurious_ to me; and she has been fighting and intriguing against what was called the family-compact ever since. In 1787 she threatened France with war to prevent a connection between France and Hoi-land; and in all her propositions of peace to-day she is dictating separations. But if she look at the Anglo-germanic compact at home, called the Hanover succession, she cannot avoid seeing that France necessarily must, some day or other, take up that subject, and make the return of the Elector to his Electorate one of the conditions of peace. There will be no lasting peace between the two countries till this be done, and the sooner it be done the better will it be for both. I have not been in any company where this matter aas been a topic, that did not see it in the light it is here stated. Even Barthélémy,(1) when he first came to the Directory (and Barthélémy was never famous for patriotism) acknowledged in my hearing, and in company with Derché, Secretary to the Legation at Lille, the connection of an Elector of Germany and a King of England to be injurious to France. I do not, however, mention it from a wish to embarrass the negociation for peace. The Directory has fixed its _ultimatum_; but if that ultimatum be rejected, the obligation to adhere to it is discharged, and a new one may be assumed. So wretchedly has Pitt managed his opportunities» that every succeeding negociation has ended in terms more against him than the former. If the Directory had bribed him, he could not serve his interest better than he does. He serves it as Lord North served that of America, which finished in the discharge of his master.* 1 Marquis de Barthélémy (François) (1750-1830) entered the Directory in June, 1796, through royalist influence. He shared Pichegru's banishment, and subsequently became an agent of Louis XVIII.--_Editor._ * The father of Pitt, when a member of the House of Commons, exclaiming one day, during a former war, against the enormous and ruinous expense of German connections, as the offspring of the Hanover succession, and borrowing a metaphor from the story of Prometheus, cried out: "Thus, Hie Prometheus, is Britain chained to the barren rock of Hanover; whilst the imperial eagle preys upon her vitals."-- Author.