2634. ENGLAND AND FRANCE, Banditti.—
Our lot happens to have been cast in
an age when two nations to whom circumstances
have given a temporary superiority
over others, the one by land, the other by sea,
throwing off all restraints of morality, all
pride of national character, forgetting the
mutability of fortune, and the inevitable doom
which the laws of nature pronounce against
departure from justice, individual or national,
have declared to treat her reclamations with
derision, and to set up force instead of reason
as the umpire of nations. Degrading themselves
thus from the character of lawful societies
into lawless bands of robbers and
pirates, they are abusing their brief ascendency
by desolating the world with blood and
rapine. Against such a banditti, war had become
less ruinous than peace, for then peace
was a war on one side only.—
To J. W. Eppes. Washington ed. vi, 195.
Ford ed., ix, 396.
(P.F.,,
Sep. 1813)
