ABSTRACT
The balance of power among states has always been a chimera; in all times the weak have received laws from the strong; whether the law is pronounced by one individual, or twenty, is the same to him whose fortune it is to obey. Every person must perceive after a moment's reflection, that it would be a fruitless undertaking to combat such a system with argument. For between what lies within its sphere, and what lies without it, a common basis is wanting, without which no discussion can lead to any right conclusions. The vigorous creative hand of one individual of an absolute sovereign will restore to everything life and youth. To live under the sceptre of a stranger, and to see all the appurtenances of an independent constitution swallowed up in the vortex of a prodigious monarchy, where everything is engorged, has, to be sure, something repulsive in it.
