Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/90

 ¬made to her. — She was not bound to be con- tented with general professions, but might have claimed the character of arbitrator upon her own terms, and have demanded preliminary securities for the performance of her award; and if she found that notwithstanding the dispositions of the sovereign who addressed her, his subjects were incapable of performing any engagements he might stipulate, that reason, after due inves- tigation, might have been acted upon, and even publicly assigned for declining the mediation; or supposing them to have been capable of acting as a nation, yet, if there were doubts of their performing their parts with sincerity, Armata, as the sovereign umpire, might have proposed to add her mighty strength to that of confede- rating monarchs upon any breach of the con- ditions she might propose. But instead of this, or any part of it, or the profession of any one principle which ever entered a negociation for peace, this wretched prince, whose life then hung by a thread, but which might have been strengthened into a cable if the mediation had ¬been ¬