Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/122

the orders and balances of its government, have declined in an age of general improvement, and become a prey to any invader—much leſs would it have forced the world to acknowledge, that the tranſlation of near five millions of people, from a republican government to that of abſolute empires and monarchies, whether it were done by right or by wrong, is a bleſſing to them. The partition was projected by the king of Pruſſia, who communicated it to the emperor and empreſs. The plague was one circumſtance, and the Ruſſian war againſt the Turks another, that favoured the deſign; and the partition-treaty was ſigned at Peterſburg, in February 1772, by the Ruſſian, Auſtrian, and Pruſſian plenipotentiaries. The troops of the three courts were already in poſſeſſion of the greateſt part of Poland, and the Confederates were ſoon diſperſed. The partitioning powers proceeded with ſuch ſecrecy, that only vague conjectures were made at Warſaw, and that lord Cathcart, the Engliſh miniſter at Peterſburg, obtained no authentic information of the treaty until two months after its ſignature. The formal notification, to the king and ſenate at Warſaw, was made, by the Imperial and Pruſſian ambaſſadors, in September 1772, of the pretenſions of their courts to the Poliſh territory. The remonſtrances of the king and ſenate, as well as thoſe of the courts of London, Paris, Stockholm, and Copenhagen, had no effect; and the moſt humiliating record, that ever appeared in the annals of a republic, is ſeen in the king's ſummons—"Since there are no hopes from any quarter, and any further delays will only tend to draw down the moſt dreadful calamities upon the remainder of the dominions which are left to the republic, the diet is convened

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