ginations would have realized in them a standard of virtue and wifdom, beyond the vulgar practice of the hour and you would have rifen with the example to whofe imitation you aspired. Refpecting your forefathers, you would have been taught to respect yourfelves. You would not have chofen to confider the French as a people of yefterday, as a nation of low-born fervile wretches until the emancipating year of 1789. In order to furnish, at the expence of your honour, an excuse to your apologists here for feveral enormities of yours, you would not have been content to be represented as a gang of Maroon flaves, fuddenly broke loose from the house of bondage, and therefore to be pardoned for your abuse of the liberty so which you were not accustomed and ill fitted. Would it not, my worthy friend, have been wiser to have you thought, what I, for one, always thought you, a generous and gallant nation, long mifled to your difadvantage by your high and romantic fentiments of fidelity, honour, and loyalty; that events had been unfavourable to you, but that you were not enflaved through any illiberal or fervile difpofition; that in your most devoted fubmiffion, you were actuated by a principle of public fpirit, and that it was your country you worshipped, in the person of your king? Had you made it to be understood, that in the delufion of this amiable error you had gone further than your wife ancestors; that you were resolved to resume your ancient privileges, whilst you preferved the fpirit of your ancient and your recent recent loyalty and honour; or, if diffident of yourselves, and not clearly difcerning the almost obliterated conftitution of your ancestors, you had looked to your neighbours in this land, who had kept alive the ancient principles and models of the old common law of Europe meliorated. and adapted to its prefent ftate-by following wife examples you would have given new examples of wisdom to the world. You would have rendered the cause of liberty venerable in the eyes of every worthy mind in every nation. You would have shamed defpotifm from the earth, by fhewing that freedom was not only reconcileable, but as, when well difciplined it is, auxiliary to law. You would have had an unoppreffive but a productive revenue. You would have had a flourifhing commerce to feed it. You would have had a free conftitution; a potent monarchy; a difciplined army; a reformed and venerated clergy; a mitigated but fpirited nobility, to lead your virtue, not to overlay it; you would have had a liberal order of commons, to emulate and to recruit that nobility; you would have had a protected, fatisfied, laborious, and obedient people, taught to feek and to recognize the happiness that is to be found by virtue in all conditions; in which confifts, the true moral equality of mankind, and not in that monftrous fiction, which, by infpiring falfe ideas and vain expectations into men deftined to travel in the obfcure walk of laborious life, ferves only to aggravate and imbitter that real inequality, E 3 which which it never can remove; and which the order of civil life establishes as much for the benefit of those whom it must leave in an humble ftate, as those whom it is able to exalt to a condition more fplendid, but not more happy. You had a smooth and easy career of felicity and glory laid open to you, beyond any thing recorded in the history of the world; but you have fhewn that difficulty is good for man. f Compute your gains: fee what is got by those extravagant and prefumptuous speculations which have taught your leaders to defpife all their predeceffors, and all their contemporaries, and even to despise themfelves, until the moment in which they became truly defpicable. By following thofe falfe lights, France has bought undisguised calamities at a higher price than any nation has purchased the most unequivocal bleffings! France has bought poverty by crime! France has not facrificed her virtue to her intereft; but he has abandoned her intereft, that fhe might prostitute her virtue. All other nations have begun the fabric of a new government, or the reformation of an old, by eftablishing originally, or by enforcing with greater exactness fome rites or other of religion. All other people have laid the foundations of civil freedom in feverer manners, and a fyftem of a more auftere and masculine morality. France, when fhe let loofe the reins of regal authority, doubled the licence, of a ferocious diffoluteness in manners, and of an infolent irreligion in opinions and prac tices i tices; and has extended through all ranks of life, as if he were communicating fome privilege, or laying open fome fecluded benefit, all the unhappy corruptions that ufually were the disease of wealth and power. This is one of the new principles of equality in France. France, by the perfidy of her leaders, has utterly difgraced the tone of lenient council in the cabinets of princes, and difarmed it of its most potent topics. She has fanctified the dark fufpicious maxims of tyrannous diftruft; and taught kings to tremble at (what will hereafter be called) the delufive plaufibilities, of moral politicians. Sovereigns will confider thofe who advise them to place an unlimited confidence in their people, as fubverters of their thrones; as traitors who aim at their deftruction, by leading their eafy good-nature, under fpecious pretences, to admit combinations of bold and faithlefs men into a participation of their power. This alone (if there were nothing elfe) is an irreparable calamity to you and to mankind. Remember that your parliament of Paris told your king, that in calling the ftates together, he had nothing to fear but the prodigal excess of their zeal in providing for the fupport of the throne. It is right that these men fhould hide their heads. It is right that they fhould bear their part in the ruin which their counfel has brought on their fovereign and their country. Such fanguine declarations tend to lul authority afleep; to encourage it rafhly to engage in perilous adventures of untried policy; to neglect those provifions, preparations, and precautions, which diftinguifh benevolence from imbecillity; and without which no man can anfwer for the falutary effect of any abftract plan of government or of freedom. For want of thefe, they have seen the medicine of the state corrupted into its poifon. They have feen the French rebel against a mild and lawful monarch, with more fury, outrage, and infult, than ever any people has been known to rife against the most illegal ufurper, or the most fanguinary tyrant. Their refiftance was made to conceffion; their revolt was from protection; their blow was aimed at an hand holding out graces, favours, and immunities. This was unnatural. The reft is in order. They have found their punishment in their fuccefs. Laws overturned; tribunals fubverted ; industry without vigour; commerce expiring; the revenue unpaid, yet the people impoverifhed; a church pillaged, and a state not relieved; civil and military anarchy made the conftitution of the kingdom; every thing human and divine facrificed to the idol of public credit, and national bankruptcy the confequence; and to crown all, the paper securities of new, precarious, tottering power, the difcredited paper fecurities of impoverished fraud, and beggared rapine, held out as a currency for the fupport of an empire, in lieu of the two great recognized fpecies that reprefent the lafting con ventional credit of mankind, which difappeared and |