d kings and good ministers, if such have been, may have erred;
nay, may have done the best they could. They would not have been good,
if they wished their errors should be preserved, the longer they had
lasted.

[Footnote 1: Sully and Colbert were the two great Finance Ministers of
Henry IV. and Louis XIV.]

In short, Sir, I think this resistance of the Parliament to the adorable
reformation planned by Messrs. de Turgot and Malesherbes[1] is more
phlegmatically scandalous than the wildest tyranny of despotism. I
forget what the nation was that refused liberty when it was offered.
This opposition to so noble a work is worse. A whole people may refuse
its own happiness; but these profligate magistrates resist happiness for
others, for millions, for posterity!--Nay, do they not half vindicate
Maupeou, who crushed them? And you, dear Sir, will you now chide my
apostasy? Have I not cleared myself to your eyes? I do not see a shadow
of sound logic in all Monsieur Seguier's speeches, but in his proposing
that the soldiers should work on the roads, and that passengers should
contribute to their fabric; though, as France is not so luxuriously mad
as England, I do not believe passengers could support the expense of
their roads. That argument, therefore, is like another that the Avocat
proposes to the King, and which, he modestly owns, he believes would be
impracticable.

[Footnote 1: Malesherbes was the Chancellor, and in 1792 he was accepted
by Louis XVI. as his counsel on his trial--a duty which he performed
with an ability which drew on him the implacable resentment of
Robespierre and the Jacobins, and which led to his execution in 1794.]

I beg your pardon, Sir, for giving you this long trouble; but I could
not help venting myself, when shocked to find such renegade conduct in a
Parliament that I was rejoiced had been restored. Poor human kind! is it
always to breed serpents from its own bowels? In one country, it chooses
its representatives, and they sell it and themselves; in others, it
exalts despots; in another, it resists the despot when he consults the
good of his people! Can we wonder mankind is wretched, when men are such
beings? Parliaments run wild with loyalty, when America is to be
enslaved or butchered. They rebel, when their country is to be set free!
I am not surprised at the idea of the devil being always at our elbows.
They who invented him, no doubt could not conceive how men could be so
atrocious to one