France was brought about. As to other evils which took
place on the occasion, I considered them certainly as evils of
importance; but at the same time as evils inseparable from a state of
civil commotion, and which I conceived would be more than compensated by
the establishment of a limited monarchy.

The French have abandoned the constitution they had at first
established, and have changed it for another. No one can reprobate with
more truth than I do both the means and the end of this change. The end
has been the establishment of a republic. Now a republic is a form of
government which, of all others, I most dislike--and I dislike it for
this reason; because of all forms of government, scarcely excepting the
most despotic, I think a republic the most oppressive to the bulk of the
people: they are deceived in it with the show of liberty; but they live
in it under the most odious of all tyrannies, the tyranny of their
equals. With respect to the means by which this new republic has been
erected in France, they have been sanguinary, savage, more than brutal.
They not merely fill the heart of every individual with commiseration
for the unfortunate sufferers, but they exhibit to the eye of
contemplation an humiliating picture of human nature, when its passions
are not regulated by religion, or controlled by law. I fly with terror
and abhorrence even from the altar of Liberty, when I see it stained
with the blood of the aged, of the innocent, of the defenceless sex, of
the ministers of religion, and of the faithful adherents of a fallen
monarch. My heart sinks within me when I see it streaming with the blood
of the monarch himself. Merciful God! strike speedily, we beseech Thee,
with deep contrition and sincere remorse, the obdurate hearts of the
relentless perpetrators and projectors of these horrid deeds, lest they
should suddenly sink into eternal and extreme perdition, loaded with an
unutterable weight of unrepented and, except through the blood of Him
whose religion they reject, inexpiable sin.

The monarch, you will tell me, was guilty of perfidy and perjury. I know
not that he was guilty of either; but admitting that he has been guilty
of both, who, alas, of the sons of men is so confident in the strength
of his own virtue, so assured of his own integrity and intrepidity of
character, as to be certain that, under similar temptations, he would
not have been guilty of similar offences? Surely it would have been no
dim