andoned her interest that she might prostitute her
virtue.

All other nations have begun the fabric of a new government, or the
reformation of an old, by establishing, or by enforcing with greater
exactness, some rites or other of religion. All other people have laid
the foundations of civil freedom in severer manners, and a system of a
more austere and masculine morality. France, when she let loose the
reins of regal authority, doubled the license of a ferocious
dissoluteness in manners, and of an insolent irreligion in opinions and
practices; and has extended through all ranks of life, as if she were
communicating some privilege, or laying open some secluded benefit, all
the unhappy corruptions that usually 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 disgraced the tone of
lenient counsel in the cabinets of princes, and has taught kings to
tremble at what will hereafter be called the delusive plausibilities of
moral politicians. Sovereigns will consider those who advise them to
place an unlimited confidence in their people as subverters of their
thrones. This alone is an irreparable calamity to you and to mankind.

The French have rebelled against a mild and lawful monarch with more
fury, outrage, and insult than ever any people has been known to rise
against the most illegal usurper or the most sanguinary tyrant. Their
resistance was made to concession; their revolt was from protection;
their blow was aimed at a hand holding out graces, favours, and
immunities. They have found their punishment in their success. Laws
overturned; tribunals subverted; industry without vigour; commerce
expiring; the revenue unpaid, yet the people impoverished; a Church
pillaged and a state unrelieved; everything human and divine sacrificed
to the idol of public credit, and national bankruptcy the consequence.

_III.--The Men in Power_

This unforced choice, this fond election of evil, would appear perfectly
unaccountable if we did not consider the composition of the national
assembly. If we were to know nothing of this assembly but its title and
function, no colours could paint to the imagination anything more
venerable. But no artificial institution whatever can make the men of
whom any system of authority is composed any other than God, and nature,
and education, and their habits of life have made them. Capacities
beyond these t