cerning the profitable effects of fraud
and cunning, they can retreat. The wearing out of an old serves only to
put them upon the invention of a new delusion. Unluckily, too, the
credulity of dupes is as inexhaustible as the invention of knaves. They
never give people possession; but they always keep them in hope. Your
state doctors do not so much as pretend that any good whatsoever has
hitherto been derived from their operations, or that the public has
prospered in any one instance under their management. The nation is
sick, very sick, by their medicines. But the charlatan tells them that
what is past cannot be helped;--they have taken the draught, and they
must wait its operation with patience;--that the first effects, indeed,
are unpleasant, but that the very sickness is a proof that the dose is
of no sluggish operation;--that sickness is inevitable in all
constitutional revolutions;--that the body must pass through pain to
ease;--that the prescriber is not an empiric who proceeds by vulgar
experience, but one who grounds his practice[1] on the sure rules of
art, which cannot possibly fail. You have read, Sir, the last manifesto,
or mountebank's bill, of the National Assembly. You see their
presumption in their promises is not lessened by all their failures in
the performance. Compare this last address of the Assembly and the
present state of your affairs with the early engagements of that body,
engagements which, not content with declaring, they solemnly deposed
upon oath,--swearing lustily, that, if they were supported, they would
make their country glorious and happy; and then judge whether those who
can write such things, or those who can bear to read them, are of
_themselves_ to be brought to any reasonable course of thought or
action.

As to the people at large, when once these miserable sheep have broken
the fold, and have got themselves loose, not from the restraint, but
from the protection, of all the principles of natural authority and
legitimate subordination, they become the natural prey of impostors.
When they have once tasted of the flattery of knaves, they can no longer
endure reason, which appears to them only in the form of censure and
reproach. Great distress has never hitherto taught, and whilst the world
lasts it never will teach, wise lessons to any part of mankind. Men are
as much blinded by the extremes of misery as by the extremes of
prosperity. Desperate situations produce desperate councils