hey were young and inexperienced; and when will young
and inexperienced men learn caution and distrust of themselves? And when
will men, young or old, if suddenly raised to far higher power than that
which absolute kings and emperors commonly enjoy, learn anything like
moderation? Monarchs, in general, respect some settled order of things,
which they find it difficult to move from its basis, and to which they
are obliged to conform, even when there are no positive limitations to
their power. These gentlemen conceived that they were chosen to
new-model the state, and even the whole order of civil society itself.
No wonder that _they_ entertained dangerous visions, when the king's
ministers, trustees for the sacred deposit of the monarchy, were so
infected with the contagion of project and system (I can hardly think it
black premeditated treachery) that they publicly advertised for plans
and schemes of government, as if they were to provide for the rebuilding
of an hospital that had been burned down. What was this, but to unchain
the fury of rash speculation amongst a people of itself but too apt to
be guided by a heated imagination and a wild spirit of adventure?

The fault of M. Mounier and M. Lally was very great; but it was very
general. If those gentlemen stopped, when they came to the brink of the
gulf of guilt and public misery that yawned before them in the abyss of
these dark and bottomless speculations, I forgive their first error: in
that they were involved with many. Their repentance was their own.

They who consider Mounier and Lally as deserters must regard themselves
as murderers and as traitors: for from what else than murder and treason
did they desert? For my part, I honor them for not having carried
mistake into crime. If, indeed, I thought that they were not cured by
experience, that they were not made sensible that those who would reform
a state ought to assume some actual constitution of government which is
to be reformed,--if they are not at length satisfied that it is become a
necessary preliminary to liberty in France, to commence by the
reestablishment of order and property of _every_ kind, and, through the
reestablishment of their monarchy, of every one of the old habitual
distinctions and classes of the state,--if they do not see that these
classes are not to be confounded in order to be afterwards revived and
separated,--if they are not convinced that the scheme of parochial and
club governmen