of the advantages of monarchy to have no local seat. It may maintain its
rights out of the sphere of its territorial jurisdiction, if other
powers will suffer it.

I am well apprised that the little intriguers, and whisperers, and
self-conceited, thoughtless babblers, worse than either, run about to
depreciate the fallen virtue of a great nation. But whilst they talk, we
must make our choice,--they or the Jacobins. We have no other option. As
to those who in the pride of a prosperity not obtained by their wisdom,
valor, or industry, think so well of themselves, and of their own
abilities and virtues, and so ill of other men, truth obliges me to say
that they are not founded in their presumption concerning themselves,
nor in their contempt of the French princes, magistrates, nobility, and
clergy. Instead of inspiring me with dislike and distrust of the
unfortunate, engaged with us in a common cause against our Jacobin
enemy, they take away all my esteem for their own characters, and all my
deference to their judgment.

There are some few French gentlemen, indeed, who talk a language not
wholly different from this jargon. Those whom I have in my eye I respect
as gallant soldiers, as much as any one can do; but on their political
judgment and prudence I have not the slightest reliance, nor on their
knowledge of their own country, or of its laws and Constitution. They
are, if not enemies, at least not friends, to the orders of their own
state,--not to the princes, the clergy, or the nobility; they possess
only an attachment to the monarchy, or rather to the persons of the late
king and queen. In all other respects their conversation is Jacobin. I
am afraid they, or some of them, go into the closets of ministers, and
tell them that the affairs of France will be better arranged by the
allied powers than by the landed proprietors of the kingdom, or by the
princes who have a right to govern; and that, if any French are at all
to be employed in the settlement of their country, it ought to be only
those who have never declared any decided opinion, or taken any active
part in the Revolution.[35]

I suspect that the authors of this opinion are mere soldiers of fortune,
who, though men of integrity and honor, would as gladly receive military
rank from Russia, or Austria, or Prussia, as from the regent of France.
Perhaps their not having as much importance at his court as they could
wish may incline them to this strange imagination