ion as we recede from the ancient system of Europe, we
approach to that connection which alone can remain to us, a close
alliance with the new-discovered moral and political world in France.

These theories would be of little importance, if we did not only know,
but sorely feel, that there is a strong Jacobin faction in this country,
which has long employed itself in speculating upon constitutions, and to
whom the circumstance of their government being home-bred and
prescriptive seems no sort of recommendation. What seemed to us to be
the best system of liberty that a nation ever enjoyed to them seems the
yoke of an intolerable slavery. This speculative faction had long been
at work. The French Revolution did not cause it: it only discovered it,
increased it, and gave fresh vigor to its operations. I have reason to
be persuaded that it was in this country, and from English writers and
English caballers, that France herself was instituted in this
revolutionary fury. The communion of these two factions upon any
pretended basis of similarity is a matter of very serious consideration.
They are always considering the formal distributions of power in a
constitution: the moral basis they consider as nothing. Very different
is my opinion: I consider the moral basis as everything,--the formal
arrangements, further than as they promote the moral principles of
government, and the keeping desperately wicked persons as the subjects
of laws and not the makers of them, to be of little importance. What
signifies the cutting and shuffling of cards, while the pack still
remains the same? As a basis for such a connection as has subsisted
between the powers of Europe, we had nothing to fear, but from the
lapses and frailties of men,--and that was enough; but this new
pretended republic has given us more to apprehend from what they call
their virtues than we had to dread from the vices of other men. Avowedly
and systematically, they have given the upperhand to all the vicious and
degenerate part of human nature. It is from their lapses and deviations
from their principle that alone we have anything to hope.

I hear another inducement to fraternity with the present rulers. They
have murdered one Robespierre. This Robespierre, they tell us, was a
cruel tyrant, and now that he is put out of the way, all will go well in
France. Astraea will again return to that earth from which she has been
an emigrant, and all nations will resort to her golden