ngs: but those who are subjected to wrong under
multitudes are deprived of all external consolation; they seem deserted
by mankind, overpowered by a conspiracy of their whole species.

But admitting democracy not to have that inevitable tendency to party
tyranny which I suppose it to have, and admitting it to possess as much
good in it when unmixed as I am sure it possesses when compounded with
other forms; does monarchy, on its part, contain nothing at all to
recommend it? I do not often quote Bolingbroke, nor have his works in
general left any permanent impression on my mind. He is a presumptuous
and a superficial writer. But he has one observation which in my opinion
is not without depth and solidity. He says that he prefers a monarchy to
other governments, because you can better ingraft any description of
republic on a monarchy than anything of monarchy upon the republican
forms. I think him perfectly in the right. The fact is so historically,
and it agrees well with the speculation.

I know how easy a topic it is to dwell on the faults of departed
greatness. By a revolution in the state, the fawning sycophant of
yesterday is converted into the austere critic of the present hour. But
steady, independent minds, when they have an object of so serious a
concern to mankind as government under their contemplation, will disdain
to assume the part of satirists and declaimers. They will judge of human
institutions as they do of human characters. They will sort out the good
from the evil, which is mixed in mortal institutions as it is in mortal
men.

Your government in France, though usually, and I think justly, reputed
the best of the unqualified or ill-qualified monarchies, was still full
of abuses. These abuses accumulated in a length of time, as they must
accumulate in every monarchy not under the constant inspection of a
popular representative. I am no stranger to the faults and defects of
the subverted government of France; and I think I am not inclined by
nature or policy to make a panegyric upon anything which is a just and
natural object of censure. But the question is not now of the vices of
that monarchy, but of its existence. Is it, then, true, that the French
government was such as to be incapable or undeserving of reform, so that
it was of absolute necessity the whole fabric should be at once pulled
down, and the area cleared for the erection of a theoretic, experimental
edifice in its place? All France was o