f a different opinion in the
beginning of the year 1789. The instructions to the representatives to
the States-General, from every district in that kingdom, were filled
with projects for the reformation of that government, without the
remotest suggestion of a design to destroy it. Had such a design been
then even insinuated, I believe there would have been but one voice, and
that voice for rejecting it with scorn and horror. Men have been
sometimes led by degrees, sometimes hurried, into things of which, if
they could have seen the whole together, they never would have permitted
the most remote approach. When those instructions were given, there was
no question but that abuses existed, and that they demanded a reform:
nor is there now. In the interval between the instructions and the
Revolution things changed their shape; and in consequence of that
change, the true question at present is, whether those who would have
reformed or those who have destroyed are in the right.

To hear some men speak of the late monarchy of France, you would imagine
that they were talking of Persia bleeding under the ferocious sword of
Thamas Kouli Khan,--or at least describing the barbarous anarchic
despotism of Turkey, where the finest countries in the most genial
climates in the world are wasted by peace more than any countries have
been worried by war, where arts are unknown, where manufactures
languish, where science is extinguished, where agriculture decays, where
the human race itself melts away and perishes under the eye of the
observer. Was this the case of France? I have no way of determining the
question but by a reference to facts. Facts do not support this
resemblance. Along with much evil, there is some good in monarchy
itself; and some corrective to its evil from religion, from laws, from
manners, from opinions, the French monarchy must have received, which
rendered it (though by no means a free, and therefore by no means a good
constitution) a despotism rather in appearance than in reality.

Among the standards upon which the effects of government on any country
are to be estimated, I must consider the state of its population as not
the least certain. No country in which population flourishes, and is in
progressive improvement, can be under a _very_ mischievous government.
About sixty years ago, the Intendants of the Generalities of France
made, with other matters, a report of the population of their several
districts. I have