favouritism
existed at court, and the vilest and most impudent corruption prevailed
in every department of state, and in every branch of administration,
from the highest to the lowest. It is only the institutions of
Christianity, and the vicinity of better-regulated states, which prevent
kingdoms, under such circumstances of misrule, from sinking into a
barbarism like that of Turkey. A sense of better things was kept alive
in some of the Neapolitans by literature, and by their intercourse with
happier countries. These persons naturally looked to France, at the
commencement of the Revolution, and during all the horrors of that
Revolution still cherished a hope that, by the aid of France, they
might be enabled to establish a new order of things in Naples. They were
grievously mistaken in supposing that the principles of liberty would
ever be supported by France, but they were not mistaken in believing
that no government could be worse than their own; and therefore they
considered any change as desirable. In this opinion men of the most
different characters agreed. Many of the nobles, who were not in favour,
wished for a revolution, that they might obtain the ascendancy to which
they thought themselves entitled; men of desperate fortunes desired
it, in the hope of enriching themselves; knaves and intriguers sold
themselves to the French to promote it; and a few enlightened men, and
true lovers of their country, joined in the same cause, from the purest
and noblest motives. All these were confounded under the common name of
Jacobins; and the Jacobins of the continental kingdoms were regarded by
the English with more hatred than they deserved. They were classed with
Phillippe Egalite, Marat, and Hebert; whereas they deserved rather to be
ranked, if not with Locke, and Sydney, and Russell, at least with Argyle
and Monmouth, and those who, having the same object as the prime movers
of our own Revolution, failed in their premature but not unworthy
attempt.

No circumstances could be more unfavourable to the best interests of
Europe, than those which placed England in strict alliance with the
superannuated and abominable governments of the continent. The subjects
of those governments who wished for freedom thus became enemies to
England, and dupes and agents of France. They looked to their own
grinding grievances, and did not see the danger with which the liberties
of the world were threatened. England, on the other hand, saw t