That he was no enemy to reformation. Almost every business in which he
was much concerned, from the first day he sat in that House to that
hour, was a business of reformation; and when he had not been employed
in correcting, he had been employed in resisting abuses. Some traces of
this spirit in him now stand on their statute-book. In his opinion,
anything which unnecessarily tore to pieces the contexture of the state
not only prevented all real reformation, but introduced evils which
would call, but perhaps call in vain, for new reformation.
That he thought the French nation very unwise. What they valued
themselves on was a disgrace to them. They had gloried (and some people
in England had thought fit to take share in that glory) in making a
Revolution, as if revolutions were good things in themselves. All the
horrors and all the crimes of the anarchy which led to their Revolution,
which attend its progress, and which may virtually attend it in its
establishment, pass for nothing with the lovers of revolutions. The
French have made their way, through the destruction of their country, to
a bad constitution, when they were absolutely in possession of a good
one. They were in possession of it the day the states met in separate
orders. Their business, had they been either virtuous or wise, or had
been left to their own judgment, was to secure the stability and
independence of the states, according to those orders, under the monarch
on the throne.
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