You would have rendered the cause of liberty venerable in the
eyes of every worthy mind in every nation. You would have shamed
despotism from the earth, by showing that freedom was not only
reconcilable, but, as, when well disciplined, it is, auxiliary to law.
You would have had an unoppressive, but a productive revenue. You would
have had a flourishing commerce to feed it. You would have had a free
Constitution, a potent monarchy, a disciplined army, a reformed and
venerated clergy,--a mitigated, but spirited nobility, to lead your
virtue, not to overlay it; you would have had a liberal order of
commons, to emulate and to recruit that nobility; you would have had a
protected, satisfied, laborious, and obedient people, taught to seek and
to recognize the happiness that is to be found by virtue in all
conditions,--in which consists the true moral equality of mankind, and
not in that monstrous fiction which, by inspiring false ideas and vain
expectations into men destined to travel in the obscure walk of
laborious life, serves only to aggravate and embitter that real
inequality which it never can remove, and which the order of civil life
establishes as much for the benefit of those whom it must leave in an
humble state as those whom it is able to exalt to a condition more
splendid, but not more happy. You had a smooth and easy career of
felicity and glory laid open to you, beyond anything recorded in the
history of the world; but you have shown that difficulty is good for
man.
Pages:
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320