Such, as better men, and in a less dubious cause, were your Henry the
Fourth, and your Sully, though nursed in civil confusions, and not
wholly without some of their taint. It is a thing to be wondered at, to
see how very soon France, when she had a moment to respire, recovered
and emerged from the longest and most dreadful civil war that ever was
known in any nation. Why? Because, among all their massacres, they had
not slain the _mind_ in their country. A conscious dignity, a noble
pride, a generous sense of glory and emulation, was not extinguished. On
the contrary, it was kindled and inflamed. The organs also of the state,
however shattered, existed. All the prizes of honor and virtue, all the
rewards, all the distinctions, remained. But your present confusion,
like a palsy, has attacked the fountain of life itself. Every person in
your country, in a situation to be actuated by a principle of honor, is
disgraced and degraded, and can entertain no sensation of life, except
in a mortified and humiliated indignation. But this generation will
quickly pass away. The next generation of the nobility will resemble the
artificers and clowns, and money-jobbers, usurers, and Jews, who will be
always their fellows, sometimes their masters. Believe me, Sir, those
who attempt to level never equalize. In all societies consisting of
various descriptions of citizens, some description must be uppermost.
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