But that sort of reason which banishes the affections is
incapable of filling their place. These public affections, combined with
manners, are required sometimes as supplements, sometimes as
correctives, always as aids to law. The precept given by a wise man, as
well as a great critic, for the construction of poems, is equally true
as to states:--"_Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, dulcia sunto_."
There ought to be a system of manners in every nation which a
well-formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our
country, our country ought to be lovely.
But power, of some kind or other, will survive the shock in which
manners and opinions perish; and it will find other and worse means for
its support. The usurpation, which, in order to subvert ancient
institutions, has destroyed ancient principles, will hold power by arts
similar to those by which it has acquired it. When the old feudal and
chivalrous spirit of _fealty_, which, by freeing kings from fear, freed
both kings and subjects from the precautions of tyranny, shall be
extinct in the minds of men, plots and assassinations will be
anticipated by preventive murder and preventive confiscation, and that
long roll of grim and bloody maxims which form the political code of all
power not standing on its own honor and the honor of those who are to
obey it. Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels
from principle.
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