By a revolution in the state, the fawning sycophant of
yesterday is converted into the austere critic of the present hour. But
steady, independent minds, when they have an object of so serious a
concern to mankind as government under their contemplation, will disdain
to assume the part of satirists and declaimers. They will judge of human
institutions as they do of human characters. They will sort out the good
from the evil, which is mixed in mortal institutions as it is in mortal
men.
Your government in France, though usually, and I think justly, reputed
the best of the unqualified or ill-qualified monarchies, was still full
of abuses. These abuses accumulated in a length of time, as they must
accumulate in every monarchy not under the constant inspection of a
popular representative. I am no stranger to the faults and defects of
the subverted government of France; and I think I am not inclined by
nature or policy to make a panegyric upon anything which is a just and
natural object of censure. But the question is not now of the vices of
that monarchy, but of its existence. Is it, then, true, that the French
government was such as to be incapable or undeserving of reform, so that
it was of absolute necessity the whole fabric should be at once pulled
down, and the area cleared for the erection of a theoretic, experimental
edifice in its place? All France was of a different opinion in the
beginning of the year 1789.
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