The instructions to the representatives to
the States-General, from every district in that kingdom, were filled
with projects for the reformation of that government, without the
remotest suggestion of a design to destroy it. Had such a design been
then even insinuated, I believe there would have been but one voice, and
that voice for rejecting it with scorn and horror. Men have been
sometimes led by degrees, sometimes hurried, into things of which, if
they could have seen the whole together, they never would have permitted
the most remote approach. When those instructions were given, there was
no question but that abuses existed, and that they demanded a reform:
nor is there now. In the interval between the instructions and the
Revolution things changed their shape; and in consequence of that
change, the true question at present is, whether those who would have
reformed or those who have destroyed are in the right.
To hear some men speak of the late monarchy of France, you would imagine
that they were talking of Persia bleeding under the ferocious sword of
Thamas Kouli Khan,--or at least describing the barbarous anarchic
despotism of Turkey, where the finest countries in the most genial
climates in the world are wasted by peace more than any countries have
been worried by war, where arts are unknown, where manufactures
languish, where science is extinguished, where agriculture decays, where
the human race itself melts away and perishes under the eye of the
observer.
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