What have they since done, that they were to be driven
into exile, that their persons should be hunted about, mangled, and
tortured, their families dispersed, their houses laid in ashes, and that
their order should be abolished, and the memory of it, if possible,
extinguished, by ordaining them to change the very names by which they
were usually known? Read their instructions to their representatives.
They breathe the spirit of liberty as warmly, and they recommend
reformation as strongly, as any other order. Their privileges relative
to contribution were voluntarily surrendered; as the king, from the
beginning, surrendered all pretence to a right of taxation. Upon a free
constitution there was but one opinion in France. The absolute monarchy
was at an end. It breathed its last without a groan, without struggle,
without convulsion. All the struggle, all the dissension, arose
afterwards, upon the preference of a despotic democracy to a government
of reciprocal control. The triumph of the victorious party was over the
principles of a British Constitution.
I have observed the affectation which for many years past has prevailed
in Paris, even to a degree perfectly childish, of idolizing the memory
of your Henry the Fourth. If anything could put any one out of humor
with that ornament to the kingly character, it would be this overdone
style of insidious panegyric.
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