Embassy Row Ally Carter Epub 18
Anfos Sin
Credits: Produced by Paul Murray, Susan Skinner and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team from images generously made
available by the Bibliotheque nationale de France
(BnF/Gallica) at
Some of the errors you point out to me in my printed letter are reallysuch. One only I find to be material. It is corrected in the editionwhich I take the liberty of sending to you. As to the cavils which maybe made on some part of my remarks with regard to the gradations inyour new Constitution, you observe justly that they do not affect thesubstance of my objections. Whether there be a round more or less in theladder of representation by which your workmen ascend from theirparochial tyranny to their federal anarchy, when the whole scale isfalse, appears to me of little or no importance.
I published my thoughts on that Constitution, that my countrymen mightbe enabled to estimate the wisdom of the plans which were held out totheir imitation. I conceived that the true character of those planswould be best collected from the committee appointed to prepare them. Ithought that the scheme of their building would be better comprehendedin the design of the architects than in the execution of the masons. Itwas not worth my reader's while to occupy himself with the alterationsby which bungling practice corrects absurd theory. Such an investigationwould be endless: because every day's past experience ofimpracticability has driven, and every day's future experience willdrive, those men to new devices as exceptionable as the old, and whichare no otherwise worthy of observation than as they give a daily proofof the delusion of their promises and the falsehood of theirprofessions. Had I followed all these changes, my letter would have beenonly a gazette of their wanderings, a journal of their march from errorto error, through a dry, dreary desert, unguided by the lights ofHeaven, or by the contrivance which wisdom has invented to supply theirplace.
I am unalterably persuaded that the attempt to oppress, degrade,impoverish, confiscate, and extinguish the original gentlemen and landedproperty of a whole nation cannot be justified under any form it mayassume. I am satisfied beyond a doubt, that the project of turning agreat empire into a vestry, or into a collection of vestries, and ofgoverning it in the spirit of a parochial administration, is senselessand absurd, in any mode or with any qualifications. I can never beconvinced that the scheme of placing the highest powers of the state inchurch-wardens and constables and other such officers, guided by theprudence of litigious attorneys and Jew brokers, and set in action byshameless women of the lowest condition, by keepers of hotels, taverns,and brothels, by pert apprentices, by clerks, shop-boys, hair-dressers,fiddlers, and dancers on the stage, (who, in such a commonwealth asyours, will in future overbear, as already they have overborne, thesober incapacity of dull, uninstructed men, of useful, but laboriousoccupations,) can never be put into any shape that must not be bothdisgraceful and destructive. The whole of this project, even if it werewhat it pretends to be, and was not in reality the dominion, throughthat disgraceful medium, of half a dozen, or perhaps fewer, intriguingpoliticians, is so mean, so low-minded, so stupid a contrivance, inpoint of wisdom, as well as so perfectly detestable for its wickedness,that I must always consider the correctives which might make it in anydegree practicable to be so many new objections to it.
A rash recourse to force is not to be justified in a state of realweakness. Such attempts bring on disgrace, and in their failurediscountenance and discourage more rational endeavors. But reason isto be hazarded, though it may be perverted by craft and sophistry; forreason can suffer no loss nor shame, nor can it impede any useful planof future policy. In the unavoidable uncertainty as to the effect,which attends on every measure of human prudence, nothing seems a surerantidote to the poison of fraud than its detection. It is true, thefraud may be swallowed after this discovery, and perhaps even swallowedthe more greedily for being a detected fraud. Men sometimes make a pointof honor not to be disabused; and they had rather fall into an hundrederrors than confess one. But, after all, when neither our principles norour dispositions, nor, perhaps, our talents, enable us to encounterdelusion with delusion, we must use our best reason to those that oughtto be reasonable creatures, and to take our chance for the event. Wecannot act on these anomalies in the minds of men. I do not conceivethat the persons who have contrived these things can be made much thebetter or the worse for anything which can be said to them. They arereason-proof. Here and there, some men, who were at first carried awayby wild, good intentions, may be led, when their first fervors areabated, to join in a sober survey of the schemes into which they hadbeen deluded. To those only (and I am sorry to say they are not likelyto make a large description) we apply with any hope. I may speak it uponan assurance almost approaching to absolute knowledge, that nothing hasbeen done that has not been contrived from the beginning, even beforethe States had assembled. Nulla nova mihi res inopinave surgit. Theyare the same men and the same designs that they were from the first,though varied in their appearance. It was the very same animal that atfirst crawled about in the shape of a caterpillar that you now see riseinto the air and expand his wings to the sun.
The indulgence of a sort of undefined hope, an obscure confidence, thatsome lurking remains of virtue, some degree of shame, might exist in thebreasts of the oppressors of France, has been among the causes whichhave helped to bring on the common ruin of king and people. There is nosafety for honest men, but by believing all possible evil of evil men,and by acting with promptitude, decision, and steadiness on that belief.I well remember, at every epocha of this wonderful history, in everyscene of this tragic business, that, when your sophistic usurpers werelaying down mischievous principles, and even applying them in directresolutions, it was the fashion to say that they never intended toexecute those declarations in their rigor. This made men careless intheir opposition, and remiss in early precaution. By holding out thisfallacious hope, the impostors deluded sometimes one description of men,and sometimes another, so that no means of resistance were providedagainst them, when they came to execute in cruelty what they had plannedin fraud.
As to the people at large, when once these miserable sheep have brokenthe fold, and have got themselves loose, not from the restraint, butfrom the protection, of all the principles of natural authority andlegitimate subordination, they become the natural prey of impostors.When they have once tasted of the flattery of knaves, they can no longerendure reason, which appears to them only in the form of censure andreproach. Great distress has never hitherto taught, and whilst the worldlasts it never will teach, wise lessons to any part of mankind. Men areas much blinded by the extremes of misery as by the extremes ofprosperity. Desperate situations produce desperate councils anddesperate measures. The people of France, almost generally, have beentaught to look for other resources than those which can be derived fromorder, frugality, and industry. They are generally armed; and they aremade to expect much from the use of arms. Nihil non arrogant armis.Besides this, the retrograde order of society has something flatteringto the dispositions of mankind. The life of adventurers, gamesters,gypsies, beggars, and robbers is not unpleasant. It requires restraintto keep men from falling into that habit. The shifting tides of fearand hope, the flight and pursuit, the peril and escape, the alternatefamine and feast of the savage and the thief, after a time; render allcourse of slow, steady, progressive, unvaried occupation, and theprospect only of a limited mediocrity at the end of long labor, to thelast degree tame, languid, and insipid. Those who have been onceintoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it,even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They maybe distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never lookto anything but power for their relief. When did distress ever oblige aprince to abdicate his authority? And what effect will it have uponthose who are made to believe themselves a people of princes?
The more active and stirring part of the lower orders having gotgovernment and the distribution of plunder into their hands, they willuse its resources in each municipality to form a body of adherents.These rulers and their adherents will be strong enough to overpower thediscontents of those who have not been able to assert their share of thespoil. The unfortunate adventurers in the cheating lottery of plunderwill probably be the least sagacious or the most inactive and irresoluteof the gang. If, on disappointment, they should dare to stir, they willsoon be suppressed as rebels and mutineers by their brother rebels.Scantily fed for a while with the offal of plunder, they will drop offby degrees; they will be driven out of sight and out of thought; andthey will be left to perish obscurely, like rats, in holes and corners.
One would think, that, out of common decency, they would have given youmen who had not been in the habit of trampling upon law and justice inthe Assembly, neutral men, or men apparently neutral, for judges, whoare to dispose of your lives and fortunes.
In matters so ridiculous it is hard to be grave. On a view of theirconsequences, it is almost inhuman to treat them lightly. To what astate of savage, stupid, servile insensibility must your people bereduced, who can endure such proceedings in their Church, their state,and their judicature, even for a moment! But the deluded people ofFrance are like other madmen, who, to a miracle, bear hunger, andthirst, and cold, and confinement, and the chains and lash of theirkeeper, whilst all the while they support themselves by the imaginationthat they are generals of armies, prophets, kings, and emperors. As to achange of mind in those men, who consider infamy as honor, degradationas preferment, bondage to low tyrants as liberty, and the practicalscorn and contumely of their upstart masters as marks of respect andhomage, I look upon it as absolutely impracticable. These madmen, to becured, must first, like other madmen, be subdued. The sound part of thecommunity, which I believe to be large, but by no means the largestpart, has been taken by surprise, and is disjointed, terrified, anddisarmed. That sound part of the community must first be put into abetter condition, before it can do anything in the way of deliberationor persuasion. This must be an act of power, as well as of wisdom: ofpower in the hands of firm, determined patriots, who can distinguish themisled from traitors, who will regulate the state (if such should betheir fortune) with a discriminating, manly, and provident mercy; menwho are purged of the surfeit and indigestion of systems, if ever theyhave been admitted into the habit of their minds; men who will lay thefoundation of a real reform in effacing every vestige of that philosophywhich pretends to have made discoveries in the Terra Australia ofmorality; men who will fix the state upon these bases of morals andpolitics, which are our old and immemorial, and, I hope, will be oureternal possession.
b1e95dc632