But never the
gloom that lowers over the fortune of the cause, nor anything which the
great may do towards hastening their own fall, can make me repent of
what I have done by pen or voice (the only arms I possess) in favor of
the order of things into which I was born and in which I fondly hoped to
die.
In the long series of ages which have furnished the matter of history,
never was so beautiful and so august a spectacle presented to the moral
eye as Europe afforded the day before the Revolution in France. I knew,
indeed, that this prosperity contained in itself the seeds of its own
danger. In one part of the society it caused laxity and debility; in the
other it produced bold spirits and dark designs. A false philosophy
passed from academies into courts; and the great themselves were
infected with the theories which conducted to their ruin. Knowledge,
which in the two last centuries either did not exist at all, or existed
solidly on right principles and in chosen hands, was now diffused,
weakened, and perverted. General wealth loosened morals, relaxed
vigilance, and increased presumption. Men of talent began to compare, in
the partition of the common stock of public prosperity, the proportions
of the dividends with the merits of the claimants. As usual, they found
their portion not equal to their estimate (or perhaps to the public
estimate) of their own worth. When it was once discovered by the
Revolution in France that a struggle between establishment and rapacity
could be maintained, though but for one year and in one place, I was
sure that a practicable breach was made in the whole order of things,
and in every country.
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