If
his Grace be one of these whom they endeavor to proselytize, he ought to
be aware of the character of the sect whose doctrines he is invited to
embrace. With them insurrection is the most sacred of revolutionary
duties to the state. Ingratitude to benefactors is the first of
revolutionary virtues. Ingratitude is, indeed, their four cardinal
virtues compacted and amalgamated into one; and he will find it in
everything that has happened since the commencement of the philosophic
Revolution to this hour. If he pleads the merit of having performed the
duty of insurrection against the order he lives in, (God forbid he ever
should!) the merit of others will be to perform the duty of insurrection
against him. If he pleads (again God forbid he should, and I do not
suspect he will) his ingratitude to the crown for its creation of his
family, others will plead their right and duty to pay him in kind. They
will laugh, indeed they will laugh, at his parchment and his wax. His
deeds will be drawn out with the rest of the lumber of his
evidence-room, and burnt to the tune of _Ca, ira_ in the courts of
Bedford (then Equality) House.
Am I to blame, if I attempt to pay his Grace's hostile reproaches to me
with a friendly admonition to himself? Can I be blamed for pointing out
to him in what manner he is like to be affected, if the sect of the
cannibal philosophers of France should proselytize any considerable part
of this people, and, by their joint proselytizing arms, should conquer
that government to which his Grace does not seem to me to give all the
support his own security demands? Surely it is proper that he, and that
others like him, should know the true genius of this sect,--what their
opinions are,--what they have done, and to whom,--and what (if a
prognostic is to be formed from the dispositions and actions of men) it
is certain they will do hereafter.
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