At present, however, fashion governs
in more serious things than furniture and dress. It looks as if
sovereigns abroad were emulous in bidding against their estimation. It
seems as if the preeminence of regicide was acknowledged,--and that
kings tacitly ranked themselves below their sacrilegious murderers, as
natural magistrates and judges over them. It appears as if dignity were
the prerogative of crime, and a temporizing humiliation the proper part
for venerable authority. If the vilest of mankind are resolved to be the
most wicked, they lose all the baseness of their origin, and take their
place above kings. This example in foreign princes I trust will not
spread. It is the concern of mankind, that the destruction of order
should not, be a claim to rank, that crimes should not be the only title
to preeminence and honor.
At this second stage of humiliation, (I mean the insulting declaration
in consequence of the message to both Houses of Parliament,) it might
not have been amiss to pause, and not to squander away the fund of our
submissions, until we knew what final purposes of public interest they
might answer. The policy of subjecting ourselves to further insults is
not to me quite apparent. It was resolved, however, to hazard a third
trial. Citizen Barthelemy had been established, on the part of the new
republic, at Basle,--where, with his proconsulate of Switzerland and the
adjacent parts of Germany, he was appointed as a sort of factor to deal
in the degradation of the crowned heads of Europe.
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