Their cry is the voice of sacred
misery, exalted, not into wild raving, but into the sanctified frenzy of
prophecy and inspiration. In that bitterness of soul, in that
indignation of suffering virtue, in that exaltation of despair, would
not persecuted English loyalty cry out with an awful warning voice, and
denounce the destruction that waits on monarchs who consider fidelity
to them as the most degrading of all vices, who suffer it to be punished
as the most abominable of all crimes, and who have no respect but for
rebels, traitors, regicides, and furious negro slaves, whose crimes have
broke their chains? Would not this warm language of high indignation
have more of sound reason in it, more of real affection, more of true
attachment, than all the lullabies of flatterers who would hush monarchs
to sleep in the arms of death? Let them be well convinced, that, if ever
this example should prevail in its whole extent, it will have its full
operation. Whilst kings stand firm on their base, though under that base
there is a sure-wrought mine, there will not be wanting to their levees
a single person of those who are attached to their fortune, and not to
their persons or cause; but hereafter none will support a tottering
throne. Some will fly for fear of being crushed under the ruin; some
will join in making it. They will seek, in the destruction of royalty,
fame and power and wealth and the homage of kings, with Reubell, with
Carnot, with Revelliere, and with the Merlins and the Talliens, rather
than suffer exile and beggary with the Condes, or the Broglies, the
Castries, the D'Avarays, the Serents, the Cazales, and the long line of
loyal, suffering, patriot nobility, or to be butchered with the oracles
and the victims of the laws, the D'Ormessons, the D'Espremesnils, and
the Malesherbes.
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