But unity in design and
perseverance and boldness in pursuit have never wanted resources, and
never will. We have not considered as we ought the dreadful energy of a
state in which the property has nothing to do with the government
Reflect, my dear Sir, reflect again and again, on a government in which
the property is in complete subjection, and where nothing roles but the
mind of desperate men. The condition of a commonwealth not governed by
its property was a combination of things which the learned and ingenious
speculator, Harrington, who has tossed about society into all forms,
never could imagine to be possible. We have seen it; the world has felt
it; and if the world will shut their eyes to this state of things, they
will feel it more. The rulers there have found their resources in
crimes. The discovery is dreadful, the mine exhaustless. They have
everything to gain, and they have nothing to lose. They have a boundless
inheritance in hope, and there is no medium for them betwixt the highest
elevation and death with infamy. Never can they, who, from the miserable
servitude of the desk, have been raised to empire, again submit to the
bondage of a starving bureau, or the profit of copying music, or writing
_plaidoyers_ by the sheet. It has made me often smile in bitterness,
when I have heard talk of an indemnity to such men, provided they
returned to their allegiance.
From all this what is my inference? It is, that this new system of
robbery in France cannot be rendered safe by any art; that it _must_ be
destroyed, or that it will destroy all Europe; that to destroy that
enemy, by some means or other, the force opposed to it should be made to
bear some analogy and resemblance to the force and spirit which that
system exerts; that war ought to be made against it in its vulnerable
parts.
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