They felt the importance of this situation. The correspondence of
the moneyed and the mercantile world, the literary intercourse of
academies, but above all, the press, of which they had in a manner
entire possession, made a kind of electric communication everywhere. The
press, in reality, has made every government, in its spirit, almost
democratic. Without the great, the first movements in this revolution
could not, perhaps, have been given. But the spirit of ambition, now for
the first time connected with the spirit of speculation, was not to be
restrained at will. There was no longer any means of arresting a
principle in its course. When Louis the Sixteenth, under the influence
of the enemies to monarchy, meant to found but one republic, he set up
two; when he meant to take away half the crown of his neighbor, he lost
the whole of his own. Louis the Sixteenth could not with impunity
countenance a new republic. Yet between his throne and that dangerous
lodgment for an enemy, which he had erected, he had the whole Atlantic
for a ditch. He had for an outwork the English nation itself, friendly
to liberty, adverse to that mode of it. He was surrounded by a rampart
of monarchies, most of them allied to him, and generally under his
influence. Yet even thus secured, a republic erected under his auspices,
and dependent on his power, became fatal to his throne. The very money
which he had lent to support this republic, by a good faith which to him
operated as perfidy, was punctually paid to his enemies, and became a
resource in the hands of his assassins.
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