A
thousand times have we seen it asserted in public prints and pamphlets,
that, if the nobility and priesthood of France had stayed at home, their
property never would have been confiscated. One would think that none of
the clergy had been robbed previous to their deportation, or that their
deportation had, on their part, been a voluntary act. One would think
that the nobility and gentry, and merchants and bankers, who stayed at
home, had enjoyed their property in security and repose. The assertors
of these positions well know that the lot of thousands who remained at
home was far more terrible, that the most cruel imprisonment was only a
harbinger of a cruel and ignominious death, and that in this mother
country of freedom there were no less than _three hundred thousand_ at
one time in prison. I go no further. I instance only these
representations of the party, as staring indications of partiality to
that sect to whose dominion they would have left this country nothing to
oppose but her own naked force, and consequently subjected us, on every
reverse of fortune, to the imminent danger of falling under those very
evils, in that very system, which are attributed, not to its own nature,
but to the perverseness of others. There is nothing in the world so
difficult as to put men in a state of judicial neutrality. A leaning
there must ever be, and it is of the first importance to any nation to
observe to what side that leaning inclines,--whether to our own
community, or to one with which it is in a state of hostility.
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