When men of rank facrifice all ideas of dignity to an ambition without a diftinct object, and work with low inftruments and for low ends, the whole compofition becomes low and base, Does not fomething like this now appear in France? Does it not produce fomething ignoble and inglorious? a kind of meanness in all the prevalent policy? a tendency in all that is done to lower along with individuals all the dignity and importance of the ftate? Other revolutions have been conducted by perfons, who whilft they attempted or effected changes in the commonwealth, fanctified their ambition by advancing the dignity of the people whose peace they troubled. They had long views. They aimed at the rule, not at the deftruction of their country. They were men of great civil, and great military talents, and if the terror, the ornament of their age. They were not like Jew brokers contending with each other who could beft remedy with fraudulent circulation and depreciated paper the wretchedness and ruin brought on their country by their degenerate councils. The compliment made to one of the great bad men of the old ftamp (Cromwell) by his kinfman, a favourite poet of that time, fhews what it was he propofed, and what indeed to a great degree he accomplished in the fuccefs of his ambition:

Still as you rife, the state, exalted too,

Finds no diftemper whilst 'tis chang'd by you; "Chang'd like the world's great scene, when without noise The rifing fun night's vulgar lights deftroys."

Thefe

Thefe difturbers were not fo much like men ufurping power, as afferting their natural place in fociety. Their rifing was to illuminate and beautify the world. Their conqueft over their competitors was by outfhining them. The hand that, like a destroying angel, fmote the country, communicated to it the force and energy under which it fuffered. I do not fay (God forbid) I do not fay, that the virtues of fuch men were to be taken as a balance to their crimes; but they were fome corrective to their effects. Such was, as I faid, our Cromwell. Such were your whole race of Guifes, Condés, and Colignis. Such the Richlieus, who in more quiet times acted in the fpirit of a civil war. Such, as better men, and in a lefs dubious caufe, were your Henry the 4th and your Sully, though nurfed in civil confufions, and not wholly without fome of their taint. is a thing to be wondered at, to see how very foon France, when fhe had a moment to refpire, recovered and emerged from the longeft and moft dreadful civil war that ever was known in any nation. Why? Because, among all their maffacres, they had not flain the mind in their country. A conscious dignity, a noble pride, a generous fenfe of glory and emulation, was not extinguished. On the contrary, it was kindled and inflamed. The organs alfo of the ftate, however shattered, exifted. All the prizes of honour and virtue, all the rewards, all the distinctions, remained. But your prefent confufion, like a palfy, has attacked the fountain

It

of life itself. Every perfon in your country, in a fituation to be actuated by a principle of honour, is difgraced and degraded, and can entertain no fenfation of life, except in a mortified and humiliated indignation. But this generation will quickly pafs away. The next generation of the nobility will resemble the artificers and clowns, and money-jobbers, ufurers, and Jews, who will be always their fellows, fometimes their mafters. Believe me, Sir, thofe who atempt to level, never equalize. In all focieties, confifting of various descriptions of citizens, fome defcription must be uppermoft. The levellers therefore only change and pervert the natural order of things; they load the edifice of fociety, by fetting up in the air what the folidity of the structure requires to be on the ground. The affociations of taylors and carpenters, of which the republic (of Paris, for instance) is compofed, cannot be equal to the fituation, into which, by the worst of ufurpations, an ufurpation on the prerogatives of nature, you attempt to force them.

The chancellor of France at the opening of the ftates, faid, in a tone of oratorial flourish, that all occupations were honourable. If he meant only, that no honeft employment was difgraceful, he would not have gone beyond the truth. But in afferting, that any thing is honourable, we imply fome diftinction in its favour. The occupation of an hair-dreffer, or of a working tallowchandler, cannot be a matter of honour to any

perfon

perfon-to fay nothing of a number of other more fervile employments. Such defcriptions of men ought not to fuffer oppreffion from the ftate; but the ftate fuffers oppreffion, if fuch as they, either individually or collectively, are permitted to rule. In this you think you are combating prejudice, but you are at war with nature*.

I do not, my dear Sir, conceive you to be of that fophiftical captious fpirit, or of that uncandid dulnefs, as to require, for every general observation or fentiment, an explicit detail of all the correctives and exceptions, which reafon will prefume to be included in all the general propofitions which come from reasonable men. You do not imagine, that I wish to confine power, authority, and diftinction to blood, and names, and titles. No, Sir. There is no qualification for govern

Ecclefiafticus, chap. xxxviii. verfe 24, 25. The wif"dom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure: "and he that hath little business shall become wife.". -"How "can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough, and that glo"rieth in the goad; that driveth oxen; and is occupied in "their labours; and whofe talk is of bullocks ?"

Ver. 27.

"So every carpenter and work-mafter that labour"eth night and day." &c.

66

Ver. 33. They fhall not be fought for in public counsel, "nor fit high in the congregation: They fhall not fit on the "judges feat, nor understand the fentence of judgment: they cannot declare justice and judgment, and they shall "not be found where parables are spoken.'

Ver. 34, "But they will maintain the ftate of the world." I do not determine whether this book be canonical, as the Gallican church (till lately) has confidered it, or apocryphal, as here it is taken. I am fure it contains a great deal of fenfe, and truth.

ment,

ment, but virtue and wisdom, actual or prefumptive. Wherever they are actually found, they have, in whatever ftate, condition, profeffion or trade, the paffport of Heaven to human place and honour. Woe to the country which would madly and impiously reject the fervice of the talents and virtues, civil, military, or religious, that are given to grace and to ferve it; and would condemn to obfcurity every thing formed to diffuse luftre and glory around a ftate. Woe to that country too, that paffing into the oppofite extreme, confiders a low education, a mean contracted view of things, a fordid mercenary Occupation, as a preferable title to command, Every thing ought to be open; but not indifferently to every man. No rotation; no appointment by lat; no mode of election operating in the fpirit of fortition or rotation, can be generally good in a government converfant in extenfive objects. Because they have no tendency, direct or indirect, to fit the man to the duty. I do not hesitate to fay, that the road to eminence and power, from obfcure condition, ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rareft of all rare things, it ought to pass through fome fort of probation. The temple of honour ought to be feated on an eminence. If it be open through virtue, let it be remembered too, that virtue is never tried but by fome difficulty, and fome ftruggle.

Nothing is a due and adequate representation of a state, that does not reprefent its ability, as

well

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