From the tenor of my animadversions on the genius and character of the two parties in France, you have probably concluded that the consequences of their systems are, in my opinion, as opposite as the extremes of good and evil. The principles of those who desire the establishment of a free and liberal government tend, I religiously believe, as directly to exalt the dignity of human nature, as the doctrines of their adversaries do to destroy human happiness, by preventing the development of the moral and intellectual faculties of our nature. But you are not to imagine, that because the ultra-royalists wish to perpetuate, under the name of legitimacy, the systems of servitude which were created by usurpation or conquest, and have been entailed on nations by ignorance, that they are radically malevolent and vicious at heart. Men may honestly pursue error; for self-interest is a great deluder of judgment, and habit is apt to reconcile the human mind to any excess of injustice. Those who have been impressed with prejudices in early youth, find it very difficult to discard them, even when their understandings have arrived at maturity; and hence, in every nation, men live after the fashion of their fathers. The ultra-royalists of France are, in a social point of view, a most amiable and delightful people; but they have been particularly and cruelly injured by the national dereliction from the old established principles of government, and it is scarcely surprising that they should honestly believe that the system, which was best for them, was best for every body.

I have not yet attempted to give you a distinct conception of the principles and objects of the court party in France, and as I mean to devote this letter to the curious infelicity of reasoning,

by which they arrive at their conclusion, I will prefix to it a summary of their principles. You cannot doubt the uniform kindliness of Madame de Stael's heart, nor the general tendency of her writings to soothe and abate the fever of prejudice; and therefore, her impression of the wishes of the ultras can scarcely be an exaggerated one. "They want," says she, "an absolute king, and an exclusive religion, with intolerant priests; a nobility of the court founded on genealogy; a middle rank now and then enfranchised by letters of nobility; a people held in ignorance, and without rights; an army, a mere machine; a ministry without responsibility;-no liberty of the press; no juries; no civil liberty; but police spies and hired journals." Such was her candid opinion of the principles of those political ardelions, or intermeddlers in the science of government, whose errors proceed more, I am persuaded, from the head than the heart; and therefore, to point out to you the causes of their delusion, is in some degree to vindicate their integrity. In exhibiting, however, the singular sophistry by which they attempt to justify their creed, I must claim your indulgence for the desultory irregularity with which I throw together such observations as I have heard them let fall in occasional conversations.

Permanence and stability, say they, are the first requisites of good government, since a perplexing insecurity of person and property was the origin of society. Nature has given to man a sagacity commensurate with his wants, and therefore that form of government, which has been most generally adopted, is most consonant to nature. Now, no constitution of government has prevailed so generally, or lasted so long as absolute monarchy: and no form has been subject to such violent fluctuations and vicissitudes as the republican. Experience, therefore, points out the former as friendly, and the latter as hostile to the true ends of our being; and as reason should be guided rather by the results of experience than the visions of speculation, we conclude that every admixture of what is called liberty in government, is a diminution of the principle of good by the introduction of evil. The world has hitherto gone on very well; and is it not therefore absurd, if not sacrilegious, to suppose, that if it had been capable of any higher excellence, its creator, would have kept it so long in an imperfect state? The first fall of

man was occasioned by arrogance and presumption, which caused him to overleap the restrictions of nature; and since his fall, he has been perpetually misled by listening to the suggestions of reason, in preference to those of authority. His love of novelty has never left him, and hence, in the succession of ages, he has made a variety of experiments in government, yet, after infinite change and perplexity, has he not invariably returned to the primitive system? We consider the ancient regime of France as the perfection of this system, because it carried the human faculties to the highest state of perfection, and secured a happier condition to mankind during fourteen centuries, than any other system of polity ever did, during an equal period We therefore desire its immediate restoration, in preference to this mongrel government, by which our king expects to cure the distemper of the times, and to slide us into our old position;but under which, we shudder to see "l'honneur en roture et le vice ennobli."

That the monarchical form of government has shown, in its development, a principle of improvement which has never appeared in the republican, is evident from the fact, that all free constitutions, from an inaptitude to control man in a high state of civilization, have expired in the progress of society, and given place to absolute monarchy. They have, in fact, no principle of self preservation, and are as changeable as the moon. They place man in an artificial condition, and can only be maintained by a perpetual watchfulness and effort against the resilient tendencies of his nature. Thus each republic

"Devient un grand exemple, et laisse à la memoire,

Des changements du sort une eclatante histoire."-CORNEILLE. The charm of free government consists in the seductiveness of its theory, which dupes the credulity of men by flattering their vanity with such ideas as the partition of the sovereignty, and the calling the governors of states servants, instead of masters. Now we consider these notions ridiculous, "car c'est ne regner pas qu'être deux à regner,” and because a "rose by any other name would smell as sweet." A false, shallow, and presumptuous system of philosophy in the last century bedecked the theory of free government with every meritricious ornament which might allure the imaginations of men, and all the super

ficial thinkers in France were thus seduced from their allegiance to the good old dictates of experience. Our mad and atrocious revolution was the consequence. Because a handful of people on the other side of the Atlantic-a migratory nation without any fixed habits or settled attachments-without any neighbours to interrupt either by intrigue or arms, their eccentric scheme, had succeeded in patching up a precarious and temporary covering to hide the nakedness of their political wants, we vainly imagined that we, la grande nation, les superbes Français might follow their example. So we resolved to make an experiment of your liberty, and we soon experimented away our virtue, our respectability, our fortunes, and our lives. We have kept the political furnace in blast too these thirty years, forging constitutions, and no one of them has lasted much longer than it took to form it. We were miserable under all of them, and therefore all written constitutions must be pernicious and destructive of the ends of human association. In fact, there is nothing good in politics but what is old-all that is thought new, has been tried an hundred times, and been as often rejected. Old folks are too wise to attempt to fly in the air, or to walk in the water. The Siamese king (who, when told by a vapouring Dutchman, that the rivers became hard in Holland in the winter season, observed, that he had for some time suspected him of lying, and was sure of it then,) was so far from being a fit subject of ridicule, a man of sound discretion, and worthy of being a legitimate monarch.

The best government is that which is best administered, and how can a free one be well administered when all its agents must have a contempt for laws, made by people they know to be no wiser than themselves.

"Mais on doit ce respect au pouvoir absolu

De n'examiner rien quand un roi l'a voulu."

Besides, if free government were intrinsically good it would not suit us, because we French are too enlightened to be free. In countries where there are but few men capable of governing, the people may submit to them from deference to their superiority. But here in France we have so many capable and wise men that no one will consent to see his rival invested with a power which he thinks he could exercise better himself.

"Lorque le peuple est maitre on n'agit qu'en tumulte
La voix de la raison jamais ne se consulte."

England is one of your models of fine government, and because an unprincipled system of brigandage has enriched her, you infer that her mongrel constitution is a good one, although her greatest statesman once admitted that if she would be just to France, it could not exist twenty years. But even if it were good for the control of a rough, selfish, half-civilized, and tumultuous people like the English, does it follow that it would suit us? Nature has prepared every nation by a peculiar concatenation of circumstances for a peculiar form of polity, and, therefore, your constitution mongers are not a whit more rational in wishing every nation to adopt the British constitution than the mad tailor who wished all his customers to wear coats cut to the same measure. Besides, what have the British gained by their boasted constitution? Are they not the most discontented, growling, mobocratic people on earth? Have they not nearly ruined themselves by fighting battles to keep other nations from following their own stupid example, in breaking the chain of legitimacy? Have they not loaded themselves with a weight of taxes which causes even all provisions to be adulterated, and destroys the comfort of domestic life? Have they not diminished the value of property almost to nothing by detestable philanthropic poor laws, for the support of paupers who do not thank them for their folly? Has not England the most sanguinary penal code in Europe; and does not her government assure us that the bonds of society there are so relaxed, and the temptations to crime arising from the necessities of the people, so great, that the softening of those statutes would be infinitely dangerous? Do not the ministerial reviews inform us of a melancholy diminution of the social sympathies there, even between master and servant, who are becoming so disunited by mutual independence of each other, that those acts of reciprocal kindness, which formerly endeared the connexion have nearly ceased? Do they not tell us that nothing but the strong hand of power keeps down the mutinous spirit of radicalism.

"Ainsi la liberté ne peut être utile

Qu'a former les fureurs d'une guerre civile."

Since a century then has produced all these evils, are we not