When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong
principle at work; and this, for a while, is all I can possibly know
of it. The wild gas, the fixed air, is plainly broke loose; but we
ought to suspend our judgment until the first effervescence is a
little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see
something deeper than the agitation of a troubled and frothy
surface. I must be tolerably sure, before I venture publicly to
congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have really received
one. Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver, and
adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings. I
should, therefore, suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of
France until I was informed how it had been combined with
government, with public force, with the discipline and obedience of
armies, with the collection of an effective and well-distributed
revenue, with morality and religion, with the solidity of property,
with peace and order, with civil and social manners. All these (in
their way) are good things, too, and without them liberty is not a
benefit whilst it lasts, and is not likely to continue long. The
effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please;
we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk
congratulations which may be soon turned into complaints. Prudence
would dictate this in the case of separate, insulated, private men,
but liberty, when men act in bodies, is power.
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