She has sanctified the dark, suspicious maxims
of tyrannous distrust, and taught kings to tremble at (what will
hereafter be called) the delusive plausibilities of moral politicians.
Sovereigns will consider those who advise them to place an unlimited
confidence in their people as subverters of their thrones, as traitors
who aim at their destruction by leading their easy good-nature,
under specious pretenses, to admit combinations of bold and
faithless men into a participation of their power. This alone (if
there were nothing else) is an irreparable calamity to you and to
mankind. Remember that your parliament of Paris told your king that,
in calling the states together, he had nothing to fear but the
prodigal excess of their zeal in providing for the support of the
throne. It is right that these men should hide their heads. It is
right that they should bear their part in the ruin which their counsel
has brought on their sovereign and their country. Such sanguine
declarations tend to lull authority asleep; to encourage it rashly
to engage in perilous adventures of untried policy; to neglect those
provisions, preparations, and precautions which distinguish
benevolence from imbecility, and without which no man can answer for
the salutary effect of any abstract plan of government or of
freedom. For want of these, they have seen the medicine of the state
corrupted into its poison.
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