THIS, MY DEAR SIR, was not the triumph of France. I must believe
that, as a nation, it overwhelmed you with shame and horror. I must
believe that the National Assembly find themselves in a state of the
greatest humiliation in not being able to punish the authors of this
triumph or the actors in it, and that they are in a situation in which
any inquiry they may make upon the subject must be destitute even of
the appearance of liberty or impartiality. The apology of that
assembly is found in their situation; but when we approve what they
must bear, it is in us the degenerate choice of a vitiated mind.
With a compelled appearance of deliberation, they vote under the
dominion of a stern necessity. They sit in the heart, as it were, of a
foreign republic: they have their residence in a city whose
constitution has emanated neither from the charter of their king nor
from their legislative power. There they are surrounded by an army not
raised either by the authority of their crown or by their command, and
which, if they should order to dissolve itself, would instantly
dissolve them. There they sit, after a gang of assassins had driven
away some hundreds of the members, whilst those who held the same
moderate principles, with more patience or better hope, continued
every day exposed to outrageous insults and murderous threats. There a
majority, sometimes real, sometimes pretended, captive itself, compels
a captive king to issue as royal edicts, at third hand, the polluted
nonsense of their most licentious and giddy coffeehouses.
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