Otherwise, your supreme government cannot
harmonize with its executory system. There are cases in which we
cannot take up with names and abstractions. You may call half a
dozen leading individuals, whom we have reason to fear and hate, the
nation. It makes no other difference than to make us fear and hate
them the more. If it had been thought justifiable and expedient to
make such a revolution by such means, and through such persons, as you
have made yours, it would have been more wise to have completed the
business of the fifth and sixth of October. The new executive
officer would then owe his situation to those who are his creators
as well as his masters; and he might be bound in interest, in the
society of crime, and (if in crimes there could be virtues) in
gratitude to serve those who had promoted him to a place of great
lucre and great sensual indulgence, and of something more; for more he
must have received from those who certainly would not have limited
an aggrandized creature, as they have done a submitting antagonist.
A king circumstanced as the present, if he is totally stupefied by
his misfortunes so as to think it not the necessity but the premium
and privilege of life to eat and sleep, without any regard to glory,
can never be fit for the office. If he feels as men commonly feel,
he must be sensible that an office so circumstanced is one in which he
can obtain no fame or reputation.
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