much disapprobation. No confusion could be feared in such
an enterprise; because the establishment to be reformed was
itself a state of confusion. A King without authority,
nobles without union or subordination, a people without
arts, industry, commerce, or liberty; no order within, no
defence without; no effective public force, but a foreign
force, which entered a naked country at will, and disposed
of everything at pleasure. Here was a state of things
which seemed to invite, and might, perhaps, justify bold
enterprise and desperate experiment. But in what manner
was this chaos brought into order? The means were as
striking to the imagination, as satisfactory to the reason,
and soothing to the moral sentiments. In contemplating
that change, humanity has everything to rejoice and to
glory in, nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to suffer. So
far as it has gone, it probably is the most pure and defecated
public good which ever has been conferred on mankind.
We have seen anarchy and servitude at once removed,
a throne strengthened for the protection of the people,
without trenching on their liberties, all foreign cabal
banished, by changing the crown from elective to hereditary;
and what was a matter of pleasing wonder, we have
seen a reigning King, from an heroic love to his country,
exerting himself with all the toil, the dexterity, the management,
the intrigue, in favour of a family of strangers, with
which ambitious men labour for the aggrandizement of
their own. Ten millions of men in a way of being freed
gradually, and therefore safely to themselves and the State,
not from civil or political chains, which, bad as they are,
only fetter the mind, but from substantial personal bondage.