those excesses and outrages, which even history itself will hereafter
be unable fully to record, and a just representation of the principle
and source from which they originated, will any man say that we ought
to accept a precarious security against so tremendous a danger? Much
more will he pretend, after the experience of all that has passed, in
the different stages of the French revolution, that we ought to be
deterred from probing this great question to the bottom, and from
examining, without ceremony or disguise, whether the change which has
recently taken place in France is sufficient now to give security, not
against a common danger, but against such a danger as that which I
have described?

In examining this part of the subject, let it be remembered that there
is one other characteristic of the French revolution, as striking as
its dreadful and destructive principles; I mean the instability of
its Government, which has been of itself sufficient to destroy all
reliance, if any such reliance could, at any time, have been placed
on the good faith of any of its rulers. Such has been the incredible
rapidity with which the revolutions in France have succeeded each
other, that I believe the names of those who have successively
exercised absolute power, under the pretence of liberty, are to
be numbered by the years of the revolution; and each of the new
constitutions, which, under the same pretence, has, in its turn, been
imposed by force on France, every one of which alike was founded upon
principles which professed to be universal, and was intended to be
established and perpetuated among all the nations of the earth--each
of these will be found, upon an average, to have had about two years
as the period of its duration.

Under this revolutionary system, accompanied with this perpetual