reluctance, than an edict of Louis the fourteenth.*

* The King appealed, by his counsel, to the People; but the
convention, by a decree, declared his appeal of no validity, and
forbade all persons to pay attention to it, under the severest
penalties.

The French seem to have no energy but to destroy, and to resist nothing
but gentleness or infancy. They bend under a firm or oppressive
administration, but become restless and turbulent under a mild Prince or
a minority.

The fate of this unfortunate Monarch has made me reflect, with great
seriousness, on the conduct of our opposition-writers in England. The
literary banditti who now govern France began their operations by
ridiculing the King's private character--from ridicule they proceeded to
calumny, and from calumny to treason; and perhaps the first libel that
degraded him in the eyes of his subjects opened the path from the palace
to the scaffold.--I do not mean to attribute the same pernicious
intentions to the authors on your side the Channel, as I believe them,
for the most part, to be only mercenary, and that they would write
panegyrics as soon as satires, were they equally profitable. I know too,
that there is no danger of their producing revolutions in England--we do
not suffer our principles to be corrupted by a man because he has the art
of rhyming nothings into consequence, nor suffer another to overturn the
government because he is an orator. Yet, though these men may not be
very mischievous, they are very reprehensible; and, in a moment like the
present, contempt and neglect should supply the place of that punishment
against which our liberty of the press secures them.