extremities, it may not be so easy to discriminate the one from the
other. Tho necessities created even by ill designs have their excuse.
They may be forgotten by others, when the guilty themselves do not
choose to cherish their recollection, and, by ruminating their
offences, nourish themselves, through the example of their past, to the
perpetration of future crimes. It is in the relaxation of security, it
is in the expansion of prosperity, it is in the hour of dilatation of
the heart, and of its softening into festivity and pleasure, that the
real character of men is discerned. If there is any good in them, it
appears then or never. Even wolves and tigers, when gorged with their
prey, are safe and gentle. It is at such times that noble minds give all
the reins to their good nature. They indulge their genius even to
intemperance, in kindness to the afflicted, in generosity to the
conquered,--forbearing insults, forgiving injuries, overpaying benefits.
Full of dignity themselves, they respect dignity in all, but they feel
it sacred in the unhappy. But it is then, and basking in the sunshine of
unmerited fortune, that low, sordid, ungenerous, and reptile souls swell
with their hoarded poisons; it is then that they display their odious
splendor, and shine out in the full lustre of their native villany and
baseness. It is in that season that no man of sense or honor can be
mistaken for one of them. It was in such a season, for them of political
ease and security, though their people were but just emerged from actual
famine, and were ready to be plunged into a gulf of penury and beggary,
that your philosophic lords chose, with an ostentatious pomp and luxury,
to feast an incredible number of idle and thoughtless people, collected
with art and pains from all quarters of the world. They constructed a
vast amphitheatre in which they raised a species of pillory.[3] On this
pillory they set their lawful king and queen, with an insulting figure
over their heads. There they exposed these objects of pity and respect
to all good minds to the derision of an unthinking and unprincipled