be guided by a heated imagination and a wild spirit of adventure?

The fault of M. Mounier and M. Lally was very great; but it was very
general. If those gentlemen stopped, when they came to the brink of the
gulf of guilt and public misery that yawned before them in the abyss of
these dark and bottomless speculations, I forgive their first error: in
that they were involved with many. Their repentance was their own.

They who consider Mounier and Lally as deserters must regard themselves
as murderers and as traitors: for from what else than murder and treason
did they desert? For my part, I honor them for not having carried
mistake into crime. If, indeed, I thought that they were not cured by
experience, that they were not made sensible that those who would reform
a state ought to assume some actual constitution of government which is
to be reformed,--if they are not at length satisfied that it is become a
necessary preliminary to liberty in France, to commence by the
reëstablishment of order and property of _every_ kind, and, through the
reëstablishment of their monarchy, of every one of the old habitual
distinctions and classes of the state,--if they do not see that these
classes are not to be confounded in order to be afterwards revived and
separated,--if they are not convinced that the scheme of parochial and
club governments takes up the state at the wrong end, and is a low and
senseless contrivance, (as making the sole constitution of a supreme
power,)--I should then allow that their early rashness ought to be
remembered to the last moment of their lives.

You gently reprehend me, because, in holding out the picture of your
disastrous situation, I suggest no plan for a remedy. Alas! Sir, the
proposition of plans, without an attention to circumstances, is the very
cause of all your misfortunes; and never shall you find me aggravating,