the justice of the law which he has enacted to-day.

Perhaps in the very outset of this inquiry the principle on which I
proceed will be questioned, and I shall be told that the people are not
the proper judges of their own welfare. But because under every
government of modern times, till the foundation of the American
Republic, the bulk of mankind have appeared incapable of discerning
their true interests, no conclusion can be drawn against my principle.
At this moment have we not daily the strongest proofs of the success
with which, in what you call the best of all monarchical governments,
the popular mind may be debauched? Left to the quiet exercise of their
own judgment, do you think that the people would have thought it
necessary to set fire to the house of the philosophic Priestley, and to
hunt down his life like that of a traitor or a parricide? that, deprived
almost of the necessaries of existence by the burden of their taxes,
they would cry out, as with one voice, for a war from which not a single
ray of consolation can visit them to compensate for the additional
keenness with which they are about to smart under the scourge of labour,
of cold, and of hunger?

Appearing, as I do, the advocate of Republicanism, let me not be
misunderstood. I am well aware, from the abuse of the executive power
in States, that there is not a single European nation but what affords a
melancholy proof that if, at this moment, the original authority of the
people should be restored, all that could be expected from such
restoration would in the beginning be but a change of tyranny.
Considering the nature of a Republic in reference to the present
condition of Europe, your Lordship stops here; but a philosopher will
extend his views much farther: having dried up the source from which
flows the corruption of the public opinion, he will be sensible that the