there must always be a vast disproportion between the duties to be
performed and the powers that are to perform them; and as the measures
of government, far from gaining additional vigour, are, on the contrary,
enfeebled by being intrusted to one hand, what arguments can be used for
allowing to the will of a single being a weight which, as history shows,
will subvert that of the whole body politic? And this brings me to my
grand objection to monarchy, which is drawn from (THE ETERNAL NATURE OF
MAN.) The office of king is a trial to which human virtue is not equal.
Pure and universal representation, by which alone liberty can be
secured, cannot, I think, exist together with monarchy. It seems madness
to expect a manifestation of the _general_ will, at the same time that
we allow to a _particular_ will that weight which it must obtain in all
governments that can with any propriety be called monarchical. They must
war with each other till one of them is extinguished. It was so in
France and....

I shall not pursue this topic further, but, as you are a teacher of
purity of morals, I cannot but remind you of that atmosphere of
corruption without which it should seem that courts cannot exist.

You seem anxious to explain what ought to be understood by the equality
of men in a state of civil society; but your Lordship's success has not
answered your trouble. If you had looked in the articles of the Rights
of Man, you would have found your efforts superseded: 'Equality, without
which liberty cannot exist, is to be met with in perfection in that
State in which no distinctions are admitted but such as have evidently
for their object the general good;' 'The end of government cannot be
attained without authorising some members of the society to command, and
of course without imposing on the rest the necessity of obedience.'