of their solid privileges. Indeed, the increase of the power of the
State has often been urged by artful men, as a pretext for some
abridgment of the public liberty. But the scheme of the junto under
consideration not only strikes a palsy into every nerve of our free
constitution, but in the same degree benumbs and stupefies the whole
executive power, rendering Government in all its grand operations
languid, uncertain, ineffective, making Ministers fearful of
attempting, and incapable of executing, any useful plan of domestic
arrangement, or of foreign politics. It tends to produce neither
the security of a free Government, nor the energy of a Monarchy that
is absolute. Accordingly, the Crown has dwindled away in proportion
to the unnatural and turgid growth of this excrescence on the Court.

The interior Ministry are sensible that war is a situation which
sets in its full light the value of the hearts of a people, and they
well know that the beginning of the importance of the people must be
the end of theirs. For this reason they discover upon all occasions
the utmost fear of everything which by possibility may lead to such
an event. I do not mean that they manifest any of that pious fear
which is backward to commit the safety of the country to the dubious
experiment of war. Such a fear, being the tender sensation of
virtue, excited, as it is regulated, by reason, frequently shows
itself in a seasonable boldness, which keeps danger at a distance,
by seeming to despise it. Their fear betrays to the first glance of
the eye its true cause and its real object. Foreign powers,
confident in the knowledge of their character, have not scrupled to
violate the most solemn treaties; and, in defiance of them, to make
conquests in the midst of a general peace, and in the heart of
Europe. Such was the conquest of Corsica, by the professed enemies
of the freedom of mankind, in defiance of those who were formerly