it resides. It has the appearance of being so in show, and in nominal
authority; but it is not so in practice and in fact. It has its
standard everywhere. Every office and department has its despotism,
founded upon custom and usage. Every place has its Bastille, and
every Bastille its despot. The original hereditary despotism resident
in the person of the king, divides and sub-divides itself into a
thousand shapes and forms, till at last the whole of it is acted by
deputation. This was the case in France; and against this species of
despotism, proceeding on through an endless labyrinth of office till
the source of it is scarcely perceptible, there is no mode of
redress. It strengthens itself by assuming the appearance of duty,
and tyrannies under the pretence of obeying.

When a man reflects on the condition which France was in from the
nature of her government, he will see other causes for revolt than
those which immediately connect themselves with the person or
character of Louis XVI. There were, if I may so express it, a
thousand despotisms to be reformed in France, which had grown up
under the hereditary despotism of the monarchy, and became so rooted
as to be in a great measure independent of it. Between the Monarchy,
the Parliament, and the Church there was a rivalship of despotism;
besides the feudal despotism operating locally, and the ministerial
despotism operating everywhere. But Mr. Burke, by considering the
king as the only possible object of a revolt, speaks as if France was
a village, in which everything that passed must be known to its
commanding officer, and no oppression could be acted but what he
could immediately control. Mr. Burke might have been in the Bastille
his whole life, as well under Louis XVI. as Louis XIV., and neither
the one nor the other have known that such a man as Burke existed.
The despotic principles of the government were the same in both