ere seen by others, as it is
seen by them, the juggle could not be kept up; they are in the condition
of men who get their living by a show, and to whom the folly of that
show is so familiar that they ridicule it; but were the audience to be
made as wise in this respect as themselves, there would be an end to the
show and the profits with it. The difference between a republican and
a courtier with respect to monarchy, is that the one opposes monarchy,
believing it to be something; and the other laughs at it, knowing it to
be nothing.

As I used sometimes to correspond with Mr. Burke believing him then to
be a man of sounder principles than his book shows him to be, I wrote
to him last winter from Paris, and gave him an account how prosperously
matters were going on. Among other subjects in that letter, I referred
to the happy situation the National Assembly were placed in; that they
had taken ground on which their moral duty and their political interest
were united. They have not to hold out a language which they do not
themselves believe, for the fraudulent purpose of making others believe
it. Their station requires no artifice to support it, and can only be
maintained by enlightening mankind. It is not their interest to cherish
ignorance, but to dispel it. They are not in the case of a ministerial
or an opposition party in England, who, though they are opposed, are
still united to keep up the common mystery. The National Assembly must
throw open a magazine of light. It must show man the proper character of
man; and the nearer it can bring him to that standard, the stronger the
National Assembly becomes.

In contemplating the French Constitution, we see in it a rational order
of things. The principles harmonise with the forms, and both with their
origin. It may perhaps be said as an excuse for bad forms, that they
are nothing more than forms; but this is a mistake. Forms grow out of
principles, and operate to continue the principles they grow from. It
is impossible to practise a bad form on anything but a bad principle.
It cannot be ingrafted on a good one; and wherever the forms in any
government are bad, it is a certain indication that the principles are
bad also.

I will here finally close this subject. I began it by remarking that Mr.
Burke had voluntarily declined going into a comparison of the English
and French Constitutions. He apologises (in page 241) for not doing it,
by saying that he had not time. Mr. Bu