heir nature null and void; that all his
voluminous inferences, and declamation drawn therefrom, or founded
thereon, are null and void also; and on this ground I rest the matter.

We now come more particularly to the affairs of France. Mr. Burke's book
has the appearance of being written as instruction to the French nation;
but if I may permit myself the use of an extravagant metaphor, suited
to the extravagance of the case, it is darkness attempting to illuminate
light.

While I am writing this there are accidentally before me some proposals
for a declaration of rights by the Marquis de la Fayette (I ask his
pardon for using his former address, and do it only for distinction's
sake) to the National Assembly, on the 11th of July, 1789, three
days before the taking of the Bastille, and I cannot but remark with
astonishment how opposite the sources are from which that gentleman and
Mr. Burke draw their principles. Instead of referring to musty records
and mouldy parchments to prove that the rights of the living are lost,
"renounced and abdicated for ever," by those who are now no more, as
Mr. Burke has done, M. de la Fayette applies to the living world,
and emphatically says: "Call to mind the sentiments which nature has
engraved on the heart of every citizen, and which take a new force when
they are solemnly recognised by all:--For a nation to love liberty, it
is sufficient that she knows it; and to be free, it is sufficient that
she wills it." How dry, barren, and obscure is the source from which Mr.
Burke labors! and how ineffectual, though gay with flowers, are all his
declamation and his arguments compared with these clear, concise, and
soul-animating sentiments! Few and short as they are, they lead on to a
vast field of generous and manly thinking, and do not finish, like Mr.
Burke's periods, with music in the ear, and nothing in the heart.

As I have introduced M. de la Fayette, I will take the liberty of adding
an anecdote respecting his farewell address to the Congress of America
in 1783, and which occurred fresh to my mind, when I saw Mr. Burke's
thundering attack on the French Revolution. M. de la Fayette went to
America at the early period of the war, and continued a volunteer in her
service to the end. His conduct through the whole of that enterprise is
one of the most extraordinary that is to be found in the history of a
young man, scarcely twenty years of age. Situated in a country that was
like the lap of