ly pride, possessing
nothing at present and hoping for nothing hereafter?

I wish you may not be going fast, and by the shortest cut, to that
horrible and disgustful situation. Already there appears a poverty of
conception, a coarseness and vulgarity, in all the proceedings of the
Assembly and of all their instructors. Their liberty is not liberal.
Their science is presumptuous ignorance. Their humanity is savage and
brutal.

It is not clear whether in England we learned those grand and decorous
principles and manners, of which considerable traces yet remain, from
you, or whether you took them from us. But to you, I think, we trace
them best. You seem to me to be _gentis incunabula nostrae_. France has
always more or less influenced manners in England; and when your
fountain is choked up and polluted the stream will not run long, or not
run clear, with us or perhaps with any nation. This gives all Europe,
in my opinion, but too close and connected a concern in what is done in
France. Excuse me therefore if I have dwelt too long on the atrocious
spectacle of the 6th of October, 1789, or have given too much scope to
the reflections which have arisen in my mind on occasion of the most
important of all revolutions, which may be dated from that day,--I mean
a revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions. As things now
stand, with everything respectable destroyed without us, and an attempt
to destroy within us every principle of respect, one is almost forced to
apologize for harboring the common feelings of men.

Why do I feel so differently from the Reverend Dr. Price and those of
his lay flock who will choose to adopt the sentiments of his discourse?
For this plain reason--because it is _natural_ I should; because we are
so made as to be affected at such spectacles with melancholy sentiments
upon the unstable condition of mortal prosperity, and the tremendous
uncertainty of human greatness; because in those natural feelings we
learn great lessons; because in events like these our passions instruct
our reason; because when kings are hurled from their thrones by the
Supreme Director of this great drama, and become the objects of insult
to the base and of pity to the good, we behold such disasters in the
moral as we should a miracle in the physical order of things. We are
alarmed into reflection; our minds (as it has long since been observed)
are purified by terror and pity; our weak, unthinking pride is humbled
un