ho were such before the triumph) were inexorable and
cruel tyrants, that they had formed a deliberate scheme for massacring
the National Assembly (I think I have seen something like the latter
insinuated in certain publications), I should think their captivity
just. If this be true, much more ought to have been done; but done, in
my opinion, in another manner. The punishment of real tyrants is a noble
and awful act of justice; and it has with truth been said to be
consolatory to the human mind. But if I were to punish a wicked king, I
should regard the dignity in avenging the crime. Justice is grave and
decorous, and in its punishments rather seems to submit to a necessity
than to make a choice. Had Nero, or Agrippina, or Louis the Eleventh, or
Charles the Ninth, been the subject; if Charles the Twelfth of Sweden
after the murder of Patkul, or his predecessor Christina after the
murder of Monaldeschi, had fallen into your hands, sir, or into mine, I
am sure our conduct would have been different.

If the French King, or King of the French (or by whatever name he is
known in the new vocabulary of your constitution), has in his own
person and that of his Queen really deserved these unavowed but
unavenged murderous attempts, and those frequent indignities more cruel
than murder, such a person would ill deserve even that subordinate
executory trust which I understand is to be placed in him; nor is he fit
to be called chief in a nation which he has outraged and oppressed. A
worse choice for such an office in a new commonwealth than that of a
deposed tyrant could not possibly be made. But to degrade and insult a
man as the worst of criminals, and afterwards to trust him in your
highest concerns as a faithful, honest, and zealous servant, is not
consistent with reasoning, nor prudent in policy, nor safe in practice.
Those who could make such an appointment must be guilty of a more
flagrant breach of trust than any they have yet committed against the
people. As this is the only crime in which your leading politicians
could have acted inconsistently, I conclude that there is no sort of
ground for these horrid insinuations. I think no better of all the other
calumnies.

In England, we give no credit to them. We are generous enemies: we are
faithful allies. We spurn from us with disgust and indignation the
slanders of those who bring us their anecdotes with the attestation of
the flower-de-luce on their shoulder. We have Lord Geor