f Monarchy. You are therefore guilty
of a most glaring contradiction. Twenty-five millions of Frenchmen have
felt that they could have no security for their liberties under any
modification of monarchical power. They have in consequence unanimously
chosen a Republic. You cannot but observe that they have only exercised
that right in which, by your own confession, liberty essentially
resides.

As to your arguments, by which you pretend to justify your anathemas of
a Republic--if arguments they may be called--they are so concise, that I
cannot but transcribe them. 'I dislike a Republic for this reason,
because of all forms of government, scarcely excepting the most
despotic, I think a Republic the most oppressive to the bulk of the
people; they are deceived in it with a show of liberty, but they live in
it under the most odious of all tyrannies--the tyranny of their equals.'

This passage is a singular proof of that fatality by which the advocates
of error furnish weapons for their own destruction: while it is merely
_assertion_ in respect to a justification of your aversion to
Republicanism, a strong _argument_ may be drawn from it in its favour.
Mr. Burke, in a philosophic lamentation over the extinction of chivalry,
told us that in those times vice lost half its evil by losing all its
grossness. Infatuated moralist! Your Lordship excites compassion as
labouring under the same delusion. Slavery is a bitter and a poisonous
draught. We have but one consolation under it, that a Nation may dash
the cup to the ground when she pleases. Do not imagine that by taking
from its bitterness you weaken its deadly quality; no, by rendering it
more palatable you contribute to its power of destruction. We submit
without repining to the chastisements of Providence, aware that we are
creatures, that opposition is vain and remonstrance impossible. But when
redress is in our own power and resistance is rational, we suffer with
the same humility from beings like ourselves, because we are taught from
infancy that we were born in a state of inferiority to our oppressors,
that they were sent into the world to scourge, and we to be scourged.
Accordingly we see the bulk of mankind, actuated by these fatal
prejudices, even more ready to lay themselves under the feet of _the
great_ than the great are to trample upon them. Now taking for granted,
that in Republics men live under the tyranny of what you call their
equals, the circumstance of this b