The game of ambition or resentment
will be played by many of the rich and great as desperately, and with as
much blindness to the consequences, as any other game. Was he a man of
no rank or fortune who first set on foot the disturbances which have
ruined France? Passion blinded him to the consequences, so far as they
concerned himself; and as to the consequences with regard to others,
they were no part of his consideration,--nor ever will be with those who
bear any resemblance to that virtuous patriot and lover of the rights of
man.

There is also a time of insecurity, when interests of all sorts become
objects of speculation. Then it is that their very attachment to wealth
and importance will induce several persons of opulence to list
themselves and even to take a lead with the party which they think most
likely to prevail, in order to obtain to themselves consideration in
some new order or disorder of things. They may be led to act in this
manner, that they may secure some portion of their own property, and
perhaps to become partakers of the spoil of their own order. Those who
speculate on change always make a great number among people of rank and
fortune, as well as amongst the low and the indigent.

What security against all this?--All human securities are liable to
uncertainty. But if anything bids fair for the prevention of so great a
calamity, it must consist in the use of the ordinary means of just
influence in society, whilst those means continue unimpaired. The public
judgment ought to receive a proper direction. All weighty men may have
their share in so good a work. As yet, notwithstanding the strutting and
lying independence of a braggart philosophy, Nature maintains her
rights, and great names have great prevalence. Two such men as Mr. Pitt
and Mr. Fox, adding to their authority in a point in which they concur
even by their disunion in everything else, might frown these wicked
opinions out of the kingdom. But if the influence of either of them, or
the influence of men like them, should, against their serious
intentions, be otherwise perverted, they may countenance opinions which
(as I have said before, and could wish over and over again to press)
they may in vain attempt to control. In their theory, these doctrines
admit no limit, no qualification whatsoever. No man can say how far he
will go, who joins with those who are avowedly going to the utmost
extremities. What security is there for stopping short