olishing every species of nobility,
gentry, and Church establishments: all their priests and all their
magistrates being only creatures of election and pensioners at will.

Knowing how opposite a permanent landed interest is to that scheme, they
have resolved, and it is the great drift of all their regulations, to
reduce that description of men to a mere peasantry for the sustenance of
the towns, and to place the true effective government in cities, among
the tradesmen, bankers, and voluntary clubs of bold, presuming young
persons,--advocates, attorneys, notaries, managers of newspapers, and
those cabals of literary men called academies. Their republic is to have
a first functionary, (as they call him,) under the name of King, or not,
as they think fit. This officer, when such an officer is permitted, is,
however, neither in fact nor name to be considered as sovereign, nor the
people as his subjects. The very use of these appellations is offensive
to their ears.

[Sidenote: Partisans of the French system.]

This system, as it has first been realized, dogmatically as well as
practically, in France, makes France the natural head of all factions
formed on a similar principle, wherever they may prevail, as much as
Athens was the head and settled ally of all democratic factions,
wherever they existed. The other system has no head.

This system has very many partisans in every country in Europe, but
particularly in England, where they are already formed into a body,
comprehending most of the Dissenters of the three leading denominations.
To these are readily aggregated all who are Dissenters in character,
temper, and disposition, though not belonging to any of their
congregations: that is, all the restless people who resemble them, of
all ranks and all parties,--Whigs, and even Tories; the whole race of
half-bred speculators; all the Atheists, Deists, and Socinians; all
those who hate the clergy and envy the nobility; a good many among the
moneyed people; the East Indians almost to a man, who cannot bear to
find that their present importance does not bear a proportion to their
wealth. These latter have united themselves into one great, and, in my
opinion, formidable club,[31] which, though now quiet, may be brought
into action with considerable unanimity and force.

Formerly, few, except the ambitious great or the desperate and indigent,
were to be feared as instruments in revolutions. What has happened in
France teaches