al constitution of things, that men of
intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

This sentence the prevalent part of your countrymen execute on
themselves. They possessed not long since what was next to freedom, a
mild, paternal monarchy. They despised it for its weakness. They were
offered a well-poised, free Constitution. It did not suit their taste or
their temper. They carved for themselves: they flew out, murdered,
robbed, and rebelled. They have succeeded, and put over their country an
insolent tyranny made up of cruel and inexorable masters, and that, too,
of a description hitherto not known in the world. The powers and
policies by which they have succeeded are not those of great statesmen
or great military commanders, but the practices of incendiaries,
assassins, housebreakers, robbers, spreaders of false news, forgers of
false orders from authority, and other delinquencies, of which ordinary
justice takes cognizance. Accordingly, the spirit of their rule is
exactly correspondent to the means by which they obtained it. They act
more in the manner of thieves who have got possession of an house than
of conquerors who have subdued a nation.

Opposed to these, in appearance, but in appearance only, is another
band, who call themselves _the Moderate_. These, if I conceive rightly
of their conduct, are a set of men who approve heartily of the whole
new Constitution, but wish to lay heavy on the most atrocious of those
crimes by which this fine Constitution of theirs has been obtained. They
are a sort of people who affect to proceed as if they thought that men
may deceive without fraud, rob without injustice, and overturn
everything without violence. They are men who would usurp the government
of their country with decency and moderation. In fact, they are nothing
more or better than men engaged in desperate designs with feeble minds.
They are not honest; they are only ineffectual and unsystematic in their
iniquity. They are persons who want not the dispositions, but the energy
and vigor, that is necessary for great evil machinations. They find that
in such designs they fall at best into a secondary rank, and others take
the place and lead in usurpation which they are not qualified to obtain
or to hold. They envy to their companions the natural fruit of their
crimes; they join to run them down with the hue and cry of mankind,
which pursues their common offences; and then hope to mount into