ical defect in a government necessary to be kept out of sight, or
from both, or from any other cause, I undertake not to determine, but
so it is, that a monarchical reasoner never traces government to its
source, or from its source. It is one of the shibboleths by which he
may be known. A thousand years hence, those who shall live in America or
France, will look back with contemplative pride on the origin of their
government, and say, This was the work of our glorious ancestors! But
what can a monarchical talker say? What has he to exult in? Alas he has
nothing. A certain something forbids him to look back to a beginning,
lest some robber, or some Robin Hood, should rise from the long
obscurity of time and say, I am the origin. Hard as Mr. Burke laboured
at the Regency Bill and Hereditary Succession two years ago, and much
as he dived for precedents, he still had not boldness enough to bring
up William of Normandy, and say, There is the head of the list! there
is the fountain of honour! the son of a prostitute, and the plunderer of
the English nation.

The opinions of men with respect to government are changing fast in all
countries. The Revolutions of America and France have thrown a beam of
light over the world, which reaches into man. The enormous expense of
governments has provoked people to think, by making them feel; and when
once the veil begins to rend, it admits not of repair. Ignorance is of a
peculiar nature: once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish it.
It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of
knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made
ignorant. The mind, in discovering truth, acts in the same manner as it
acts through the eye in discovering objects; when once any object has
been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition
it was in before it saw it. Those who talk of a counter-revolution in
France, show how little they understand of man. There does not exist in
the compass of language an arrangement of words to express so much
as the means of effecting a counter-revolution. The means must be an
obliteration of knowledge; and it has never yet been discovered how to
make man unknow his knowledge, or unthink his thoughts.

Mr. Burke is labouring in vain to stop the progress of knowledge; and it
comes with the worse grace from him, as there is a certain transaction
known in the city which renders him suspected of being a pensioner in