Instead of that
liberty which takes root and growth in the progress of reason, if
recovered by mere force or accident, it becomes, with an unprepared
people, a tyranny still, of the many, the few, or the one. Possibly you
may remember, at the date of the _jeu de paume_, how earnestly I urged
yourself and the patriots of my acquaintance to enter then into a
compact with the King, securing freedom of religion, freedom of the
press, trial by jury, habeas corpus, and a national legislature, all of
which it was known he would then yield, to go home, and let these work
on the amelioration of the condition of the people, until they should
have rendered them capable of more, when occasions would not fail to
arise for communicating to them more. This was as much as I then thought
them able to bear, soberly and usefully for themselves. You thought
otherwise, and that the dose might still be larger. And I found you were
right; for subsequent events proved they were equal to the constitution
of 1791. Unfortunately, some of the most honest and enlightened of our
patriotic friends (but closet politicians merely, unpractised in the
knowledge of man) thought more could still be obtained and borne. They
did not weigh the hazards of a transition from one form of government to
another, the value of what they had already rescued from those hazards,
and might hold in security if they pleased, nor the imprudence of giving
up the certainty of such a degree of liberty, under a limited monarch,
for the uncertainty of a little more under the form of a republic.
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