You
differed from them. You were for stopping there, and for securing the
constitution which the National Assembly had obtained. Here, too, you
were right; and from this fatal error of the republicans, from their
separation from yourself and the constitutionalists, in their councils,
flowed all the subsequent sufferings and crimes of the French nation.
The hazards of a second change fell upon them by the way. The foreigner
gained time to anarchize by gold the government he could not overthrow
by arms, to crush in their own councils the genuine republicans, by the
fraternal embraces of exaggerated and hired pretenders, and to turn the
machine of Jacobinism from the change to the destruction of order: and,
in the end, the limited monarchy they had secured was exchanged for
the unprincipled and bloody tyranny of Robespierre, and the equally
unprincipled and maniac tyranny of Bonaparte. You are now rid of him,
and I sincerely wish you may continue so. But this may depend on the
wisdom and moderation of the restored dynasty. It is for them now to
read a lesson in the fatal errors of the republicans; to be contented
with a certain portion of power, secured by formal compact with the
nation, rather than, grasping at more, hazard all upon uncertainty, and
risk meeting the fate of their predecessor, or a renewal of their own
exile. We are just informed, too, of an example which merits, if true,
their most profound contemplation.
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