Your literary men, and your politicians, and so do the whole clan of the enlightened among us, essentially differ in these points.  They have no respect for the wisdom of others; but they pay it off by a very full measure of confidence in their own.  With them it is a sufficient motive to destroy an old scheme of things, because it is an old one.  As to the new, they are in no sort of fear with regard to the duration of a building run up in haste; because duration is no object to those who think little or nothing has been done before their time, and who place all their hopes in discovery.  They conceive, very systematically, that all things which give perpetuity are mischievous, and therefore they are at inexpiable war with all establishments.  They think that government may vary like modes of dress, and with as little ill effect; that there needs no principle of attachment, except a sense of present conveniency, to any constitution of the state.  They always speak as if they were of opinion that there is a singular species of compact between them and their magistrates, which binds the magistrate, but which has nothing reciprocal in it, but that the majesty of the people has a right to dissolve it without any reason but its will.  Their attachment to their country itself is only so far as it agrees with some of their fleeting projects:  it begins and ends with that scheme of polity which falls in with their momentary opinion.

These doctrines, or rather sentiments, seem prevalent with your new statesmen.  But they are wholly different from those on which we have always acted in this country.

I hear it is sometimes given out in France, that what is doing among you is after the example of England.  I beg leave to affirm that scarcely anything done with you has originated from the practice or the prevalent opinions of this people, either in the act or in the spirit of the proceeding.  Let me add, that we are as unwilling to learn these lessons from France as we are sure that we never taught them to that nation.  The cabals here who take a sort of share in your transactions as yet consist of but a handful of people.  If, unfortunately, by their intrigues, their sermons, their publications, and by a confidence derived from an expected union with the counsels and forces of the French nation, they should draw considerable numbers into their faction, and in consequence should seriously attempt anything here in imitation of what has been done with you, the event, I dare venture to prophesy, will be, that, with some trouble to their country, they will soon accomplish their own destruction.  This people refused to change their law in remote ages from respect to the infallibility of Popes, and they will not now alter it from a pious implicit faith in the dogmatism of philosophers,—­though the former was armed with the anathema and crusade, and though the latter should act with the libel and the lamp-iron.