“That strain I heard was of a higher mood.”  That declaration of our sovereign was worthy of his throne.  It is in a style which neither the pen of the writer of October nor such a poor crow-quill as mine can ever hope to equal.  I am happy to enrich my letter with this fragment of nervous and manly eloquence, which, if it had not emanated from the awful authority of a throne, if it were not recorded amongst the most valuable monuments of history, and consecrated in the archives of states, would be worthy, as a private composition, to live forever in the memory of men.

In those admirable pieces does his Majesty discover this new opinion of his political security, in having the chair of the scorner, that is, the discipline of atheism, and the block of regicide, set up by his side, elevated on the same platform, and shouldering, with the vile image of their grim and bloody idol, the inviolable majesty of his throne?  The sentiments of these declarations are the very reverse:  they could not be other.  Speaking of the spirit of that usurpation, the royal manifesto describes, with perfect truth, its internal tyranny to have been established as the very means of shaking the security of all other states,—­as “disposing arbitrarily of the property and blood of the inhabitants of France, in order to disturb the tranquillity of other nations, and to render all Europe the theatre of the same crimes and of the same misfortunes.”  It was but a natural inference from this fact, that the royal manifesto does not at all rest the justification of this war on common principles:  that it was “not only to defend his own rights, and those of his allies,” but “that all the dearest interests of his people imposed upon him a duty still more important,—­that of exerting his efforts for the preservation of civil society itself, as happily established among the nations of Europe.”  On that ground, the protection offered is to “those who, by declaring for a monarchical government, shall shake off the yoke of a sanguinary anarchy.”  It is for that purpose the declaration calls on them “to join the standard of an hereditary monarchy,”—­declaring that the peace and safety of this kingdom and the other powers of Europe “materially depend on the reestablishment of order in France.”  His Majesty does not hesitate to declare that “the reestablishment of monarchy, in the person of Louis the Seventeenth, and the lawful heirs of the crown, appears to him [his Majesty] the best mode of accomplishing these just and salutary views.”