I confess I was always blind enough to regard the French Revolution, in the act, and much more in the example, as one of the greatest calamities that had ever fallen upon mankind.  I now find that in its effects it is to be the greatest of all blessings.  If so, we owe amende honorable to the Jacobins.  They, it seems, were right; and if they were right a little earlier than we are, it only shows that they exceeded us in sagacity.  If they brought out their right ideas somewhat in a disorderly manner, it must be remembered that great zeal produces some irregularity; but when greatly in the right, it must be pardoned by those who are very regularly and temperately in the wrong.  The master Jacobins had told me this a thousand times.  I never believed the masters; nor do I now find myself disposed to give credit to the disciple.  I will not much dispute with our author, which party has the best of this Revolution,—­that which is from thence to learn wisdom, or that which from the same event has obtained power.  The dispute on the preference of strength to wisdom may perhaps be decided as Horace has decided the controversy between Art and Nature.  I do not like to leave all the power to my adversary, and to secure nothing to myself but the untimely wisdom that is taught by the consequences of folly.  I do not like my share in the partition:  because to his strength my adversary may possibly add a good deal of cunning, whereas my wisdom may totally fail in producing to me the same degree of strength.  But to descend from the author’s generalities a little nearer to meaning, the security given to liberty is this,—­“that governments will have learned not to precipitate themselves into embarrassments by speculative wars.  Sovereigns and princes will not forget that steadiness, moderation, and economy are the best supports of the eminence on which they stand.”  There seems to me a good deal of oblique reflection in this lesson.  As to the lesson itself, it is at all times a good one.  One would think, however, by this formal introduction of it as a recommendation of the arrangements proposed by the author, it had never been taught before, either by precept or by experience,—­and that these maxims are discoveries reserved for a Regicide peace.  But is it permitted to ask what security it affords to the liberty of the subject, that the prince is pacific or frugal?  The very contrary has happened in our history.  Our best securities for freedom have been obtained from princes who were either warlike, or prodigal, or both.

Although the amendment of princes in these points can have no effect in quieting our apprehensions for liberty on account of the strength to be acquired to government by a Regicide peace, I allow that the avoiding of speculative wars may possibly be an advantage, provided I well understand what the author means by a speculative war.  I suppose he means a war grounded on speculative advantages, and not wars founded on