I know of no enemy of reform and of the happiness of the country so great as that man who would persuade you that we possess nothing good, and that all must be torn to pieces.  There is no principle, no precedent, no regulations (except as to mere matter of detail), favourable to freedom, which is not to be found in the Laws of England or in the example of our ancestors.  Therefore I say we may ask for, and we want nothing new.  We have great constitutional laws and principles to which we are immovably attached.  We want great alteration, but we want nothing new.  Alteration, modification, to suit the times and circumstances; but the great principles ought to be and must, be the same, or else confusion will follow.

It was the misfortune of the French people that they had no great and settled principles to refer to in their laws or history.  They sallied forth and inflicted vengeance on their oppressors; but, for want of settled principles to which to refer they fell into confusion; they massacred each other; they next flew to a military chief to protect them even against themselves; and the result has been what we too well know.  Let us therefore congratulate ourselves that we have great constitutional principles and laws, to which we can refer, and to which we are attached.

That reform will come I know, if the people do their duty; and all that we have to guard against is confusion, which cannot come if reform take place in time.  I have before observed to you that when the friends of corruption in France saw that they could not prevent a change, they bent their endeavours to produce confusion, in which they fully succeeded.  They employed numbers of unprincipled men to go about the country proposing all sorts of mad schemes.  They produced first a confusion in men’s minds, and next a civil war between provinces, towns, villages and families.  The tyrant Robespierre, who was exceeded in cruelty only by some of the Bourbons, was proved to have been in league with the open enemies of France.  He butchered all the real friends of freedom whom he could lay his hands on, except Paine, whom he shut up in a dungeon till he was reduced to a skeleton.  This monster was at last put to death himself; and his horrid end ought to be a warning to any man who may wish to walk in the same path.  But I am, for my part, in little fear of the influence of such men.  They cannot cajole you as Robespierre cajoled the people of Paris.  It is, nevertheless, necessary for you to be on your guard against them, and when you hear a man talking big and hectoring about projects which go further than a real and radical reform of the Parliament, be you well assured that that man would be a second Robespierre if he could, and that he would make use of you and sacrifice the life of the very last man of you; that he would ride upon the shoulders of some through rivers of the blood of others, for the purpose of gratifying his own selfish and base and insolent ambition.