Knowing how opposite a permanent landed interest is to that scheme, they have resolved, and it is the great drift of all their regulations, to reduce that description of men to a mere peasantry for the sustenance of the towns, and to place the true effective government in cities, among the tradesmen, bankers, and voluntary clubs of bold, presuming young persons,—­advocates, attorneys, notaries, managers of newspapers, and those cabals of literary men called academies.  Their republic is to have a first functionary, (as they call him,) under the name of King, or not, as they think fit.  This officer, when such an officer is permitted, is, however, neither in fact nor name to be considered as sovereign, nor the people as his subjects.  The very use of these appellations is offensive to their ears.

[Sidenote:  Partisans of the French system.]

This system, as it has first been realized, dogmatically as well as practically, in France, makes France the natural head of all factions formed on a similar principle, wherever they may prevail, as much as Athens was the head and settled ally of all democratic factions, wherever they existed.  The other system has no head.

This system has very many partisans in every country in Europe, but particularly in England, where they are already formed into a body, comprehending most of the Dissenters of the three leading denominations.  To these are readily aggregated all who are Dissenters in character, temper, and disposition, though not belonging to any of their congregations:  that is, all the restless people who resemble them, of all ranks and all parties,—­Whigs, and even Tories; the whole race of half-bred speculators; all the Atheists, Deists, and Socinians; all those who hate the clergy and envy the nobility; a good many among the moneyed people; the East Indians almost to a man, who cannot bear to find that their present importance does not bear a proportion to their wealth.  These latter have united themselves into one great, and, in my opinion, formidable club,[31] which, though now quiet, may be brought into action with considerable unanimity and force.

Formerly, few, except the ambitious great or the desperate and indigent, were to be feared as instruments in revolutions.  What has happened in France teaches us, with many other things, that there are more causes than have commonly been taken into our consideration, by which government may be subverted.  The moneyed men, merchants, principal tradesmen, and men of letters (hitherto generally thought the peaceable and even timid part of society) are the chief actors in the French Revolution.  But the fact is, that, as money increases and circulates, and as the circulation of news in politics and letters becomes more and more diffused, the persons who diffuse this money and this intelligence become more and more important.  This was not long undiscovered.  Views of ambition were in France, for the first time, presented to these classes of men:  objects in the state, in the army, in the system of civil offices of every kind.  Their eyes were dazzled with this new prospect.  They were, as it were, electrified, and made to lose the natural spirit of their situation.  A bribe, great without example in the history of the world, was held out to them,—­the whole government of a very large kingdom.