Most of the topics I have used are drawn from fear and apprehension.  Topics derived from fear or addressed to it are, I well know, of doubtful appearance.  To be sure, hope is in general the incitement to action.  Alarm some men,—­you do not drive them to provide for their security; you put them to a stand; you induce them, not to take measures to prevent the approach of danger, but to remove so unpleasant an idea from their minds; you persuade them to remain as they are, from a new fear that their activity may bring on the apprehended mischief before its time.  I confess freely that this evil sometimes happens from an overdone precaution; but it is when the measures are rash, ill-chosen, or ill-combined, and the effects rather of blind terror than of enlightened foresight.  But the few to whom I wish to submit my thoughts are of a character which will enable them to see danger without astonishment, and to provide against it without perplexity.

To what lengths this method of circulating mutinous manifestoes, and of keeping emissaries of sedition in every court under the name of ambassadors, to propagate the same principles and to follow the practices, will go, and how soon they will operate, it is hard to say; but go on it will, more or less rapidly, according to events, and to the humor of the time.  The princes menaced with the revolt of their subjects, at the same time that they have obsequiously obeyed the sovereign mandate of the new Roman senate, have received with distinction, in a public character, ambassadors from those who in the same act had circulated the manifesto of sedition in their dominions.  This was the only thing wanting to the degradation and disgrace of the Germanic body.

The ambassadors from the rights of man, and their admission into the diplomatic system, I hold to be a new era in this business.  It will be the most important step yet taken to affect the existence of sovereigns, and the higher classes of life:  I do not mean to exclude its effects upon all classes; but the first blow is aimed at the more prominent parts in the ancient order of things.

What is to be done?

It would be presumption in me to do more than to make a case.  Many things occur.  But as they, like all political measures, depend on dispositions, tempers, means, and external circumstances, for all their effect, not being well assured of these, I do not know how to let loose any speculations of mine on the subject.  The evil is stated, in my opinion, as it exists.  The remedy must be where power, wisdom, and information, I hope, are more united with good intentions than they can be with me.  I have done with this subject, I believe, forever.  It has given me many anxious moments for the two last years.  If a great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds of men will be fitted to it, the general opinions and feelings will draw that way.  Every fear, every hope, will forward it; and then they who persist in opposing this mighty current in human affairs will appear rather to resist the decrees of Providence itself than the mere designs of men.  They will not be resolute and firm, but perverse and obstinate.