The fault of M. Mounier and M. Lally was very great; but it was very general.  If those gentlemen stopped, when they came to the brink of the gulf of guilt and public misery that yawned before them in the abyss of these dark and bottomless speculations, I forgive their first error:  in that they were involved with many.  Their repentance was their own.

They who consider Mounier and Lally as deserters must regard themselves as murderers and as traitors:  for from what else than murder and treason did they desert?  For my part, I honor them for not having carried mistake into crime.  If, indeed, I thought that they were not cured by experience, that they were not made sensible that those who would reform a state ought to assume some actual constitution of government which is to be reformed,—­if they are not at length satisfied that it is become a necessary preliminary to liberty in France, to commence by the reestablishment of order and property of every kind, and, through the reestablishment of their monarchy, of every one of the old habitual distinctions and classes of the state,—­if they do not see that these classes are not to be confounded in order to be afterwards revived and separated,—­if they are not convinced that the scheme of parochial and club governments takes up the state at the wrong end, and is a low and senseless contrivance, (as making the sole constitution of a supreme power,)—­I should then allow that their early rashness ought to be remembered to the last moment of their lives.

You gently reprehend me, because, in holding out the picture of your disastrous situation, I suggest no plan for a remedy.  Alas!  Sir, the proposition of plans, without an attention to circumstances, is the very cause of all your misfortunes; and never shall you find me aggravating, by the infusion of any speculations of mine, the evils which have arisen from the speculations of others.  Your malady, in this respect, is a disorder of repletion.  You seem to think that my keeping back my poor ideas may arise from an indifference to the welfare of a foreign and sometimes an hostile nation.  No, Sir, I faithfully assure you, my reserve is owing to no such causes.  Is this letter, swelled to a second book, a mark of national antipathy, or even of national indifference?  I should act altogether in the spirit of the same caution, in a similar state of our own domestic affairs.  If I were to venture any advice, in any case, it would be my best.  The sacred duty of an adviser (one of the most inviolable that exists) would lead me, towards a real enemy, to act as if my best friend were the party concerned.  But I dare not risk a speculation with no better view of your affairs than at present I can command; my caution is not from disregard, but from solicitude for your welfare.  It is suggested solely from my dread of becoming the author of inconsiderate counsel.