themselves for the subversion of nothing short of the whole Constitution of this kingdom,—­to incorporate themselves for the utter overthrow of the body of its laws, civil and ecclesiastical, and with them of the whole system of its manners, in favor of the new Constitution and of the modern usages of the French nation,—­I think no party principle could bind the author not to express his sentiments strongly against such a faction.  On the contrary, he was perhaps bound to mark his dissent, when the leaders of the party were daily going out of their way to make public declarations in Parliament, which, notwithstanding the purity of their intentions, had a tendency to encourage ill-designing men in their practices against our Constitution.

The members of this faction leave no doubt of the nature and the extent of the mischief they mean to produce.  They declare it openly and decisively.  Their intentions are not left equivocal.  They are put out of all dispute by the thanks which, formally and as it were officially, they issue, in order to recommend and to promote the circulation of the most atrocious and treasonable libels against all the hitherto cherished objects of the love and veneration of this people.  Is it contrary to the duty of a good subject to reprobate such proceedings?  Is it alien to the office of a good member of Parliament, when such practices increase, and when the audacity of the conspirators grows with their impunity, to point out in his place their evil tendency to the happy Constitution which he is chosen to guard?  Is it wrong, in any sense, to render the people of England sensible how much they must suffer, if, unfortunately, such a wicked faction should become possessed in this country of the same power which their allies in the very next to us have so perfidiously usurped and so outrageously abused?  Is it inhuman to prevent, if possible, the spilling their blood, or imprudent to guard against the effusion of our own? Is it contrary to any of the honest principles of party, or repugnant to any of the known duties of friendship, for any senator respectfully and amicably to caution his brother members against countenancing, by inconsiderate expressions, a sort of proceeding which it is impossible they should deliberately approve?

He had undertaken to demonstrate, by arguments which he thought could not be refuted, and by documents which he was sure could not be denied, that no comparison was to be made between the British government and the French usurpation.—­That they who endeavored madly to compare them were by no means making the comparison of one good system with another good system, which varied only in local and circumstantial differences; much less that they were holding out to us a superior pattern of legal liberty, which we might substitute in the place of our old, and, as they describe it, superannuated Constitution.  He meant to demonstrate that the French scheme was not a comparative good,