There are cases in which a man would be ashamed not to have been imposed on.  There is a confidence necessary to human intercourse, and without which men are often more injured by their own suspicions than they would be by the perfidy of others.  But when men whom we know to be wicked impose upon us, we are something worse than dupes.  When we know them, their fair pretences become new motives for distrust.  There is one case, indeed, in which it would be madness not to give the fullest credit to the most deceitful of men,—­that is, when they make declarations of hostility against us.

I find that some persons entertain other hopes, which I confess appear more specious than those by which at first so many were deluded and disarmed.  They flatter themselves that the extreme misery brought upon the people by their folly will at last open the eyes of the multitude, if not of their leaders.  Much the contrary, I fear.  As to the leaders in this system of imposture,—­you know that cheats and deceivers never can repent.  The fraudulent have no resource but in fraud.  They have no other goods in their magazine.  They have no virtue or wisdom in their minds, to which, in a disappointment concerning the profitable effects of fraud and cunning, they can retreat.  The wearing out of an old serves only to put them upon the invention of a new delusion.  Unluckily, too, the credulity of dupes is as inexhaustible as the invention of knaves.  They never give people possession; but they always keep them in hope.  Your state doctors do not so much as pretend that any good whatsoever has hitherto been derived from their operations, or that the public has prospered in any one instance under their management.  The nation is sick, very sick, by their medicines.  But the charlatan tells them that what is past cannot be helped;—­they have taken the draught, and they must wait its operation with patience;—­that the first effects, indeed, are unpleasant, but that the very sickness is a proof that the dose is of no sluggish operation;—­that sickness is inevitable in all constitutional revolutions;—­that the body must pass through pain to ease;—­that the prescriber is not an empiric who proceeds by vulgar experience, but one who grounds his practice[1] on the sure rules of art, which cannot possibly fail.  You have read, Sir, the last manifesto, or mountebank’s bill, of the National Assembly.  You see their presumption in their promises is not lessened by all their failures in the performance.  Compare this last address of the Assembly and the present state of your affairs with the early engagements of that body, engagements which, not content with declaring, they solemnly deposed upon oath,—­swearing lustily, that, if they were supported, they would make their country glorious and happy; and then judge whether those who can write such things, or those who can bear to read them, are of themselves to be brought to any reasonable course of thought or action.