The excellencies of the British Constitution had already exercised and exhausted the talents of the best thinkers and the most eloquent writers and speakers that the world ever saw.  But in the present case a system declared to be far better, and which certainly is much newer, (to restless and unstable minds no small recommendation,) was held out to the admiration of the good people of England.  In that case it was surely proper for those who had far other thoughts of the French Constitution to scrutinize that plan which has been recommended to our imitation by active and zealous factions at home and abroad.  Our complexion is such, that we are palled with enjoyment, and stimulated with hope,—­that we become less sensible to a long-possessed benefit from the very circumstance that it is become habitual.  Specious, untried, ambiguous prospects of new advantage recommend themselves to the spirit of adventure which more or less prevails in every mind.  From this temper, men and factions, and nations too, have sacrificed the good of which they had been in assured possession, in favor of wild and irrational expectations.  What should hinder Mr. Burke, if he thought this temper likely at one time or other to prevail in our country, from exposing to a multitude eager to game the false calculations of this lottery of fraud?

I allow, as I ought to do, for the effusions which come from a general zeal for liberty.  This is to be indulged, and even to be encouraged, as long as the question is general.  An orator, above all men, ought to be allowed a full and free use of the praise of liberty.  A commonplace in favor of slavery and tyranny, delivered to a popular assembly, would indeed be a bold defiance to all the principles of rhetoric.  But in a question whether any particular Constitution is or is not a plan of rational liberty, this kind of rhetorical flourish in favor of freedom in general is surely a little out of its place.  It is virtually a begging of the question.  It is a song of triumph before the battle.

“But Mr. Fox does not make the panegyric of the new Constitution; it is the destruction only of the absolute monarchy he commends.”  When that nameless thing which has been lately set up in France was described as “the most stupendous and glorious edifice of liberty which had been erected on the foundation of human integrity in any time or country,” it might at first have led the hearer into an opinion that the construction of the new fabric was an object of admiration, as well as the demolition of the old.  Mr. Fox, however, has explained himself; and it would be too like that captious and cavilling spirit which I so perfectly detest, if I were to pin down the language of an eloquent and ardent mind to the punctilious exactness of a pleader.  Then Mr. Fox did not mean to applaud that monstrous thing which, by the courtesy of France, they call a Constitution.  I easily believe it.  Far from meriting the praises