The British state is, without question, that which pursues the greatest variety of ends, and is the least disposed to sacrifice any one of them to another or to the whole.  It aims at taking in the entire circle of human desires, and securing for them their fair enjoyment.  Our legislature has been ever closely connected, in its most efficient part, with individual feeling and individual interest.  Personal liberty, the most lively of these feelings and the most important of these interests, which in other European countries has rather arisen from the system of manners and the habitudes of life than from the laws of the state, (in which it flourished more from neglect than attention,) in England has been a direct object of government.

On this principle, England would be the weakest power in the whole system.  Fortunately, however, the great riches of this kingdom, arising from a variety of causes, and the disposition of the people, which is as great to spend as to accumulate, has easily afforded a disposable surplus that gives a mighty momentum to the state.  This difficulty, with these advantages to overcome it, has called forth the talents of the English financiers, who, by the surplus of industry poured out by prodigality, have outdone everything which has been accomplished in other nations.  The present minister has outdone his predecessors, and, as a minister of revenue, is far above my power of praise.  But still there are cases in which England feels more than several others (though they all feel) the perplexity of an immense body of balanced advantages and of individual demands, and of some irregularity in the whole mass.

France differs essentially from all those governments which are formed without system, which exist by habit, and which are confused with the multitude and with the complexity of their pursuits.  What now stands as government in France is struck out at a heat.  The design is wicked, immoral, impious, oppressive:  but it is spirited and daring; it is systematic; it is simple in its principle; it has unity and consistency in perfection.  In that country, entirely to cut off a branch of commerce, to extinguish a manufacture, to destroy the circulation of money, to violate credit, to suspend the course of agriculture, even to burn a city or to lay waste a province of their own, does not cost them a moment’s anxiety.  To them the will, the wish, the want, the liberty, the toil, the blood of individuals, is as nothing.  Individuality is left out of their scheme of government.  The state is all in all.  Everything is referred to the production of force; afterwards, everything is trusted to the use of it.  It is military in its principle, in its maxims, in its spirit, and in all its movements.  The state has dominion and conquest for its sole objects,—­dominion over minds by proselytism, over bodies by arms.