the universe; but, unluckily, irritable philosophy, the most irritable of all things, was pat into a passion, and provoked into ambition abroad and tyranny at home.  They find all this very natural and very justifiable.  They choose to forget that other nations, struggling for freedom, have been attacked by their neighbors, or that their neighbors have otherwise interfered in their affairs.  Often have neighbors interfered in favor of princes against their rebellious subjects, and often in favor of subjects against their prince.  Such cases fill half the pages of history; yet never were they used as an apology, much less as a justification, for atrocious cruelty in princes, or for general massacre and confiscation on the part of revolted subjects,—­never as a politic cause for suffering any such powers to aggrandize themselves without limit and without measure.  A thousand times have we seen it asserted in public prints and pamphlets, that, if the nobility and priesthood of France had stayed at home, their property never would have been confiscated.  One would think that none of the clergy had been robbed previous to their deportation, or that their deportation had, on their part, been a voluntary act.  One would think that the nobility and gentry, and merchants and bankers, who stayed at home, had enjoyed their property in security and repose.  The assertors of these positions well know that the lot of thousands who remained at home was far more terrible, that the most cruel imprisonment was only a harbinger of a cruel and ignominious death, and that in this mother country of freedom there were no less than three hundred thousand at one time in prison.  I go no further.  I instance only these representations of the party, as staring indications of partiality to that sect to whose dominion they would have left this country nothing to oppose but her own naked force, and consequently subjected us, on every reverse of fortune, to the imminent danger of falling under those very evils, in that very system, which are attributed, not to its own nature, but to the perverseness of others.  There is nothing in the world so difficult as to put men in a state of judicial neutrality.  A leaning there must ever be, and it is of the first importance to any nation to observe to what side that leaning inclines,—­whether to our own community, or to one with which it is in a state of hostility.

Men are rarely without some sympathy in the sufferings of others; but in the immense and diversified mass of human misery, which may be pitied, but cannot be relieved, in the gross, the mind must make a choice.  Our sympathy is always more forcibly attracted towards the misfortunes of certain persons, and in certain descriptions:  and this sympathetic attraction discovers, beyond a possibility of mistake, our mental affinities and elective affections.  It is a much surer proof than the strongest declaration of a real connection and of an overruling bias in the mind.