Novelty is not the only source of zeal.  Why should not a Maccabaeus and his brethren arise to assert the honor of the ancient law and to defend the temple of their forefathers with as ardent a spirit as can inspire any innovator to destroy the monuments of the piety and the glory of ancient ages?  It is not a hazarded assertion, it is a great truth, that, when once things are gone out of their ordinary course, it is by acts out of the ordinary course they can alone be reestablished.  Republican spirit can only be combated by a spirit of the same nature,—­of the same nature, but informed with another principle, and pointing to another end.  I would persuade a resistance both to the corruption and to the reformation that prevails.  It will not be the weaker, but much the stronger, for combating both together.  A victory over real corruptions would enable us to baffle the spurious and pretended reformations.  I would not wish to excite, or even to tolerate, that kind of evil spirit which evokes the powers of hell to rectify the disorders of the earth.  No!  I would add my voice with better, and, I trust, more potent charms, to draw down justice and wisdom and fortitude from heaven, for the correction of human vice, and the recalling of human error from the devious ways into which it has been betrayed.  I would wish to call the impulses of individuals at once to the aid and to the control of authority.  By this, which I call the true republican spirit, paradoxical as it may appear, monarchies alone can be rescued from the imbecility of courts and the madness of the crowd.  This republican spirit would not suffer men in high place to bring ruin on their country and on themselves.  It would reform, not by destroying, but by saving, the great, the rich, and the powerful.  Such a republican spirit we perhaps fondly conceive to have animated the distinguished heroes and patriots of old, who knew no mode of policy but religion and virtue.  These they would have paramount to all constitutions; they would not suffer monarchs, or senates, or popular assemblies, under pretences of dignity or authority or freedom, to shake off those moral riders which reason has appointed to govern every sort of rude power.  These, in appearance loading them by their weight, do by that pressure augment their essential force.  The momentum is increased by the extraneous weight.  It is true in moral as it is in mechanical science.  It is true, not only in the draught, but in the race.  These riders of the great, in effect, hold the reins which guide them in their course, and wear the spur that stimulates them to the goals of honor and of safety.  The great must submit to the dominion of prudence and of virtue, or none will long submit to the dominion of the great. Dis te minorem quod geris, imperas.  This is the feudal tenure which they cannot alter.

Indeed, my dear Sir, things are in a bad state.  I do not deny a good share of diligence, a very great share of ability, and much public virtue to those who direct our affairs.  But they are incumbered, not aided, by their very instruments, and by all the apparatus of the state.  I think that our ministry (though there are things against them which neither you nor I can dissemble, and which grieve me to the heart) is by far the most honest and by far the wisest system of administration in Europe.  Their fall would be no trivial calamity.