This passage is a singular proof of that fatality by which the advocates of error furnish weapons for their own destruction:  while it is merely assertion in respect to a justification of your aversion to Republicanism, a strong argument may be drawn from it in its favour.  Mr. Burke, in a philosophic lamentation over the extinction of chivalry, told us that in those times vice lost half its evil by losing all its grossness.  Infatuated moralist!  Your Lordship excites compassion as labouring under the same delusion.  Slavery is a bitter and a poisonous draught.  We have but one consolation under it, that a Nation may dash the cup to the ground when she pleases.  Do not imagine that by taking from its bitterness you weaken its deadly quality; no, by rendering it more palatable you contribute to its power of destruction.  We submit without repining to the chastisements of Providence, aware that we are creatures, that opposition is vain and remonstrance impossible.  But when redress is in our own power and resistance is rational, we suffer with the same humility from beings like ourselves, because we are taught from infancy that we were born in a state of inferiority to our oppressors, that they were sent into the world to scourge, and we to be scourged.  Accordingly we see the bulk of mankind, actuated by these fatal prejudices, even more ready to lay themselves under the feet of the great than the great are to trample upon them.  Now taking for granted, that in Republics men live under the tyranny of what you call their equals, the circumstance of this being the most odious of all tyrannies is what a Republican would boast of; as soon as tyranny becomes odious, the principal step is made towards its destruction.  Reflecting on the degraded state of the mass of mankind, a philosopher will lament that oppression is not odious to them, that the iron, while it eats the soul, is not felt to enter into it.  ’Tout homme ne dans l’esclavage nait pour l’esclavage, rien n’est plus certain; les esclaves perdent tout dans leurs fers, jusqu’au desir d’en sortir; ils aiment leur servitude, comme les compagnons d’Ulysse aimaient leur abrutissement.’

I return to the quotation in which you reprobate Republicanism.  Relying upon the temper of the times, you have surely thought little argument necessary to content what few will be hardy enough to support; the strongest of auxiliaries, imprisonment and the pillory, has left your arm little to perform.  But the happiness of mankind is so closely connected with this subject, that I cannot suffer such considerations to deter me from throwing out a few hints, which may lead to a conclusion that a Republic legitimately constructed contains less of an oppressive principle than any other form of government.