of the ministers of religion, and of the faithful adherents of a fallen monarch.  My heart sinks within me when I see it streaming with the blood of the monarch himself.  Merciful God! strike speedily, we beseech Thee, with deep contrition and sincere remorse, the obdurate hearts of the relentless perpetrators and projectors of these horrid deeds, lest they should suddenly sink into eternal and extreme perdition, loaded with an unutterable weight of unrepented and, except through the blood of Him whose religion they reject, inexpiable sin.

The monarch, you will tell me, was guilty of perfidy and perjury.  I know not that he was guilty of either; but admitting that he has been guilty of both, who, alas, of the sons of men is so confident in the strength of his own virtue, so assured of his own integrity and intrepidity of character, as to be certain that, under similar temptations, he would not have been guilty of similar offences?  Surely it would have been no diminution of the sternness of new republican virtue, no disgrace to the magnanimity of a great nation, if it had pardoned the perfidy which its own oppression had occasioned, if it had remitted the punishment of the perjury of the king to the tribunal of Him by whom kings reign and princes decree justice.

And are there any men in this kingdom, except such as find their account in public confusion, who would hazard the introduction of such scenes of rapine, barbarity, and bloodshed, as have disgraced France and outraged humanity, for the sake of obtaining—­what?—­Liberty and Equality.  I suspect that the meaning of these terms is not clearly and generally understood:  it may be of use to explain them.

The liberty of a man in a state of nature consists in his being subject to no law but the law of nature; and the liberty of a man in a state of society consists in his being subject to no law but to the law enacted by the general will of the society to which he belongs.  And to what other law is any man in Great Britain subject?  The king, we are all justly persuaded, has not the inclination, and we all know that if he had the inclination, he has not the power, to substitute his will in the place of the law.  The House of Lords has no such power; the House of Commons has no such power; the Church has no such power; the rich men of the country have no such power.  The poorest man amongst us, the beggar at our door, is governed—­not by the uncertain, passionate, arbitrary will of an individual—­not by the selfish insolence of an aristocratic faction—­not by the madness of democratic violence—­but by the fixed, impartial, deliberate voice of law, enacted by the general suffrage of a free people.  Is your property injured?  Law, indeed, does not give you property; but it ascertains it.  Property is acquired by industry and probity; by the exercise of talents and ingenuity; and the possession of it is secured by the laws of the community.  Against whom think