its theory; and it presents the singular phenomenon of a nation, the individuals of which are as faithful to their private engagements and duties, as honorable, as worthy, as those of any nation on earth, and whose government is yet the most unprincipled at this day known.  In an absolute government there can be no such equiponderant parties.  The despot is the government.  His power, suppressing all opposition, maintains his ministers firm in their places.  What he has contracted, therefore, through them, he has the power to observe with good faith; and he identifies his own honor and faith with that of his nation.

When I observed, however, that the King of England was a cipher, I did not mean to confine the observation to the mere individual now on that throne.  The practice of Kings marrying only into the families of Kings, has been that of Europe for some centuries.  Now, take any race of animals, confine them in idleness and inaction, whether in a sty, a stable, or a state-room, pamper them with high diet, gratify all their sexual appetites, immerse them in sensualities, nourish their passions, let every thing bend before them, and banish whatever might lead them to think, and in a few generations they become all body, and no mind:  and this, too, by a law of nature, by that very law by which we are in the constant practice of changing the characters and propensities of the animals we raise for our own purposes.  Such is the regimen in raising Kings, and in this way they have gone on for centuries.  While in Europe, I often amused myself with contemplating the characters of the then reigning sovereigns of Europe.  Louis the XVI. was a fool, of my own knowledge, and in despite of the answers made for him at his trial.  The King of Spain was a fool, and of Naples the same.  They passed their lives in hunting, and despatched two couriers a week, one thousand miles, to let each other know what game they had killed the preceding days.  The King of Sardinia was a fool.  All these were Bourbons.  The Queen of Portugal, a Braganza, was an idiot by nature.  And so was the King of Denmark.  Their sons, as regents, exercised the powers of government.  The King of Prussia, successor to the great Frederick, was a mere hog in body as well as in mind.  Gustavus of Sweden, and Joseph of Austria, were really crazy, and George of England you know was in a straight waistcoat.  There remained, then, none but old Catherine, who had been too lately picked up to have lost her common sense.  In this state Bonaparte found Europe; and it was this state of its rulers which lost it with scarce a struggle.  These animals had become without mind and powerless; and so will every hereditary monarch be after a few generations.  Alexander, the grandson of Catherine, is as yet an exception.  He is able to hold his own.  But he is only of the third generation.  His race is not yet worn out.  And so endeth the book of Kings, from all of whom the Lord deliver us and have you, my friend, and all such good men and true, in his holy keeping.