Fox as arguing in a
manner which implied that the British Constitution could not be
defended, but by abusing all republics ancient and modern. He said
nothing to give the least ground for such a censure. He never abused all
republics. He has never professed himself a friend or an enemy to
republics or to monarchies in the abstract. He thought that the
circumstances and habits of every country, which it is always perilous
and productive of the greatest calamities to force, are to decide upon
the form of its government. There is nothing in his nature, his temper,
or his faculties which should make him an enemy to any republic, modern
or ancient. Far from it. He has studied the form and spirit of republics
very early in life; he has studied them with great attention, and with a
mind undisturbed by affection or prejudice. He is, indeed, convinced
that the science of government would be poorly cultivated without that
study. But the result in his mind from that investigation has been and
is, that neither England nor France, without infinite detriment to them,
as well in the event as in the experiment, could be brought into a
republican form; but that everything republican which can be introduced
with safety into either of them must be built upon a monarchy,--built
upon a real, not a nominal monarchy, _as its essential basis_; that all
such institutions, whether aristocratic or democratic, must originate
from their crown, and in all their proceedings must refer to it; that by
the energy of that mainspring alone those republican parts must be set
in action, and from thence must derive their whole legal effect, (as
amongst us they actually do,) or the whole will fall into confusion.
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