For many years it has been the perpetual theme of their
invectives. "Mockery, insult, usurpation," are amongst the best names
they bestow upon it. They damn it in the mass, by declaring "that it
does not arise out of the inherent rights of the people, as the National
Assembly does in France, and whose name designates its original."
Of the charters and corporations, to whose rights a few years ago these
gentlemen were so tremblingly alive, they say, "that, when the people of
England come to reflect upon them, they will, like France, annihilate
those badges of oppression, those traces of a conquered nation."
As to our monarchy, they had formerly been more tender of that branch of
the Constitution, and for a good reason. The laws had guarded against
all seditious attacks upon it with a greater degree of strictness and
severity. The tone of these gentlemen is totally altered since the
French Revolution. They now declaim as vehemently against the monarchy
as on former occasions they treacherously flattered and soothed it.
"When we survey the wretched condition of man under the monarchical and
hereditary systems of government, dragged from his home by one power, or
driven by another, and impoverished by taxes more than by enemies, it
becomes evident that those systems are bad, and that a general
revolution in the principle and construction of governments is
necessary.
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