Their
ostentatious preamble to certain late edicts demonstrates (if their
actions had not been sufficiently explanatory of their cast of mind)
that they are deeply infected with the same distemper of dangerous,
because plausible, though trivial and shallow, speculation.
Ministers, turning their backs on the reputation which properly belongs
to them, aspire at the glory of being speculative writers. The duties of
these two situations are in general directly opposite to each other.
Speculators ought to be neutral. A minister cannot be so. He is to
support the interest of the public as connected with that of his master.
He is his master's trustee, advocate, attorney, and steward,--and he is
not to indulge in any speculation which contradicts that character, or
even detracts from its efficacy. Necker had an extreme thirst for this
sort of glory; so had others; and this pursuit of a misplaced and
misunderstood reputation was one of the causes of the ruin of these
ministers, and of their unhappy, master. The Prussian ministers in
foreign courts have (at least not long since) talked the most democratic
language with regard to Prance, and in the most unmanaged terms.
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