As far as any practical experiment had been tried, the result was not discouraging. Of two revolutions that had taken place, one, that of America, had succeeded, and a more free and equal government had been established without tumult, civil discord, animosity or bloodshed, except what had arisen from the interference of the mother country. The other Revolution, that of France, was but begun: but it had at this time displayed none of those alarming features which it afterwards discovered. Whether the difference of the result in the latter case was owing to the external situation of the country, which exposed it to the inroads of a band of despots; or to the manners of the people, which had been depraved by a long course of slavery, which while it made freedom the more desirable, rendered them the more incapable of it; whether, I say, the French Revolution might not have succeeded, had not every means been employed to destroy and crush the good that might have been expected from it, is a question not to be discussed here: but at the period of which I am speaking, I believe I may say there were few real friends of liberty who did not augur well of it. A tyranny, which all our most esteemed writers had been endeavouring for the last hundred years to render odious and contemptible to the English people, had been overthrown; and this was hailed by all those who had been taught to value the principles of liberty, or the welfare of nations, as an event auspicious to France and to the world. The emancipation of thirty millions of people (so I remember it was considered at the time) was a change for the better, as great as it was unexpected: the pillars of oppression and tyranny seemed to have been overthrown: man was about to shake off the fetters which had bound him in wretchedness and ignorance; and the blessings that were yet in store for him were unforeseen and incalculable. Hope smiled upon him, and pointed to futurity.