But granting the supposition to be true, the patriotic general, who should open to himself a glorious passage through the heart of his country, and attempt to make it the vassal of England, under the monstrous pretence of allegiance to his Sovereign, might perhaps meet the fate which Providence destined for the virtuous Moreau. Perhaps the French may think that as their affected loyalty could be only a cover for the most dastardly submission, so their hypocrisy and treachery to themselves might be justly retaliated upon them, by making the restoration of thrones a mask for the dismemberment of kingdoms. They may have acquired by experience some knowledge of that enlargement of view and boldness of nerve, which is inspired by the elevation of success. They may consider, that ‘when the wild and savage passions are set afloat, they are not so easily regulated’ according to the dictates of justice or generosity. Some of them may even go so far as to think that all the respect of the Emperor of Russia for the talents and virtues of Moreau might be insufficient to deter him from memorizing another Warsaw at Paris! Of this we are tolerably certain, that there are not wanting staunch friends of order and civilization in this country who would advise and applaud such a catastrophe ‘to the very echo,’ as a masterpiece of political justice, chaunt _Te Deum_ over the ruins, and very seriously invite the good people of France to join in the chorus! But we are not ‘the echo that shall applaud again.’ We shall not hail such a catastrophe, nor such a triumph. For out of the desolation would arise a poisoned stench that would choak almost the breath of life, and one low, creeping fog of universal despotism, that would confound the Eastern and the Western world together _in darkness that might be felt_. We do not wish for this final consummation, because we do not wish the pulse of liberty to be quite destroyed, or that the mass of our common nature should become a lifeless corpse, unable to rouse itself against never-ending wrongs, or that the last spark of generous enthusiasm should be extinguished in that moral atheism, which defaces and mangles the image of God in man. We do not wish that liberty should ever have a deer’s heart given her, to live in constant fear of the fatal, inevitable venal pack behind her; but that she may still have the heart of a lioness, whose mighty roar keeps the hunters at bay, and whose whelps revenge their parent’s death!