Hæc finis Priami fatorum; hic exitus illum Sorte tulit, Trojam incensam et prolapsa videntem Pergama, tot quondam populis terrisque superbum Regnatorem Asiæ. Jacet ingens littore truncus, Avolsumque humeris caput, et sine nomine corpus. _At me_ tum primum sævus circumstetit horror. Obstupui: _subiit chari genitoris imago_. [76] They are Sworn to obey the king, the nation, and the law. REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE, THE PROCEEDINGS IN CERTAIN SOCIETIES IN LONDON RELATIVE TO THAT EVENT: IN A LETTER INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN SENT TO A GENTLEMAN IN PARIS. 1790. It may not be unnecessary to inform the reader that the following Reflections had their origin in a correspondence between the author and a very young gentleman at Paris, who did him the honor of desiring his opinion upon the important transactions which then, and ever since have, so much occupied the attention of all men. An answer was written some time in the month of October, 1789; but it was kept back upon prudential considerations. That letter is alluded to in the beginning of the following sheets. It has been since forwarded to the person to whom it was addressed. The reasons for the delay in sending it were assigned in a short letter to the same gentleman. This produced on his part a new and pressing application for the author's sentiments. The author began a second and more full discussion on the subject. This he had some thoughts of publishing early in the last spring; but the matter gaining upon him, he found that what he had undertaken not only far exceeded the measure of a letter, but that its importance required rather a more detailed consideration than at that time he had any leisure to bestow upon it. However, having thrown down his first thoughts in the form of a letter, and, indeed, when he sat down to write, having intended it for a private letter, he found it difficult to change the form of address, when his sentiments had grown into a greater extent and had received another direction. A different plan, he is sensible, might be more favorable to a commodious division and distribution of his matter. REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. Dear Sir,--You are pleased to call again, and with some earnestness, for my thoughts on the late proceedings in France. I will not give you reason to imagine that I think my sentiments of such value as to wish myself to be solicited about them. They are of too little consequence to be very anxiously either communicated or withheld. It was from attention to you, and to you only, that I hesitated at the time when you first desired to receive them. In the first letter I had the honor to write to you, and which at length I send, I wrote neither for nor from any description of men; nor shall I in this. My errors, if any, are my own. My reputation alone is to answer for them.