But it seems there is still another lurking hope, akin to that which duped us so egregiously before, when our delightful basis was accepted: we still flatter ourselves that the public voice of France will compel this Directory to more moderation. Whence does this hope arise? What public voice is there in France? There are, indeed, some writers, who, since this monster of a Directory has obtained a great, regular, military force to guard them, are indulged in a sufficient liberty of writing; and some of them write well, undoubtedly. But the world knows that in France there is no public,--that the country is composed but of two descriptions, audacious tyrants and trembling slaves. The contests between the tyrants is the only vital principle that can be discerned in France. The only thing which there appears like spirit is amongst their late associates, and fastest friends of the Directory,--the more furious and untamable part of the Jacobins. This discontented member of the faction does almost balance the reigning divisions, and it threatens every moment to predominate. For the present, however, the dread of their fury forms some sort of security to their fellows, who now exercise a more regular and therefore a somewhat less ferocious tyranny. Most of the slaves choose a quiet, however reluctant, submission to those who are somewhat satiated with blood, and who, like wolves, are a little more tame from being a little less hungry, in preference to an irruption of the famished devourers who are prowling and howling about the fold. This circumstance assures some degree of permanence to the power of those whom we know to be permanently our rancorous and implacable enemies. But to those very enemies who have sworn our destruction we have ourselves given a further and far better security, by rendering the cause of the royalists desperate. Those brave and virtuous, but unfortunate adherents to the ancient Constitution of their country, after the miserable slaughters which have been made in that body, after all their losses by emigration, are still numerous, but unable to exert themselves against the force of the usurpation evidently countenanced and upheld by those very princes who had called them to arm for the support of the legal monarchy. Where, then, after chasing these fleeting hopes of ours from point to point of the political horizon, are they at last really found? Not where, under Providence, the hopes of Englishmen used to be placed, in our own courage and in our own virtues, but in the moderation and virtue of the most atrocious monsters that have ever disgraced and plagued mankind.