indigent part of the society. The ruling Jacobins insist upon it, that
even the wars which they carry on with so much obstinacy against all
nations are made to prevent the poor from any longer being the
instruments and victims of kings, nobles, and the aristocracy of
burghers and rich men. They pretend that the destruction of kings,
nobles, and the aristocracy of burghers and rich men is the only means
of establishing an universal and perpetual peace. This is the great
drift of all their writings, from the time of the meeting of the states
of France, in 1789, to the publication of the last Morning Chronicle.
They insist that even the war which with so much boldness they have
declared against all nations is to prevent the poor from becoming the
instruments and victims of these persons and descriptions. It is but too
easy, if you once teach poor laborers and mechanics to defy their
prejudices, and, as this has been done with an industry scarcely
credible, to substitute the principles of fraternity in the room of that
salutary prejudice called our country,--it is, I say, but too easy to
persuade them, agreeably to what Mr. Fox hints in his public letter,
that this war is, and that the other wars have been, the wars of kings;
it is easy to persuade them that the terrors even of a foreign conquest
are not terrors for _them_; it is easy to persuade them, that, for their
part, _they_ have nothing to lose,--and that their condition is not
likely to be altered for the worse, whatever party may happen to prevail
in the war. Under any circumstances this doctrine is highly dangerous,
as it tends to make separate parties of the higher and lower orders, and
to put their interests on a different bottom. But if the enemy you have
to deal with should appear, as France now appears, under the very name
and title of the deliverer of the poor and the chastiser of the rich,
the former class would readily become not an indifferent spectator of
the war, but would be ready to enlist in the faction of the
enemy,--which they would consider, though under a foreign name, to be