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¬pence! as they did, without the commanding ¬talents of an extraordinary young man, who vet miidit not have flourished at so early an age, but from being the son of another man who had justly acquired a great reputation in our country by superior eloquence, always ex- erted in the cause of freedom ; nor could his descendant, eloquent as he was, have risen to so premature an eminence but by treading in his father's steps, pleading the cause of public reformation, which at that time was highly po- pular, and of which he too took the lead in his very earliest youth : neither could even this illustrious course have produced the events which followed, but on the contrary might have averted them, if he had not turned short round on a sudden and not only renounced his former opinions, but sounded the alarm when others persevered in the sentiments they had imbibed from his own lips. — But history is a libel when it departs in any thing from the truth. — It must be admitted that the influence of the Capetian revolution had given an in- flamed ¬
