Page:A Tour Through the Batavian Republic.djvu/403

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APPENDIX
391

under the eye, and with the plenary approbation of the preceding government."

"If we reject these principles, there is no longer security for any human action; and let it not be dissembled, that he who broaches a contrary doctrine, proclaims in effect the right of the strongest, and consequently the favourite right of tyrants."

"It is a great mistake to compare the circumstances of France in the course of her revovolution with ours. It was not in France a spirit of revenge for the crimes committed under the old government, which occasioned the repeated scenes of terror that were exhibited but the violent opposition to the revolution itself, which occasioned the necessity of a proportionable vigilance to crush all conspiracies. But what opposition have we to expect?"

"All political dissensions, all the revolutions that have taken place in this state since its origin, vanish before so interesting a revolution as the present. They were only disputes between party and party; struggles for power, between unprincipled men, in which the people were constantly duped. To-day it is the cause of the people itself in which we labour, in which you all ought to labour. To-day it is not a faction, but the nation herself, who is victorious.