I would wish to call
the impulses of individuals at once to the aid and to the control of
authority. By this, which I call the true republican spirit,
paradoxical as it may appear, monarchies alone can be rescued from
the imbecility of courts and the madness of the crowd. This
republican spirit would not suffer men in high place to bring ruin on
their country and on themselves. It would reform, not by destroying,
but by saving, the great, the rich, and the powerful. Such a
republican spirit, we perhaps fondly conceive to have animated the
distinguished heroes and patriots of old, who knew no mode of policy
but religion and virtue. These they would have paramount to all
constitutions; they would not suffer monarchs, or senates, or popular
assemblies, under pretences of dignity, or authority, or freedom, to
shake off those moral riders which reason has appointed to govern
every sort of rude power. These, in appearance loading them by their
weight, do by that pressure augment their essential force. The
momentum is increased by the extraneous weight. It is true in moral,
as it is in mechanical science. It is true, not only in the draught,
but in the race. These riders of the great, in effect, hold the reins
which guide them in their course, and wear the spur that stimulates
them to the goals of honour and of safety.
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