Let those who have the trust of political or of natural authority ever
keep watch against the desperate enterprises of innovation: let even
their benevolence be fortified and armed. They have before their eyes
the example of a monarch, insulted, degraded, confined, deposed; his
family dispersed, scattered, imprisoned; his wife insulted to his face
like the vilest of the sex, by the vilest of all populace; himself three
times dragged by these wretches in an infamous triumph; his children
torn from him, in violation of the first right of nature, and given
into the tuition of the most desperate and impious of the leaders of
desperate and impious clubs; his revenues dilapidated and plundered; his
magistrates murdered; his clergy proscribed, persecuted, famished; his
nobility degraded in their rank, undone in their fortunes, fugitives
in their persons; his armies corrupted and ruined; his whole people
impoverished, disunited, dissolved; whilst through the bars of his
prison, and amidst the bayonets of his keepers, he hears the tumult of
two conflicting factions, equally wicked and abandoned, who agree in
principles, in dispositions, and in objects, but who tear each other to
pieces about the most effectual means of obtaining their common end;
the one contending to preserve for a while his name, and his person, the
more easily to destroy the royal authority--the other clamouring to cut
off the name, the person, and the monarchy together, by one sacrilegious
execution. All this accumulation of calamity, the greatest that ever
fell upon one man, has fallen upon his head, because he had left his
virtues unguarded by caution; because he was not taught that, where
power is concerned, he who will confer benefits must take security
against ingratitude.