When I consider the face of the kingdom of France; the multitude
and opulence of her cities; the useful magnificence of her spacious
high-roads and bridges; the opportunity of her artificial canals and
navigations, opening the conveniences of maritime communication through
a solid continent of so immense an extent; when I turn my eyes to the
stupendous works of her ports and harbours, and to her whole naval
apparatus, whether for war or trade; when I bring before my view the
number of her fortifications, constructed with so bold and masterly a
skill, and made and maintained at so prodigious a charge, presenting
an armed front and impenetrable barrier to her enemies upon every side;
when I recollect how very small a part of that extensive region is
without cultivation, and to what complete perfection the culture of many
of the best productions of the earth have been brought in France; when
I reflect on the excellence of her manufactures and fabrics, second to
none but ours, and in some particulars not second; when I contemplate
the grand foundations of charity, public and private; when I survey the
state of all the arts that beautify and polish life; when I reckon the
men she has bred for extending her fame in war, her able statesmen, the
multitude of her profound lawyers and theologians, her philosophers,
her critics, her historians and antiquaries, her poets and her orators,
sacred and profane; I behold in all this something which awes and
commands the imagination, which checks the mind on the brink of
precipitate and indiscriminate censure, and which demands that we should
very seriously examine, what and how great are the latent vices that
could authorize us at once to level so specious a fabric with the
ground. I do not recognise in this view of things, the despotism of
Turkey. Nor do I discern the character of a government that has been,
on the whole, so oppressive, or so corrupt, or so negligent, as to be
utterly UNFIT FOR ALL REFORMATION. I must think such a government well
deserved to have its excellences heightened, its faults corrected, and
its capacities improved into a British constitution.