My advice upon
this occasion was farther influenced by another consideration. Having
traced, with minute attention, the progress of the revolution, and the
conduct of its advocates, I had remarked the extreme affiduity employed
(as well by translations of the most violent productions of the Gallic
press, as by original compositions,) to introduce and propagate, in
foreign countries, those pernicious principles which have already sapped
the foundation of social order, destroyed the happiness of millions, and
spread desolation and ruin over the finest country in Europe. I had
particularly observed the incredible efforts exerted in England, and, I
am sorry to say, with too much success, for the base purpose of giving a
false colour to every action of the persons exercising the powers of
government in France; and I had marked, with indignation, the atrocious
attempt to strip vice of its deformity, to dress crime in the garb of
virtue, to decorate slavery with the symbols of freedom, and give to
folly the attributes of wisdom. I had seen, with extreme concern, men,
whom the lenity, mistaken lenity, I must call it, of our government had
rescued from punishment, if not from ruin, busily engaged in this
scandalous traffic, and, availing themselves of their extensive
connections to diffuse, by an infinite variety of channels, the poison of
democracy over their native land. In short, I had seen the British
press, the grand palladium of British liberty, devoted to the cause of
Gallic licentiousness, that mortal enemy of all freedom, and even the
pure stream of British criticism diverted from its natural course, and
polluted by the pestilential vapours of Gallic republicanism.
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