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the same chapter, where he is defining the difference between Law and some other
such private executions can be attributed to nothing but a Diabolical Depravity in the minds of those who order them.
It also appears that one use of a standing Army, in that unhappy Kingdom, is to guard the avenues of streets to prevent the people from discovering the actors as well sufferers at such horrid masked tragedies as I have mentioned; and therefore I cannot help remarking the extreme absurdity of that (otherwise) sensible and shrewd people in boasting of their national military Honour, when even large bodies of their best-disciplined troops, who are Frenchmen also by birth, and have the means in their own hands to render justice and restore liberty to their much - injured countrymen, can yet tamely yield themselves so far to the absolute Will of any man or men on earth, as to become silent accomplices (like the detestable Turkish Mutes of old) to the horrid crime of wilful Murder, (for such are the secret executions of France,) and professed Tools for perpetrating the most abandoned wickedness! To such a disgraceful and slavish pitch of passive obedience is that once spirited nation now reduced, that they seem to give up all pretensions to that fundamental Right of human Nature, which alone distinguishes men from brutes! I mean the indispensable Right of judging for themselves and of yielding obedience to the impulse of Conscience, according to that natural knowledge of good and evil which is implanted in all men, (French soldiers as well as others,) and of which they must one day render a strict account in a separate disbanded state, as individuals, (which I have before remarked,) stripped of their arms and regimentals!
Shall we, then, adopt the Laws of France? “quod principi placuit?” &c. It is not impossible that such a measure may, sometime or other, be proposed by an inconsiderate Minister, and that a Parliament (through
