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 ¬been Armata. — how differently would She have acted! — As nothing ought to have detached you from the forms and principles of your own government, it might have been incumbent at that period to watch over them with extraordi- nary caution ; but self-preservation, though it vindicates our securing our dwellings by any means from an approaching conflagration, can never justify the refusal of personal assistance to snatch the sufferers from the flames. — As to republican infection, even if Capet ia had then been a republic, you, surely, must be infected yourself with some strange delusion to apply it to such a subject. — The nations preparing to in- vade her whose governments had never been reformed, might, according to your new phra- seology, have dreaded such a contagion; but after what you yourself have within a moment related of Armata, what had she to fear from it? — nothing below is perfect — her almost divine institutions might have been thought capable of still higher improvements, but there was no food within her land for revolution. — Thus ¬when ¬