Coleridge has observed, in excess of principle; the other in the utter
defect of all moral principle whatever; and the progress of each being
answerable to its origin! Yet so it is. And not a memoir-writer of that
age is reprinted in this, but we have a preface from some red-hot Anti-
jacobin warning us with much vapid common-place from the mischiefs and
eventual anarchy of too rash a spirit of reform as displayed in the French
revolution--_not_ by the example of that French revolution, but by that of
our own in the age of Charles I. The following passage from the
Introduction to Sir William Waller's Vindication published in 1793, may
serve as a fair instance: 'He' (Sir W. Waller) 'was, indeed, at length
sensible of the misery which he had contributed to bring on his country;'
(by the way, it is a suspicious circumstance--that Sir William [3] first
became sensible that his country was miserable, when he became sensible
that he himself was not likely to be again employed; and became fully
convinced of it, when his party lost their ascendancy:) 'he was convinced,
by fatal experience, that anarchy was a bad step towards a perfect
government; that the subversion of every establishment was no safe
foundation for a permanent and regular constitution: he found that
pretences of reform were held up by the designing to dazzle the eyes of
the unwary, &c.; he found in short that reformation, by popular
insurrection, must end in the destruction and cannot tend to the formation
of a regular Government.
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