What there is in this principle of weak, perilous, and self-destructive--I may find a grateful employment in endeavouring to shew upon some future occasion.

But it is a duty which we owe to the present moment to proclaim--in vindication of the dignity of human nature, and for an admonition to men of prostrate spirit--that the dominion, which this Enemy of mankind holds, has neither been acquired nor is sustained by endowments of intellect which are rarely bestowed, or by uncommon accumulations of knowledge; but that it has risen from circumstances over which he had no influence; circumstances which, with the power they conferred, have stimulated passions whose natural food hath been and is ignorance; from the barbarian impotence and insolence of a mind--originally of ordinary constitution--lagging, in moral sentiment and knowledge, three hundred years behind the age in which it acts.

In such manner did the power originate; and, by the forces which I have described, is it maintained.

This should be declared: and it should be added--that the crimes of Buonaparte are more to be abhorred than those of other denaturalized creatures whose actions are painted in History; because the Author of those crimes is guilty with less temptation, and sins in the presence of a clearer light.
No doubt in the command of almost the whole military force of Europe (the subject which called upon me to make these distinctions) he has, _at this moment_, a third source of power which may be added to these two.

He himself rates this last so high--either is, or affects to be, so persuaded of its pre-eminence--that he boldly announces to the world that it is madness, and even impiety, to resist him.