The intrinsic superiority of virtue and liberty, even for politic ends, is not affected by it.

If the tide of success were, by any effort, fairly turned;--not only a general desertion, as we have the best reason to believe, would follow among the troops of the enslaved nations; but a moral change would also take place in the minds of the native French soldiery.

Occasion would be given for the discontented to break out; and, above all, for the triumph of human nature.

It would _then_ be seen whether men fighting in a bad cause,--men without magnanimity, honour, or justice,--could recover; and stand up against champions who by these virtues were carried forward in good fortune, as by these virtues in adversity they had been sustained.
As long as guilty actions thrive, guilt is strong: it has a giddiness and transport of its own; a hardihood not without superstition, as if Providence were a party to its success.

But there is no independent spring at the heart of the machine which can be relied upon for a support of these motions in a change of circumstances.