Some of it is available online. Snarky, but often brilliant, and relevant to today's Middle East problems. My favorite, from his copy of Mary Wollstonecraft's book on the French Revolution:
How was it possible to bring twenty-five millions of Frenchmen Who had never known or thought of any law but the King's will to rally round any free constitution at all? A constitution is a standard, a pillar, and a bond when it is understood, approved, and beloved. But without this intelligence and attachment, it might as well be a kite or balloon, flying in the air.
These machines called constitutions are not to be taken to pieces and cleaned or mended so easily as a watch.
Did this lady think three months time enough to form a free constitution for twenty five millions of Frenchmen? 300 years would be well spent in procuring so great a blessing, but I doubt whether it will be accomplished in 3,000. Not one of the projects of the Sage of La Mancha was more absurd, ridiculous, or delirious than this of a revolution in France per saltum from a monarchy to a democracy. I thought so in 1785 when it was first talked of. I thought so in all the intermediate time, and I think so in 1812....
How was liberty secured by the Declaration of Rights? No more than their innocence and obedience by the Decalogue, i.e. the Ten Commandments. Besides there were not two men in fifty who believed in those rights. There were in France twenty times as many who believed in the King's divine right....
I would rather call the natural, civil, and political rights of man the foundations than the pillars. If they are pillars, they must stand upon a firm foundation. Is a declaration then a foundation? No more than a heap of sand or a pool of water. They stand as firmly without a declaration as with, if nothing more is done. Laws and guardians of laws must be made and guardians to watch one another.
A declaration of these rights will have no more influence than the Ten Commandments without laws executed.
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