In a letter to Washington he drew a picture of the chaos as it really was, and at the same time, with wonderful clear-sightedness, showed the great good which the change was eventually to bring to the mass of the people. Remembering how bitter Morris's feelings were against the revolutionists, it is extraordinary that they did not blind him to the good that would in the long run result from their movement. Not another statesman would have been able to set forth so clearly and temperately the benefits that would finally come from the convulsions he saw around him, although he rightly believed that these benefits would be even greater could the hideous excesses of the revolutionists be forthwith stopped and punished.
His letter runs: "This unhappy country, bewildered in the pursuit of metaphysical whimsies, presents to our moral view a mighty ruin.... The sovereign, humbled to the level of a beggar without pity, without resources, without authority, without a friend. The Assembly, at once a master and a slave, new in power, wild in theory, raw in practice. It engrosses all functions, though incapable of exercising any, and has taken from this fierce, ferocious people every restraint of religion and of respect." Where this would all end, or what sum of misery would be necessary to change the popular will and awaken the popular heart, he could not say. A glorious opportunity had been lost, and for the time being the Revolution had failed. Yet, he went on to say, in the consequences flowing from it he was confident he could see the foundation of future prosperity. For among these consequences were,--1. The abolition of the different rights and privileges which had formerly kept the various provinces asunder; 2. The abolition of feudal tyranny, by which the tenure of real property would be simplified, and the rent no longer be dependent upon idle vanity, capricious taste, or sullen pride; 3. The throwing into the circle of industry those vast possessions formerly held by the clergy in mortmain, wealth conferred upon them as wages for their idleness; 4. The destruction of the system of venal jurisprudence which had established the pride and privileges of the few on the misery and degradation of the general mass; 5. Above all, the establishment of the principles of true liberty, which would remain as solid facts after the superstructure of metaphysical froth and vapor should have been blown away. Finally, "from the chaos of opinion and the conflict of its jarring elements a new order will at length arise, which, though in some degree the child of chance, may not be less productive of human happiness than the forethought provisions of human speculation." Not one other contemporary statesman could have begun to give so just an estimate of the good the Revolution would accomplish; no other could have seen so deeply into its ultimate results, while also keenly conscious of the dreadful evil through which these results were being worked out.