text:  Whether the military and bureaucratic despotism of Germany may not after all be a better system of government on the whole than our strange system of local and corporate influence of all sorts of fermenting acids and alkalis here is a question which some persons of a speculative disposition may consider open enough; but that the supreme power having once pledged itself to give a people a free constitution and freedom of the press should act with honour and do what was promised seems (if there be any such thing as public morals at all ) under any form of government nothing more than what common policy as well as propriety would dictate