The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Advertisement to the London Edition, By the Editor.
• The Miscellaneous Works of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh
• On the Philosophical Genius of Lord Bacon and Mr. Locke. *
• A Discourse On the Law of Nature and Nations. *
• Life of Sir Thomas More.
• Appendix.
• A Refutation of the Claim On Behalf of King Charles I. To the Authorship of ΤΗΕ ΕἸΚῺΝ ΒΑΣΙΛΙΚῊ. *
• Dissertation On the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, Chiefly During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.
• Introduction.
• Section I.: Preliminary Observations.
• Section II.: Retrospect of Ancient Ethics.
• Section III.: Retrospect of Scholastic Ethics.
• Section IV.: Modern Ethics.
• Section V.: Controversies Concerning the Moral Faculties and the Social Affections.
• Section VI.: Foundations of a More Just Theory of Ethics.
• Section VII.: General Remarks.
• An Account of the Partition of Poland. *
• Sketch of the Administration and Fall of Struensee. *
• Statement of the Case of Donna Maria Da Gloria, As a Claimant to the Crown of Portugal. *
• Character of Charles, First Marquis Cornwallis. *
• Character of the Right Honourable George Canning. *
• Preface to a Reprint of the Edindurgh Review of 1755. *
• On the Writings of Machiavel. *
• Review of Mr. Godwin’s Lives of Edward and John Philips, &c. &c. *
• Review of Rogers’ Poems.
• Review of Madame De StaËl’s ‘de L’allemagne.’ *
• Review of the Causes of the Revolution of 1688.
• Chapter I.
• Chapter II.
• Chapter III.
• Chapter IV.
• Chapter V.
• Chapter VI.
• Chapter VII.
• Chapter VIII.
• Chapter IX.
• Memoir of the Affairs of Holland. Ad 1667—1686.
• Discourse Read At the Opening of the Literary Society of Bombay.
• Vindiciae Gallicae. a Defence of the French Revolution and Its English Admirers, Against the Accusations of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, Including Some Strictures On the Late Production of Mons. De Calonne.
• Introduction.
• Section I.: The General Expediency and Necessity of a Revolution In France.
• Section II.: Of the Composition and Character of the National Assembly.
• Section III.: Popular Excesses Which Attended the Revolution.
• Section IV.: New Constitution of France. *
• Section V.: English Admirers Vindicated.
• Section VI.: Speculations On the Probable Consequences of the French Revolution In Europe.
• Reasons Against the French War of 1793. *
• On the State of France In 1815. *
• On the Right of Parliamentary Suffrage. *
• A Speech In Defence of Jean Peltier, Accused of a Libel On the First Consul of France. Delivered In the Court of King’s Bench On the 21st of February, 1803. *
• A Charge, Delivered to the Grand Jury of the Island of Bombay, On the 20 Th of July, 1811.
• Speech On the Annexation of Genoa to the Kingdom of Sardinia. Delivered In the House of Commons On the 27 Th of April, 1815. *
• Speech On Moving For a Committee to Inquire Into the State of the Criminal Law, Delivered In the House of Commons, On the 2 D March, 1819. *
• Speech On Mr. Brougham’s Motion For an Address to the Crown, With Reference to the Trial and Condemnation of the Rev. John Smith, of Demerara, Delivered In the House of Commons, On the 1 St of June, 1824. *
• Speech On Presenting a Petition From the Merchants of London For the Recognition of the Independent States Established In the Countries of America Formerly Subject to Spain. Delivered In the House of Commons, On the 15th of June, 1824.
• Speech On the Civil Government of Canada. Delivered In the House of Commons On the 2 D of May, 1828.
• Speech On Moving For Papers Relative to the Affairs of Portugal. Delivered In the House of Commons, On the 1 St of June, 1829.
• Speech On the Second Reading of the Bill to Amend the Representation of the People of England and Wales. Delivered In the House of Commons, On the 4 Th of July, 1831.
• Appendix.

SECTION III.

Popular excesses which attended the Revolution.

That no great revolutions can be accomplished without excesses and miseries at which humanity revolts, is a truth which cannot be denied. This unfortunately is true in a peculiar manner of those Revolutions, which, like that of France, are strictly popular. Where the people are led by a faction, its leaders find no difficulty in the re-establishment of that order, which must be the object of their wishes, because it is the sole security of their power. But when a general movement of the popular mind levels a despotism with the ground, it is far less easy to restrain excess. There is more resentment to satiate and less authority to control. The passion which produced an effect so tremendous, is too violent to subside in a moment into serenity and submission.

The attempt to punish the spirit that actuates a people, if it were just, would be vain, and if it were possible, would be cruel. No remedies are therefore left but the progress of instruction,—the force of persuasion,—the mild authority of opinion: and these though infallible are of slow operation. In the interval which elapses before a calm succeeds the boisterous moments of a revolution, it is vain to expect that a people mured to barbarism by their oppressors, and which has ages of oppression to avenge, will be punctiliously generous in their triumph, nicely discriminative in their vengeance, of cautiously mild in their mode of retaliation. “They will break their chains on the heads of their oppressors.”*

Such was the state of France; and such were the obvious causes of scenes which the friends of freedom deplore as tarnishing her triumphs. They feel these evils as men of humanity: but they will not bestow this name on that womanish sensibility, towards which, even in the still intercourse of private life, love is not unmingled with indulgence. The only humanity which, in the great affairs of men, claims their respect, is that manly and expanded sentiment, which fixes its steady eye on the means of general happiness. The sensibility which shrinks at present evil, without extending its view to future good, is not a virtue; for it is not a quality beneficial to mankind. It would arrest the arm of a surgeon in amputating a gangrened limb, or the hand of a judge in signing the sentence of a parricide. I do not say (God forbid!) that a crime may be committed for the attainment even of a good end: such a doctrine would shake morals to their centre. The man who would erect freedom on the ruins of morals neither understands nor loves either. But the case of the French Revolutionists is totally different. Has any moralist ever pretended, that we are to decline the pursuit of a good which our duty prescribes to us, because we foresee that some partial and incidental evil would arise from it? But the number of the French leaders against whom such charges have been insinuated is so small, that supposing (what I do not believe) its truth, it only proves that some corrupt and ambitious men will mix with all great bodies. The question with respect to the rest, is reducible to this:—Whether they were to abstain from establishing a free government, because they foresaw that it could not be effected without confusion and temporary distress, or to be consoled for such calamities by the view of that happiness to which their labours were to give ultimate permanence and diffusion? A Minister is not conceived to be guilty of systematic immorality, because he balances the evils of the most just war with the advantages of that national security which is produced by the reputation of spirit and power:—neither ought the patriot, who balancing the evils of transient anarchy against the inestimable good of established liberty, finds the last preponderate in the scale.

Such, in fact, has ever been the reasoning of the leaders in those insurrections which have preserved the remnant of freedom that still exists among mankind. Holland, England, and America, must have reasoned thus; and the different portions of liberty which they enjoy, have been purchased by the endurance of far greater calamities than have been suffered by France. It is unnecessary to appear to the wars which for almost a century afflicted the Low Countries: but it may not be so to remind England of the price she paid for the establishment of the principles of the Revolution. The disputed succession which arose from that event, produced a destructive civil war in Ireland, two rebellions in Scotland, and the consequent slaughter and banishment of thousands of citizens, with the widest confiscation of their properties;—not to mention the continental connections and the foreign wars into which it plunged us, and the necessity thus imposed upon us of maintaining a standing army, and accumulating an enormous public debt.*

The freedom of America was purchased by calamities still more inevitable. The authors of it must have foreseen them; for they were not contingent or remote, but ready in a moment to burst on their heads. Their case is most similar to that of France, and best answers one of Mr. Burke’s most triumphant arguments. They enjoyed some liberty, which their oppressors did not attack; and the object for which they resisted, was conceded in the progress of the war: but like France, after the concessions of her King, they refused to acquiesce in an imperfect liberty, when a more perfect one was within their reach. They pursued what Mr. Burke,—whatever were then his sentiments,—on his present system, must reprobate as a speculative and ideal good. They sought their beloved independence through new calamities, and the prolonged horrors of civil war. Their resistance, from that moment, “was against concession; and their blows were aimed at a hand holding forth immunity and favours.” Events have indeed justified that noble resistance: America has emerged from her struggle into tranquillity and freedom,—into affluence and credit; and the authors of her Constitution have constructed a great permanent experimental answer to the sophisms and declamations of the detractors of liberty.

But what proportion did the price she paid for so great blessing bear to the transient misfortunes which have afflicted France? The extravagance of the comparison shocks every unprejudiced mind. No series of events in history have probably been more widely, malignantly, and systematically exaggerated than the French commotions. An enraged, numerous, and opulent body of exiles, dispersed over Europe, have possessed themselves of every venal press, and filled the public ear with a perpetual buz of the crimes and horrors that were acting in France. Instead of entering on a minute scrutiny, of which the importance would neither expiate the tediousness, nor reward the toil, let us content ourselves with opposing one general fact to this host of falsehoods:—no commercial house of importance has failed in France since the Revolution! How is this to be reconciled with the tales that have been circulated? As well might the transfers of the Royal Exchange be quietly executed in the ferocious anarchy of Gondar, and the peaceful opulence of Lombard-street flourish amidst hordes of Galla and Agows.* Commerce, which shrinks from the breath of civil confusion, has resisted this tempest; and a mighty Revolution has been accomplished with less commercial derangement than could arise from the bankruptcy of a second-rate house in London or Amsterdam. The manufacturers of Lyons, the merchants of Bourdeaux and Marseilles, are silent amidst the lamentations of the Abbé Maury, M. de Calonne, and Mr. Burke. Happy is that people whose commerce flourishes in ledgers, while it is bewailed in orations; and remains untouched in calculation, while it expires in the pictures of eloquence. This unquestionable fact is, on such a subject, worth a thousand arguments, and to any mind qualified to judge, must expose in their true light those execrable fabrications, which have sounded such a “senseless yell” through Europe.

But let us admit for a moment their truth, and take as a specimen of the evils of the Revolution, the number of lives which have been lost in its progress. That no possibility of cavil may remain, let us surpass in an exaggerated estimate the utmost audacity of falsehood: let us make a statement, from which the most frontless hireling of M. de Calonne would shrink. Let us for a moment suppose, that in the course of the Revolution twenty thousand lives have been lost. On the comparison of even this loss with parallel events in history, is there anything in it from which a manly and enlightened humanity will recoil? Compare it with the expenditure of blood by which in ordinary wars so many pernicious and ignoble objects are fought. Compare it with the blood spilt by England in the attempt to subjugate America: and if such be the guilt of the Revolutionists of France, for having, at the hazard of this evil, sought the establishment of freedom, what new name of obloquy shall be applied to the Minister of England, who with the certainty of a destruction so much greater, attempted the establishment of tyranny?

The illusion which prevents the effects of these comparisons, is not peculiar to Mr. Burke. The massacres of war, and the murders committed by the sword of justice, are disguised by the solemnities which invest them: but the wild justice of the people has a naked and undisguised horror. Its slightest motion awakens all our indignation: while murder and rapine, if arrayed in the gorgeous disguise of acts of state, may with impunity stalk abroad. We forget that the evils of anarchy must be short-lived, while those of despotism are fatally permanent.

Another illusion has, particularly in England, favoured the exaggeration of the exiles;—we judge of France by our own situation, instead of comparing her conduct with that of other nations in similar circumstances. With us “the times may be moderate, and therefere ought to be peaceable:”* but in France the times were not moderate, and could not be peaceable. Let us correct these illusions of moral optics which make near objects so disproportionately large. Let us place the scene of the French Revolution in a remote age, or in a distant nation, and then let us calmly ask our own minds, whether the most reasonable subject of wonder be not its unexampled mildness, and the small number of individuals crushed in the fall of so vast a pile.

Such are the general reflections suggested by the disorders of the French Revolution. Of these, the first in point of time, as well as of importance, was the Parisian insurrection and the capture of the Bastile. The mode in which that memorable event is treated by Mr. Burke, is worthy of notice. It occupies no conspicuous place in his work; it is only obscurely and contemptuously hinted at as one of those examples of successful revolt, which have fostered a mutinous spirit in the soldiery. “They have not forgot the taking of the King’s castles in Paris and Marseilles. That they murdered with impunity in both places the governors, has not escaped their minds.”† Such is the courtly circumlocution by which Mr. Burke designates the Bastile—“the King’s castle at Paris!” such is the ignominious language in which he speaks of the summary justice executed on the titled ruffian who was its governor; and such is the apparent art with which he has thrown into the back-ground invective and asperity, that, had they been prominent, would have provoked the indignation of mankind! “Je sais,” says Mounier, in the language of that frigid and scanty approbation that is extorted from an enemy, “qu’il est des circonstances qui legitiment l’insurrection, et je mets dans ce nombre celles qui ont causé le siège de la Bastile.”‡

But the admiration of Europe and of posterity, is not to be estimated by the penurious applause of M. Mounier, nor repressed by the insidious hostility of Mr. Burke. It will correspond to the splendour of an insurrection, as much ennobled by heroism as it was justified by necessity, in which the citizens of Paris,—the unwarlike inhabitants of a voluptuous capital,—listening to no voice but that of the danger which menaced their representatives, their families, and their country, and animated, instead of awed, by the host of disciplined mercenaries which invested them on every side, attacked with a gallantry and success equally incredible, a fortress formidable from its strength, and tremendous from its destination, and changed the destiny of France. To palliate or excuse such a revolt, would be abject treachery to its principles. It was a case in which revolt was the dictate of virtue, and the path of duty; and in which submission would have been the most dastardly baseness, and the foulest crime. It was an action not to be excused, but applauded,—not to be pardoned, but admired. I shall not therefore descend to vindicate acts of heroism, which history will teach the remotest posterity to revere, and of which the recital is destined to kindle in unborn millions the holy enthusiasm of freedom.

Commotions of another description followed, partly arising from the general causes before stated, and partly from others of more limited and local operation. The peasantry of the provinces, buried for so many ages in the darkness of servitude, saw but indistinctly and confusedly, in the first dawn of liberty, the boundaries of their duties and their rights. It was no wonder that they should little understand that freedom which so long had been remote from their views. The name conveyed to their ear a right to reject all restraint, to gratify every resentment, and to attack all property. Ruffians, mingling with the deluded peasants, in hopes of booty, inflamed their ignorance and prejudices, by forged authorities from the King and the Assembly for their licentiousness. Many country houses were burnt; and some obnoxious persons were assassinated: but one may without excessive scepticism doubt, whether they had been the mildest masters whose chateaux had undergone that fate; and the peasants had to avenge those silent grinding oppressions which formed almost the only intercourse of the rich with the indigent, and which, though less flagrant than those of Government, were perhaps productive of more intolerable and diffused misery.

But whatever was the demerit of these excesses, they can by no process of reasoning be made imputable to the National Assembly, or the leaders of the Revolution. In what manner were they to repress them? If they exerted against them their own authority with rigour, they must have provoked a civil war: if they invigorated the police and tribunals of the deposed government,—besides incurring the hazard of the same calamity,—they put arms into the hands of their enemies. Placed in this dilemma, they were compelled to expect a slow remedy from the returning serenity of the public mind, and from the progress of the new government towards consistence and vigour.* That the conduct of the populace of Paris towards them should not have been the most decorous and circumspect,—that it should have been frequently irregular and tumultuous, was, in the nature of things inevitable. But the horrible picture which Mr. Burke has drawn of that “stern necessity” under which this “captive” Assembly votes, is neither justified by this concession, nor by the state of facts. It is the overcharged colouring of a fervid imagination. Those to whom he alludes as driven away by assassins,—M. M. Lally and Mounier,—might, surely, have remained with perfect safety in an Assembly in which such furious invectives are daily bellowed forth with impunity against the popular leaders. No man will deny, that that member of the minority enjoyed liberty of speech in its utmost plenitude, who called M. Mirabeau “le plus vil de tous les assassins.” “The terrors of the lamp-post and bayonet” have hitherto been visionary. Popular fury has hitherto spared the most furious declaimers of Aristocracy; and the only “decree,” so far as I can discern, which has even been pretended to have been materially influenced by the populace, is that respecting the prerogatives of war and peace. That tumult has frequently derogated from the dignity which ought to distinguish the deliberations of a legislative assembly, is not to be denied. But that their debates have been tumultuous, is of little importance, if their decisions have been independent. Even in this question of war and peace, “the highest bidder at the auction of popularity”* did not succeed. The scheme of M. Mirabeau, with few amendments, prevailed, while the more “splendidly popular” propositions, which vested in the legislature alone the prerogative of war and peace, were rejected.

We are now conducted by the course of these strictures to the excesses committed at Versailles on the 5th and 6th of October, 1789. After the most careful perusal of the voluminous evidence before the Châtelet, of the controversial pamphlets of M. M. d’Orleans and Mounier, and of the official report of M. Chabroud to the Assembly, the details of the affair seem to me so much involved in obscurity and contradiction, that they afford little on which a candid mind can with confidence pronounce. They afford, indeed, to frivolous and puerile adversaries the means of convicting Mr. Burke of some minute errors. M. Miomandre, the sentinel at the Queen’s gate, it is true, survives; but it is no less true, that he was left for dead by his assassins. On the comparison of evidence it seems probable, that the Queen’s chamber was not broken into,—“that the asylum of beauty and Majesty was not profaned.”† But these slight corrections palliate little the atrocity, and alter not in the least the general complexion, of these flagitious scenes.

The most important question which the subject presents is, whether the Parisian populace were the instruments of conspirators, or whether their fatal march to Versailles was a spontaneous movement, produced by real or chimerical apprehensions of plots against their freedom. I confess that I incline to the latter opinion. Natural causes seem to me adequate to account for the movement. A scarcity of provision is not denied to have existed in Paris. The dinner of the body-guards might surely have provoked the people of a more tranquil city. The maledictions poured forth against the National Assembly, the insults offered to the patriotic cockade, the obnoxious ardour of loyalty displayed on that occasion, might have awakened even the jealousy of a people whose ardour had been sated by the long enjoyment, and whose alarms had been quieted by the secure possession, of liberty. The escape of the King would be the infallible signal of civil war: the exposed situation of the Royal residence was therefore a source of perpetual alarm. These causes, operating on that credulous jealousy which is the malady of the public mind in times of civil confusion, seeing hostility and conspiracy on every side, would seem sufficient ones. The apprehensions of the people in such a period torture the most innocent and frivolous accidents into proofs of sanguinary plots:—witness the war of conspiracies carried on by the contending factions in the reign of Charles the Second. The participation of Queen Mary in Babington’s plot against Elizabeth, is still the subject of controversy. We, at the present day, dispute about the nature of the connection which subsisted between Charles the First and the Catholic insurgents of Ireland. It has occupied the labour of a century to separate truth from falsehood in the Rye-house Plot,—the views of the leaders from the schemes of the inferior conspirators,—and to discover that Russell and Sydney had, indeed, conspired a revolt, but that the underlings alone had plotted the assassination of the King.

It may indeed be said, that ambitious leaders availed themselves of the inflamed state of public feeling,—that by false rumours, and exaggerated truths, they stimulated the revenge, and increased the fears of the populace,—that their emissaries, mixing with the mob, and concealed by its confusion, were to execute their flagitious purposes, and fanatics, as usual, were the dupes of hypocrites. Such are the accusations which have been made against M. M. d’Orleans and Mirabeau. The defence of profligate ambition is not imposed on the admirers of the French Revolution; and to become the advocate of individuals were to forget the dignity of a discussion that regards the rights and interests of an emancipated nation. Of their guilt, however, I will be bold to say no evidence was collected, by the malignant activity of an avowedly hostile tribunal, which, for a moment, would have suspended their acquittal by an English jury. It will be no mean testimony to the innocence of M. Mirabeau, that an opponent, not the mildest in his enmity, nor the most candid in his judgment, confessed, that he saw no serious ground of accusation against him.*

The project is attributed to them, of intimidating the King into a flight, that there might be a pretext for elevating the Duke of Orleans to the office of Regent. But the King could have had no rational hopes of escaping;† for he must have traversed two hundred miles of a country guarded by a people in arms, before he could reach the nearest frontier of the kingdom. The object was too absurd to be pursued by conspirators, to whom talent and sagacity have not been denied by their enemies. That the popular leaders in France did, indeed, desire to fix the Royal residence at Paris, it is impossible to doubt: the name, the person, and the authority of the King, would have been most formidable weapons in the hands of their adversaries. The peace of their country,—the stability of their freedom, called on them to use every measure that could prevent their enemies from getting possession of that “Royal Figure.” The name of the King would have sanctioned foreign powers in supporting the aristocracy. Their interposition, which now would be hostility against the King and kingdom, would then have been only regarded as aid against rebellion. Against all these dreadful consequences there seemed only one remedy,—the residence of the King at Paris. Whether that residence is to be called a “captivity,” or any other harsh name, I will not hesitate to affirm, that the Parliament of England would have merited the gratitude of their country, and of posterity, by a similar prevention of the escape of Charles I. from London. Fortunate would it have been for England if the person of James II. had been retained while his authority was limited. She would then have been circumstanced as France is now. The march to Versailles seems to have been the spontaneous movement of an alarmed populace. Their views, and the suggestions of their leaders, were probably bounded by procuring the King to change his residence to Paris; but the collision of armed multitudes terminated in unforeseen excesses and execrable crimes.

In the eye of Mr. Burke, however, these crimes and excesses assume an aspect far more important than can be communicated to them by their own insulated guilt. They form, in his opinion, the crisis of a revolution,—a far more important one than any mere change of government,—in which the sentiments and opinions that have formed the manners of the European nations are to perish. “The age of chivalry is gone, and the glory of Europe extinguished for ever.” He follows this exclamation by an eloquent eulogium on chivalry, and by gloomy predictions of the future state of Europe, when the nation that has been so long accustomed to give her the tone in arts and manners is thus debased and corrupted. A caviller might remark that ages, much more near the meridian fervour of chivalry than ours, have witnessed a treatment of queens as little gallant and generous as that of the Parisian mob. He might remind Mr. Burke, that in the age and country of Sir Philip Sidney, a Queen of France, whom no blindness to accomplishment,—no malignity of detraction, can reduce to the level of Marie Antoinette, was, by “a nation of men of honour and cavaliers,” permitted to languish in captivity and expire on a scaffold; and he might add, that the manners of a country are more surely indicated by the systematic cruelty of a sovereign than by the licentious frenzy of a mob. He might remark, that the mild system of modern manners which survived the massacres with which fanaticism had for a century desolated, and almost barbarised Europe, might, perhaps, resist the shock of one day’s excesses committed by a delirious populace. He might thus, perhaps, oppose specious and popular topics to the declamation of Mr. Burke.

But the subject itself is, to an enlarged thinker, fertile in reflections of a different nature. That system of manners which arose among the Gothic nations of Europe, and of which chivalry was more properly the effusion than the source, is without doubt one of the most peculiar and interesting appearances in human affairs. The moral causes which formed its character have not, perhaps, been hitherto investigated with the happiest success: but,—to confine ourselves to the subject before us,—chivalry was certainly one of the most prominent of its features and most remarkable of its effects Candour must confess, that this singular institution was not admirable only as the corrector of the ferocious ages in which it flourished; but that in contributing to polish and soften manners it paved the way for the diffusion of knowledge and the extension of commerce, which afterwards, in some measure, supplanted it. Society is inevitably progressive. Commerce has overthrown the “feudal and chivalrous system” under whose shade it first grew; while learning has subverted the superstition whose opulent endowments had first fostered it. Peculiar circumstances connected with the manners of chivalry favoured this admission of commerce and this growth of knowledge; while the sentiments peculiar to it, already enfeebled in the progress from ferocity and turbulence, were almost obliterated by tranquillity and refinement. Commerce and diffused knowledge have, in fact, so completely assumed the ascendant in polished nations, that it will be difficult to discover any relics of Gothic manners, but in a fantastic exterior, which has survived the generous illusions through which these manners once seemed splendid and seductive. Their direct influence has long ceased in Europe; but their indirect influence, through the medium of those causes which would not perhaps have existed but for the mildness which chivalry created in the midst of a barbarous age, still operates with increasing vigour. The manners of the middle age were, in the most singular sense, compulsory: enterprising benevolence was produced by general fierceness,—gallant courtesy by ferocious rudeness; and artificial gentleness resisted the torrent of natural barbarism. But a less incongruous system has succeeded, in which commerce, which unites men’s interests, and knowledge, which excludes those prejudices that tend to embroil them, present a broader basis for the stability of civilized and beneficent manners.

Mr. Burke, indeed, forbodes the most fatal consequences to literature from events, which he supposes to have given a mortal blow to the spirit of chivalry. I have ever been protected from such apprehensions by my belief in a very simple truth,—“that diffused knowledge immortalizes itself.” A literature which is confined to a few, may be destroyed by the massacre of scholars and the conflagration of libraries: but the diffused knowledge of the present day could only be annihilated by the extirpation of the civilized part of mankind.

Far from being hostile to letters, the French Revolution has contributed to serve their cause in a manner hitherto unexampled. The political and literary progress of nations has hitherto been simultaneous; the period of their eminence in arts has also been the era of their historical fame; and no example occurs in which their great political splendour has been subsequent to the Augustan age of a people. But in France, which is destined to refute every abject and arrogant doctrine that would limit the human powers, the ardour of a youthful literature has been infused into a nation tending to decline; and new arts are called forth when all seemed to have passed their zenith. She enjoyed one Augustan age, fostered by the favour of despotism: she seems about to witness another, created by the energy of freedom.

In the opinion of Mr. Burke, however, she is advancing by rapid strides to ignorance and barbarism.* “Already,” he informs us, “there appears a poverty of conception, a coarseness and vulgarity in all the proceedings of the Assembly, and of all their instructors. Their liberty is not liberal. Their science is presumptuous ignorance. Their humanity is savage and brutal.” To animadvert on this modest and courteous picture belongs not to the present subject: and impressions cannot be disputed, more especially when their grounds are not assigned. All that is left to us to do, is to declare opposite impressions with a confidence authorised by his example. The proceedings of the National Assembly of France appear to me to contain models of more splendid eloquence, and examples of more profound political research, than have been exhibited by any public body in modern times. I cannot therefore augur, from these proceedings, the downfall of philosophy, or the extinction of eloquence.

Thus various are the aspects which the French Revolution, not only in its influence on literature, but in its general tenor and spirit, presents to minds occupied by various opinions. To the eye of Mr. Burke, it exhibits nothing but a scene of horror: in his mind it inspires no emotion but abhorrence of its leaders, commiseration for their victims, and alarms at the influence of an event which menaces the subversion of the policy, the arts, and the manners of the civilized world. Minds who view it through another medium are filled by it with every sentiment of admiration and triumph,—of admiration due to splendid exertions of virtue, and of triumph inspired by widening prospects of happiness.

Nor ought it to be denied by the candour of philosophy, that events so great are never so unmixed as not to present a double aspect to the acuteness and exaggeration of contending parties. The same ardour of passion which produces patriotic and legislative heroism becomes the source of ferocious retaliation, of visionary novelties, and of precipitate change. The attempt were hopeless to increase the fertility, without favouring the rank luxuriance of the soil. He that on such occasions expects unmixed good, ought to recollect, that the economy of nature has invariably determined the equal influence of high passions in giving birth to virtues and to crimes. The soil of Attica was observed to produce at once the most delicious fruits and the most virulent poisons. It was thus with the human mind; and to the frequency of convulsions in the ancient commonwealths, they owe those examples of sanguinary tumult and virtuous heroism, which distinguish their history from the monotonous tranquillity of modern states. The passions of a nation cannot be kindled to the degree which renders it capable of great achievements, without involving the commission of violence and crime. The reforming ardour of a senate cannot be inflamed sufficiently to combat and overcome abuses, without hazarding the evils which arise from legislative temerity. Such are the immutable laws, which are more properly to be regarded as libels on our nature than as charges against the French Revolution. The impartial voice of History ought, doubtless, to record the blemishes as well as the glories of that great event: and to contrast the delineation of it which might have been given by the specious and temperate Toryism of Mr. Hume, with that which we have received from the repulsive and fanatical invectives of Mr. Burke, might still be amusing and instructive. Both these great men would be averse to the Revolution; but it would not be difficult to distinguish between the undisguised fury of an eloquent advocate, and the well-dissembled partiality of a philosophical judge. The passion of the latter would only feel the excesses which have dishonoured the Revolution: but the philosophy of the former would instruct him, that our sentiments, raised by such events so much above their ordinary level, become the source of guilt and heroism unknown before,—of sublime virtues and splendid crimes.

[* ] The eloquent expression of Mr. Curran in the Irish House of Commons.

[* ] Yet this was only the combat of reason and freedom against one prejudice,—that of hereditary right; whereas the French Revolution is, as has been sublimely said by the Bishop of Autun, “Le premier combat qui se soit jamais livré entre tous les Principes et toutes les Erreurs!”

[* ] Abyssinian tribes.—Ed.

[* ] Junius.

[† ] Burke, p. 307.

[‡ ] Exposé, &c. p. 24.

[* ] If this statement be candid and exact, what shall we think of the language of Mr. Burke, when he speaks of the Assembly as “authorising treasons, robberies, rapes, assassinations, slaughters, and burnings, throughout all their harassed land.” (p. 58.) In another place (p. 200,) he connects the legislative extinction of the Order of Nobles with the popular excesses committed against individual Noblemen, to load the Assembly with the accumulated obloquy;—a mode of proceeding more remarkable for controversial dexterity than for candour.

[* ] Burke, p. 353.

[† ] The expression of M. Chabroud. Five witnesses assert that the ruffians did not break into the Queen’s chamber. Two give the account followed by Mr. Burke, and to give this preponderance its due force, let it be recollected, that the whole proceedings before the Châtelet were ex parte. See Procédure Criminelle fait au Châtelet de Paris, &c., 1790.

[* ] Discours de M. l’Abbé Maury dans l’Assemblée Nationale, 1 Octobre, 1790.

[† ] The circumstances of his late attempt [the flight to Varennes—Ed.] sanction this reasoning.

[* ] Burke, p. 118.