And while the bloody and irreligious excesses of the Revolution called out his detestation, the mistakes and incapacity of the new legislators excited his contempt.  He condemned a compulsory paper currency,—­not a paper currency, but a compulsory one,—­and predicted bankruptcy.  He ridiculed an army without a head,—­not the instrument of the executive, but of a military democracy receiving orders from the clubs.  He made sport of the legislature ruled by the commune, and made up not of men of experience, but of adventurers, stock-jobbers, directors of assignats, trustees for the sale of church-lands, who “took a constitution in hand as savages would a looking-glass,”—­a body made up of those courtiers who wished to cut off the head of their king, of those priests who voted religion a nuisance, of those lawyers who called the laws a dead letter, of those philosophers who admitted no argument but the guillotine, of those sentimentalists who chanted the necessity of more blood, of butchers and bakers and brewers who would exterminate the very people who bought from them.

And the result of all this wickedness and folly on the mind of Burke was the most eloquent and masterly political treatise probably ever written,—­a treatise in which there may be found much angry rhetoric and some unsound principles, but which blazes with genius on every page, which coruscates with wit, irony, and invective; scornful and sad doubtless, yet full of moral wisdom; a perfect thesaurus of political truths.  I have no words with which to express my admiration for the wisdom and learning and literary excellence of the “Reflections on the French Revolution” as a whole,—­so luminous in statement, so accurate in the exposure of sophistries, so full of inspired intuitions, so Christian in its tone.  This celebrated work was enough to make any man immortal.  It was written and rewritten with the most conscientious care.  It appeared in 1790; and so great were its merits, so striking, and yet so profound, that thirty thousand copies were sold in a few weeks.  It was soon translated into all the languages of Europe, and was in the hands of all thinking men.  It was hailed with especial admiration by Christian and conservative classes, though bitterly denounced by many intelligent people as gloomy and hostile to progress.  But whether liked or disliked, it made a great impression, and contributed to settle public opinion in reference to French affairs.  What can be more just and enlightened than such sentiments as these, which represent the spirit of the treatise:—­

“Because liberty is to be classed among the blessings of mankind, am I to felicitate a madman who has escaped from the restraints of his cell?  There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom.  Woe be to that country that would madly reject the service of talents and virtues.  Nothing is an adequate representation of a State that does not represent its ability as well as property.