If it were possible that a people brought up under an intolerant and arbitrary system could subvert that system without acts of cruelty and folly, half the objections to despotic power would be removed.  We should, in that case, be compelled to acknowledge that it at least produces no pernicious effects on the intellectual and moral character of a nation.  We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions.  But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary.  The violence of these outrages will always be proportioned to the ferocity and ignorance of the people; and the ferocity and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the oppression and degradation under which they have been accustomed to live.  Thus it was in our civil war.  The heads of the Church and State reaped only that which they had sown.  The Government had prohibited free discussion; it had done its best to keep the people unacquainted with their duties and their rights.  The retribution was just and natural.  If our rulers suffered from popular ignorance, it was because they had themselves taken away the key of knowledge.  If they were assailed with blind fury, it was because they had exacted an equally blind submission.

It is the character of such revolutions that we always see the worst of them at first.  Till men have been some time free, they know not how to use their freedom.  The natives of wine countries are generally sober.  In climates where wine is a rarity intemperance abounds.  A newly liberated people may be compared to a Northern army encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres.  It is said that when soldiers in such a situation find themselves able to indulge without restraint in such a rare and expensive luxury, nothing is to be seen but intoxication.  Soon, however, plenty teaches discretion; and, after wine has been for a few months their daily fare, they become more temperate than they had ever been in their own country.  In the same manner, the final and permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy.  Its immediate effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, scepticism on points the most clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious.  It is just at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it.  They pull down the scaffolding from the half-finished edifice; they point to the flying dust, the falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful irregularity of the whole appearance; and then ask in scorn where the promised splendor and comfort is to be found.  If such miserable sophisms were to prevail, there would never be a good house or a good government in the world.