too ignoble to be known; and the mass too indiscriminate to be pitied.  But should a philosopher feel and reason thus?  Should he mistake the cause for the effect? and, giving all his pity to the few, feel no compassion for the many, because they suffer in his eyes not individually but by millions?  The excesses of the people cannot, I fear, be justified; it would undoubtedly have done them credit, both as men and as Christians, if they had possessed their new acquired power with moderation.  But let it be remembered that the populace in no country ever use power with moderation; excess is inherent in their aggregate constitution:  and as every Government in the world knows that violence infallibly attends power in such hands, it is doubly bound in common sense, and for common safety, so to conduct itself, that the people may not find an interest in public confusions.  They will always suffer much and long, before they are effectually roused; nothing, therefore, can kindle the flame but such oppressions of some classes or order in society as give able men the opportunity of seconding the general mass; discontent will diffuse itself around; and if the Government take not warning in time, it is alone answerable for all the burnings and all the plunderings and all the devastation and all the blood that follow.’

Who can deny the justice of these observations?  It was the Government alone that was justly chargeable with the excesses committed in this early stage, and, in fact, in every other stage, of the Revolution of France.  If the Government had given way in time, none of these excesses would have been committed.  If it had listened to the complaints, the prayers, the supplications, the cries of the cruelly-treated and starving people; if it had changed its conduct, reduced its expenses, it might have been safe under the protection of the peace-officers, and might have disbanded its standing army.  But it persevered; it relied upon the bayonet, and upon its judges and hangmen.  The latter were destroyed, and the former went over to the side of the people.  Was it any wonder that the people burnt the houses of their oppressors, and killed the owners and their families?  The country contained thousands upon thousands of men that had been ruined by taxation, and by judgments of infamous courts of justice, ’a mockery of justice’; and, when these ruined men saw their oppressors at their feet, was it any wonder that they took vengeance upon them?  Was it any wonder that the son, who had seen his father and mother flogged, because he, when a child, had smuggled a handful of salt, should burn for an occasion to shoot through the head the ruffians who had thus lacerated the bodies of his parents?  Moses slew the insolent Egyptian who had smitten one of his countrymen in bondage.  Yet Moses has never been called either a murderer or a cruel wretch for this act; and the bondage of the Israelites was light as a feather compared to the tyranny under which the people of France had groaned