We have read in history of that furious insurrection of the common people in France called the Jacquerie:  for this is not the first time that the people have been enlightened into treason, murder, and rapine.  Its object was to extirpate the gentry.  The Captal de Buch, a famous soldier of those days, dishonored the name of a gentleman and of a man by taking, for their cruelties, a cruel vengeance on these deluded wretches:  it was, however, his right and his duty to make war upon them, and afterwards, in moderation, to bring them to punishment for their rebellion; though in the sense of the French Revolution, and of some of our clubs, they were the people,—­and were truly so, if you will call by that appellation any majority of men told by the head.

At a time not very remote from the same period (for these humors never have affected one of the nations without some influence on the other) happened several risings of the lower commons in England.  These insurgents were certainly the majority of the inhabitants of the counties in which they resided; and Cade, Ket, and Straw, at the head of their national guards, and fomented by certain traitors of high rank, did no more than exert, according to the doctrines of ours and the Parisian societies, the sovereign power inherent in the majority.

We call the time of those events a dark age.  Indeed, we are too indulgent to our own proficiency.  The Abbe John Ball understood the rights of man as well as the Abbe Gregoire.  That reverend patriarch of sedition, and prototype of our modern preachers, was of opinion, with the National Assembly, that all the evils which have fallen upon men had been caused by an ignorance of their “having been born and continued equal as to their rights.”  Had the populace been able to repeat that profound maxim, all would have gone perfectly well with them.  No tyranny, no vexation, no oppression, no care, no sorrow, could have existed in the world.  This would have cured them like a charm for the tooth-ache.  But the lowest wretches, in their most ignorant state, were able at all times to talk such stuff; and yet at all times have they suffered many evils and many oppressions, both before and since the republication by the National Assembly of this spell of healing potency and virtue.  The enlightened Dr. Ball, when he wished to rekindle the lights and fires of his audience on this point, chose for the test the following couplet:—­

    When Adam delved and Eve span,
    Who was then the gentleman?

Of this sapient maxim, however, I do not give him for the inventor.  It seems to have been handed down by tradition, and had certainly become proverbial; but whether then composed or only applied, thus much must be admitted, that in learning, sense, energy, and comprehensiveness, it is fully equal to all the modern dissertations on the equality of mankind:  and it has one advantage over them,—­that it is in rhyme.[23]