his writings at that period has been admitted in the late scrutiny of him by the Jacobin Club, when they saved him from that guillotine “which he grazed.”  In the beginning of his work he displays “the task of glory,” as he calls it, which presented itself at the opening of the Convention.  All is summed up in two points:  “To create the French Republic; to disorganize Europe; perhaps to purge it of its tyrants by the eruption of the volcanic principles of equality."[6] The coincidence is exact; the proof is complete and irresistible.

In a cause like this, and in a time like the present, there is no neutrality.  They who are not actively, and with decision and energy, against Jacobinism are its partisans.  They who do not dread it love it.  It cannot be viewed with indifference.  It is a thing made to produce a powerful impression on the feelings.  Such is the nature of Jacobinism, such is the nature of man, that this system must be regarded either with enthusiastic admiration, or with the highest degree of detestation, resentment, and horror.

Another great lesson may be taught by this book, and by the fortune of the author and his party:  I mean a lesson drawn from the consequences of engaging in daring innovations from an hope that we may be able to limit their mischievous operation at our pleasure, and by our policy to secure ourselves against the effect of the evil examples we hold out to the world.  This lesson is taught through almost all the important pages of history; but never has it been taught so clearly and so awfully as at this hour.  The revolutionists who have just suffered an ignominious death, under the sentence of the revolutionary tribunal, (a tribunal composed of those with whom they had triumphed in the total destruction of the ancient government,) were by no means ordinary men, or without very considerable talents and resources.  But with all their talents and resources, and the apparent momentary extent of their power, we see the fate of their projects, their power, and their persons.  We see before our eyes the absurdity of thinking to establish order upon principles of confusion, or with the materials and instruments of rebellion to build up a solid and stable government.

Such partisans of a republic amongst us as may not have the worst intentions will see that the principles, the plans, the manners, the morals, and the whole system of France is altogether as adverse to the formation and duration of any rational scheme of a republic as it is to that of a monarchy, absolute or limited.  It is, indeed, a system which can only answer the purposes of robbers and murderers.