of the poor against the rich, of the low against the high. It is the manner in which they would at all times, if they could, legislate themselves, till they found, as they certainly would find, that low as they were, still that they could descend lower; miserable as they might think themselves, still that they could be rendered more so.

The detail of what passed in France at this period, you will, to a certain extent, comprehend from the passages I have quoted; you will comprehend more distinctly from reading Thiers, and the Two Friends of Liberty; but you will still have a very slight notion of what was suffered, unless you exercise your powers of philosophic reflection, and even of your imagination, to the utmost. Think of a man, for instance, brought before the revolutionary tribunal, and saying calmly, "Trouble not me, nor yourselves, with all this trial; I am rich, and you want no other witness against me." And it was true, what he said; no other witness was wanted; and he was ordered to the guillotine. Again, think of one of these Jacobin rulers observing, that the real mint, where the public money was coined, was the Place de la Revolution; for it was there that the people were guillotined, and then, their property confiscated. Of this kind are the incidents which you will have to read in the histories of this Reign of Terror,-incidents which speak volumes.

Again. Observe, when acts of tyranny and oppression once begin, at what rate they multiply. Observe, that while the guillotine was continually clearing the prisons in batches, according to the horrible phrase of the times, and that while these batches, from thirty, at last were to have been increased to a hundred at once, the numbers in these prisons were, in Paris, on 1st of September, 1793, 577; 1st of October, 2400; 1st of November, 3203; 1st of December, 4130; and in six months after, just before the fall of Robespierre, they were, on 1st of July, 11,400. This is the statement of the historian, an eyewitness, Desodoards. In the mean time all the population had been thrown into different classes, and the more young and vigorous part drawn out, and, with the exception of married persons, compelled to serve. The whole system of war had been altered (you will see all particulars described in the histories, especially in Thiers and Toulongeon); battles were now to be won, armies were now to be levied, not as before; but every man was marked off, some to join the army immediately, some to be ready for the years approaching. Commissioners were to be sent from Paris continually to keep generals, officers, and soldiers, properly ele

in

vated, to the revolutionary pitch of frenzy, that prevailed in the Jacobin clubs; and armies were to be levied in masses, then thrown in masses upon the enemy, to obliterate the enemy any particular point, as locusts or ants extinguish a fire raised to stop their course, by the continually renewed and accumulated destruction of crowding inexhaustible myriads.

Certainly political objects may be attained, and objects military, and civil, and moral, and any objects that can be mentioned, if what by men are considered as impossibilities are performed, if measures are conceived and carried into execution by the rulers of a people, as if human feelings were nothing, and human society nothing, and human life nothing, and every established hope and fear, and wish and will, that the human heart can know, or cherish, or respect, be nothing-certainly political points, or any points may for a time be thus carried. But what are we to think of such a state of things? And after all, such a state of things cannot last; men cannot for ever be kept in such a frenzied state of existence, and Robespierre and his Jacobins could only be thus preparing for themselves destruction, and for their country, the military rule of some distinguished general. It is very true, that, before such a system could in any country accomplish its own destruction, all the neighbouring countries might be laid in hideous ruins around it; still such a system could not last, in either the one or the other; but the interval and the crisis were assuredly of a most awful nature, unparalleled in the history of man, not equalled even on the fall of the Roman empire, when the civilized and uncivilized portions of mankind were contending for the possession of Europe.

"Deprived of the old government," says Mr. Burke, writing in the midst of these unhappy times, " deprived in a manner of all government, France, fallen as a monarchy, to common speculators, might have appeared (and Mr. Burke himself was for a season one of these common speculators) more likely to be an object of pity or insult, according to the disposition of the circumjacent powers, than to be the scourge and terror of them all; but out of the tomb of the murdered monarchy in France, has arisen a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre, in a far more terrific guise than any which ever yet has overpowered the imagination, and subdued the fortitude of man; going straight forward to its end, unappalled by peril, unchecked by remorse, despising all common maxims, and all common means.' Mr. Burke was writing in 1796, when all Europe was struck down with a sense of helplessness and terror at the extent to which

the new opinions had been carried, and the success of these great military multitudes of men, by which these new opinions were everywhere propagated and enforced.

From what I have quoted from the historians, and from Mr. Burke, you will have some general notion, that may serve you for the present, of this system of terror, and of the extent to which the new opinions had been carried. But no atonement can be made to mankind by the Jacobins and more violent leaders of the popular party in France, for the situation to which they at last reduced their country and Europe; every allowance will be made for the excesses of the multitude in the beginning and course of a revolution, but they were themselves mere multitude and mob from the first, and never produced any other than the principles and feelings of the lowest and most uninformed orders of the community; it is impossible to forgive them for having made their Revolution (with the assistance of the faults, I must always be understood to speak, of their opponents) a by-word among the nations, a blight, a shame, and a reproach to the friends of freedom; for they were men of great ability, these Jacobins, it is in vain to deny it, men with tongues to defend, hearts to conceive, and with hands to execute any mischief, no doubt, and therefore, if well directed, any good.

That such a system as this of terror could ever exist, must be accounted for by the consideration of many more principles of a moral and political nature than at the close of my lecture I can even advert to. No doubt the invasion of the allied powers gave a colour to the reasonings of Robespierre and the Jacobins, and enabled them to identify the cause of their particular faction with that of the Revolution, and to set the rest of France and human nature itself at defiance. No doubt the invasion of the allied powers must in every speculation be numbered up as an important element; still it is a very remarkable and appalling fact in the history of mankind, that such a regular system of judicial slaughter should be conceived at all, still more, that it could be ever executed; and after every allowance has been made for the considerations just mentioned, still that the Reign of Terror should ever exist; that Robespierre and his associates should find a sufficient tameness in the Convention, a sufficient supply of ferocious men to make into an army to attend them through the streets of Paris of six thousand people, a sufficient supply of members of the Convention to carry their decrees in the Assembly, and of lower wretches of every description for all their revolutionary tribunals and committees, for all their

gaols and houses of arrest, to execute their different offices of spies, informers, and judges, to make their domiciliary visits, and carry into effect their murderous commissions of every kind in Paris, and all through the kingdom; and that they should continue these outrages on the property and lives of the people of France for so many days, weeks, and months together. This, indeed, can only, I think, be accounted for by a further consideration, not only of the invasion of the allied powers, but of the situation to which the minds of the leaders of the revolutionary party, and the people of France themselves, had been at last reduced by the principles and practices of the Revolution; and, for the present, I must end as I began. See here, I must repeat, see here the result of all this violence and fury; see what it is to break down the great landmarks of human duty; see what it is for the leaders of parties to accomplish objects by any means, however unlawful, to accustom the people and themselves to breaches of order and to violations of humanity and justice; to create for themselves, and then submit to, one political necessity after another, till all the common workings of the feelings and the understanding are at an end. What can be the lessons of the whole, if this be not one of them?

Whatever we may think of the principles, of the conduct, of the policy of the allied powers (I am not their defender, nor is the subject at present properly before us), however these points may be hereafter determined, let the crimes of the National Assemblies of the French people and of their popular leaders be acknowledged and reprobated, let the national effects of all these be considered as having so fatally contributed to introduce this system of terror, and let mankind take warning. Let these be considered as having at last reduced a great nation to the lamentable condition in which we now see them; submitting, and having made it their political creed and their boast to submit, to the sovereign will of the people, till they are at last obliged, as you see here they are obliged, to suffer the fiercest of their demagogues and the basest of the multitude to bear a sway, totally uncontrolled and uncontrollable; led on from one excess to another, till they are at last to find all Europe leagued against them, and then left without any other resource than to suffer these men of tumult and of blood to beat off the invader in any way that to their ferocious imaginations might seem best; unable themselves to know what to think, or what to do; assenting to one point indeed, that the enemy was not to give law to their country. But having acquiesced and submitted to

the obligation of this one eternal maxim of national honour, to find themselves placed by it in a situation the most calamitous that human beings ever yet experienced, by perceiving themselves surrendered to the disposal of rulers without pity and without remorse, acting without discrimination, without even any sense or meaning in their imprisonments and executions, with a sort of insanity of cruelty, as if they had no wish but for the execration of their fellow creatures, no ambition but to procure for themselves assassination, no object but to render their Revolution a horror to mankind; worst of all, to hear these monsters of barbarity running changes on virtue, humanity, and justice; anathematizing others as the tyrants, oppressors, and murderers of mankind, and proposing themselves as the defenders of liberty, and as the patriots and benefactors of France. Certainly no situation in which a civilized community was ever placed can be compared to this, and I cannot but consider the people of France as paralysed and borne down, as rendered insensate, motionless, and dead by the long-protracted succession of outrages and tumults, and above all, by long familiarity with violations, in themselves and their leaders, of principle and duty. I must therefore conclude my lecture with repeating the lesson I have already insisted upon, repeating it, in a few simple words: Let men take warning; let them here see what human nature may become.

LECTURE XL.

REIGN OF TERROR.

I HAVE endeavoured in my two last lectures to give you some general notice of what was passing in Paris and in the rest of France during the Reign of Terror. You cannot be too well acquainted with it.

I shall therefore attempt, in the lecture of to-day, to offer you a new source of information. I shall refer you to the pages of the Moniteur, the great national gazette of France at the time. I will, in the first place, however, say a few words in the way of preface.

Such scenes as I have already alluded to could not but produce a strong impression on the minds of all the thinking men of Europe.

In the parliamentary debates of your own country you will