laws and
statutes that have yet been promulgated.

In the declaratory exordium which prefaces the Declaration of Rights
we see the solemn and majestic spectacle of a nation opening its
commission, under the auspices of its Creator, to establish a
Government, a scene so new, and so transcendantly unequalled by anything
in the European world, that the name of a Revolution is diminutive of
its character, and it rises into a Regeneration of man. What are the
present Governments of Europe but a scene of iniquity and oppression?
What is that of England? Do not its own inhabitants say it is a market
where every man has his price, and where corruption is common traffic
at the expense of a deluded people? No wonder, then, that the French
Revolution is traduced. Had it confined itself merely to the destruction
of flagrant despotism perhaps Mr. Burke and some others had been silent.
Their cry now is, "It has gone too far"--that is, it has gone too far
for them. It stares corruption in the face, and the venal tribe are all
alarmed. Their fear discovers itself in their outrage, and they are but
publishing the groans of a wounded vice. But from such opposition the
French Revolution, instead of suffering, receives an homage. The more it
is struck the more sparks it will emit; and the fear is it will not be
struck enough. It has nothing to dread from attacks; truth has given it
an establishment, and time will record it with a name as lasting as his
own.

Having now traced the progress of the French Revolution through most
of its principal stages, from its commencement to the taking of the
Bastille, and its establishment by the Declaration of Rights, I will
close the subject with the energetic apostrophe of M. de la Fayette,
"May this great monument, raised to Liberty, serve as a lesson to the
oppressor, and an example to the oppressed!"*[11]

MISCELLANEOUS CHAPTER

To prevent interrupting the argument in the preceding part of this work,
or the narrative that follows it, I reserved some observations to be
thrown together in a Miscellaneous Chapter; by which variety might
not be censured for confusion. Mr. Burke's book is all Miscellany. His
intention was to make an attack on the French Revolution; but instead of
proceeding with an orderly arrangement, he has stormed it with a mob of
ideas tumbling over and destroying one another.

But this confusion and contradiction in Mr. Burke's Book is easily
accounte